Do we really want to elevate George Zimmerman to the status of celebrity game show contestant?

Alyssa Rosenberg, ThinkProgress: In the aftermath of his acquittal in the death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator whose shooting of Martin sparked a national debate about racial bias and so-called Stand Your Ground laws, has engaged in a series of provocative misadventures. He went rifle shopping. He’s begun a painting career. And on Tuesday night, right before what would have been Trayvon Martin’s 19th birthday, boxing promoter Damon Feldman announced Zimmerman’s latest stunt: he’ll be fighting the rapper DMX, theoretically for charity. (Feldman says the timing was incidental.)

My colleague Judd Legum has one great reason not to spend your pay-per-view dollars on the fight: it’ll almost certainly be a fraud. Feldman has a long record of promoting fake fights, though as Judd explains, “That’s not to say Feldman doesn’t like to promote his fights as genuine in an effort to attract interest. Feldman maintains that he doesn’t fix fights, but in 2011, he pleaded no contest to ‘charges of fixing fights and promoting fights without a license’ and sentenced to two years probation by a Pennsylvania court.” And it’s not clear that Feldman could actually set up a real contest between Zimmerman and DMX in which the blows are real and the outcome uncertain: he’d need a state or tribal commission to sanction the fight, and it’s not clear that any approval is forthcoming.

But I want to raise another issue. Feldman has tried to stir up support for the match on the grounds that it represents a way for Zimmerman’s critics to get some measure of fairness after the courts failed to convict them. “Say he goes and gets his ass kicked isn’t that justice right there?” BuzzFeed reports him saying.

"…Even if you think turnabout is fair play, the idea that a fight between Zimmerman and a black man represents some sort of cosmic rematch between Zimmerman and Martin ought to be profoundly troubling," Rosenberg argues, "Buying into Feldman’s reasoning requires us to accept Zimmerman’s version of the events that ended with him killing Martin: that this was a fight between combatants of equal size, skill, and ill intent that ended in a shooting that was purely an act of self-defense."

I’d further argue that George Zimmerman has been trying to cash in on his crime since he got away with it, trying to sell paintings and showing up at gun manufacturers like some sort of visiting celebrity. Do we really want George Zimmerman to be the next Ann Coulter — i.e., a person who’s a celebrity mostly because they’re so widely hated?

Or does Zimmerman deserve to slink off to infamy, forced to struggle along in a world where anyone with any brains at all would have nothing to do with him and would never trust him out of their sight?

It’s hard to argue against the proposition that if anyone on earth deserves to get his ass kicked, it’s George Zimmerman. But that’s not the question. The question is this: do we allow Zimmerman to use our need to see justice done as his ticket to fame and fortune?

I vote no.

Sanford residents will be disappointed to learn they can no longer shoot unarmed teenagers

[click image for link to story]

Bonus: this is the relaunch of the neighborhood watch program that Sanford police chief Cecil Smith ordered shut down in April, citing “no accountability” and no training of watch members. Oddly, there’s no mention of any accompanying crime wave, as an army of Skittles-mad Trayvon Martin-types rushed in to take advantage of the absence of vigilant sentries.

It seems that the neighborhood watch program doesn’t actually accomplish much of anything — other than to make unstable wannabe cops feel important. Sanford sailed along fine without them for months on end.

George Zimmerman’s wife pleads guilty to perjury

USA Today: The wife of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, has been sentenced to one year probation and 100 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor perjury charge for lying at her husband’s bond hearing.

Shellie Zimmerman, in court Wednesday, admitted that she perjured herself before Judge Kenneth Lester at an April 22, 2012, bond hearing for her husband. At that hearing, she told Lester, who was then presiding over her husband’s case, that the couple had little funds.

But in a court filing, State Attorney Angela Corey said Shellie Zimmerman perjured herself by failing to reveal that George Zimmerman had collected more than $100,000 through Internet donations.

Together, the Zimmerman’s tried to mislead the government as to George’s financial resource through a hamhanded attempt at money laundering.

George Zimmerman instructed Shellie Zimmerman on how to transfer money from his bank account into hers and his sister’s while he was in jail in April 2012, according to recordings of jail calls released by the Florida State Attorney’s Office. According to an affidavit, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $74,000 to her personal account days before the April bond hearing. Nearly $50,000 was transferred to an account held by Zimmerman’s sister.

Taped phone calls between the couple revealed that they had discussed the money transfers in code to hide the funds, according to the affidavit. Prosecutors allege that Zimmerman and his wife talked about $10, $20 and $100 to mask the fact that they were referring to thousands of dollars. The calls also showed that George Zimmerman instructed his wife to “pay off all the bills,” including payments to American Express and Sam’s Club.

Trayvon Martin was a kid without a criminal record. Yet if you ask conservatives, Trayvon was the criminal and this pair of grifters are American heroes. As a term of her probation, Zimmerman “cannot possess, carry or own a firearm and must get permission to own any other type of weapon.”

Too bad we couldn’t at the very least get that sort of restriction placed on her husband.

If it’s not about race, why are Zimmerman supporters in agreement with racists?

Mother Jones: In April 2012, two days before George Zimmerman was arrested for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, he huddled with a fellow neighborhood watch volunteer, Frank Taaffe. According to Taaffe, who disclosed the meeting on Fox News, Zimmerman asked him to share “several talking points” with the media. Taaffe obliged. Indeed, as Zimmerman’s legal drama unfolded over the next year and a half, Taaffe emerged as his most visible and outspoken defender. He gave hundreds of interviews to media outlets, ranging from the New York Times to Fox News to CNN, and made near-daily appearances on cable news shows during Zimmerman’s trial.

Taaffe used this platform to cast Martin as a drug-addled hoodlum and Zimmerman as a community-minded do-gooder (“the best neighbor you would want to have”) who had every reason to suspect the black teen was up to mischief. He also railed against Zimmerman’s critics, whom he accused of staging a witch hunt. “It’s really sad that he has already been convicted in the public media and has already been sentenced to the gas chamber,” he lamented in an interview with NBC’s Miami affiliate last year.

Taaffe was hardly the ideal person to be weighing in on a case suffused with racial angst—or commenting on criminal-justice matters, period. A Mother Jones investigation has found that the 56-year-old New York native has a lengthy criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and burglary, and a history of airing virulently racist views. Just last Sunday, he appeared on The White Voice, a weekly podcast hosted by a man named Joe Adams, who has deep, long-standing ties to white-power groups and has authored a manual called Save The White People Handbook. (Sample quote: “A mutt makes a great pet and a mulatto makes a great slave.”)

With my headline here, it’d be easy to accuse me of applying guilt by association. Except for one thing: Zimmerman supporters aren’t in agreement with Taaffe on just one or two points, they’re in agreement with him about everything. When you’re in complete agreement with a racist, that makes you a racist — just as someone in complete agreement with Marx is a Marxist.

From the “drug-addled street thug” smear to the “let’s all start racially profiling” argument currently so popular on the right, at no point do conservative Zimmerman supporters and this avowed white supremacist part company. It’s only in how openly racist they are that they start to part ways; Taaffe is proudly racist, where the right is ashamed of it — or, at least, aware enough that it’s a bad thing to go to great lengths to distance themselves from it.

And it’s not just here, the only difference between a rightwing blog post about Trayvon Martin and one at Stormfront is word choice. The fundamental argument is the same: African-Americans are a naturally criminal population who can’t — and shouldn’t — be trusted.

So it should come as no surprise that a bona fide white supremacist could pass as an average Zimmerman supporter for so long and so successfully. There really is no difference between the two.

Zimmerman was right about one thing

Milt Priggee, Cagle Cartoons.

Zimmerman juror: ‘George Zimmerman got away with murder’

ABC News: The only minority on the all-female jury that voted to acquit George Zimmerman said today that Zimmerman “got away with murder" for killing Trayvon Martin and feels she owes an apology Martin’s parents.

"You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty," said the woman who was identified only as Juror B29 during the trial. “But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence."

She said the jury was following Florida law and the evidence, she said, did not prove murder.

"George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God. And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with," she said. "[But] the law couldn’t prove it."

And that pretty much confirms what a lot of people have been saying: the trial didn’t clear Zimmerman’s name. It was merely a case of Florida prosecutors not doing a very bang up job of presenting the case against him. The juror, known only by her first name Maddy, says that Florida law tied her hands.

"As much as we were trying to find this man guilty…they give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth, and the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it," she said. “I feel the verdict was already told."

The system clearly failed Trayvon Martin and his family. But no one’s going to address that failure, because the system is broken just the way the governor’s office likes it.

MLK's Dream (Annotated)

John Darkow: Zimmerman Walks.

Every Republican seeking office or reelection is cursing Rick Perry’s name right now

ThinkProgress: Arguing on CNN Sunday Morning that the jury in the George Zimmerman case “made the right decision from their standpoint,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) dismissed any suggestion that America’s justice system is unfair to African-Americans or other people of color. In Perry’s words, “I think our justice system is color blind.”…

Perry’s claim that race plays no role in our justice system simply cannot be squared with the data from his own state. The most distinguishing aspect of Texas’ criminal justice system is its penchant for the death penalty. Over one third of all U.S. executions take place in Rick Perry’s state. Moreover, over 40 percent Texas’ death row inmates are black (121 out of 300 total inmates), despite the fact that only about 12 percent of Texans are African American. So a black Texan is more than three times more likely to be sentenced to die than their representation in Texas as a whole would suggest.

Nor is Texas an anomaly in this regard. In Alabama, just six percent of murders involve black defendants and white victims, but but 60 percent of black death row inmates were convicted of killing a white person. In Colorado, African Americans make up four percent of the population and 100 percent of the death row. And, in North Carolina, prosecutors in capital cases are more than twice as likely to remove a nonwhite juror from a jury pool than to do the same to a white juror.

The statistics are damning enough, but you might’ve notice that — while conservative pundits have been gleefully politicizing Trayvon Martin’s killing — Republicans have mostly managed to keep their big yaps shut about it. The reason is simple: Republicans are terrified of black voters. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be pushing all these voter suppression schemes designed to keep minority voters from voting booths.

But those very efforts, combined with the open joy demonstrated when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, were already encroaching on doing more harm than good. They’ve got this whole "missing white voter" plan going and it hinges on the idea that the size of the African-American vote drops when Barack Obama is no longer on the ballot. So they want to be really careful about riling up the voting block they’re currently counting on staying home.

Now, here comes the bottomlessly gaffe-prone Rick Perry to talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, race, and the justice system. And his completely unhelpful take is that everything’s just fine and all these black people are getting all worked up over nothing. That we shouldn’t change a thing and this is the best possible outcome.

From local school board members seeking reelection to presidential hopefuls, just about every Republican with any sort of brain at all must want to strangle Rick Perry right now.

Mostly peaceful protests mark Zimmerman’s acquittal

Looks like the ‘baggers won’t get the race war they’ve so been looking forward to. Those itchy trigger fingers of their’s will have to remain itchy.

Washington Post: Protesters angered by the acquittal of George Zimmerman held largely peaceful demonstrations in three California cities, but broke windows and started small street fires Oakland, police said.

The gatherings Saturday night ranged from a few dozen to a couple hundred people turning out to protest the verdict in the Florida courtroom over the death of Trayvon Martin, and police said some of the demonstrations continued into the early hours Sunday.

The Oakland police dispatch office said about 100 people protested, with some in the crowd breaking windows on businesses and starting small fires in the streets. As the protest wound down with the crowd dispersing, the office said that as of 2 a.m. PDT it had no word of any arrests.

Local media reports said some Oakland marchers vandalized a police squad car and police formed a line to block the protesters’ path.

Oakland protesters apparently burned American and Californian flags, so prepare for the right freaking out over the WORST THING EVER!, but even by the broadest possible definition of the term, riots did not happen.

And keep in mind that the anger behind Oakland protests isn’t entirely about Trayvon Martin, as that community is engaged in a long struggle to get a racist and rogue police department under control. Any racially-charged protest is going to include actions directed at provoking Oakland police. It’s unfortunate, but understandable. You can only take so much.

The assumption that people would riot if Zimmerman walked shows why those people were about 99% Zimmerman supporters: they were racially profiling the entire African-American community in the same way that George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin.

So put the shootin’ irons down, Teabillies. Your little race war isn’t going to happen. You won’t get to shoot any more kids today.

[photo by orangesparrow]

DNA Evidence damning for George Zimmerman

Check this out from a Zimmerman trial live blog at AL.com:

2 p.m.: Anthony Gorgone, a crime lab analyst, has testified that no DNA other than Trayvon Martin’s was found on the sweatshirt the teen was wearing when he was fatally shot on Feb. 26, 2013. Shooter George Zimmerman’s blood was not found on Martin’s clothes.

1:52 p.m.: Gorgone just testified that Zimmerman’s blood and tissue were also absent from under Martin’s fingernails. Zimmerman has previously said that Martin was covering his mouth and nose during the Feb. 26, 2013, struggle that left Martin dead.

1:45 p.m.: Gorgone testified that Martin’s DNA was not found on the handgun Zimmerman used to shoot the teen.

That detail could be significant to the defense of Zimmerman, who also claims that Martin tried to grab the gun from his holster before he pulled it and fired at the teen.

Gorgone has been on the stand for about 45 minutes. He spent the majority of that time detailing the techniques by which he collects and tests DNA in criminal cases.

So no evidence at all of any fight — other than Zimmerman’s injuries, which of course, could’ve been self-inflicted. That makes this bit of evidence chilling:

George Zimmerman’s gun was pressed against Trayvon Martin’s hooded sweatshirt when the fatal shot was fired, firearms analyst testifies.

If there was no fight, then Zimmerman executed Trayvon Martin at point blank range. A brutal crime.

[photo by Provisions]

Questions for George Zimmerman supporters

1. George Zimmerman was a strange man chasing Trayvon Martin down the street. If Martin did hit Zimmerman, why wouldn’t that be a case of Martin “standing his ground?”
2. If the situations were reversed and Trayvon Martin chased an innocent George Zimmerman down the street, shooting him dead because he thought he looked suspicious, would you be supporting Martin?
3. Trayvon Martin was the guest of a household in the neighborhood, yet Zimmerman killed him instead of protecting him from crime. Doesn’t that make George Zimmerman the shittiest and most incompetent neighborhood watch volunteer ever?

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Zimmerman seeks to censor prosecutors

Yahoo! News: “Profiled”

“Vigilante”

“Self-appointed neighborhood watch captain”

“Wannabe cop”

Murder suspect George Zimmerman’s defense team wants these “inflammatory terms” banned from the opening statements of his trial. Jury selection begins on Monday.

“Some of these terms are disparaging, inappropriate, and if used in trial would serve only to unfairly prejudice the jury by eliciting unfounded connotations and unfair emotional responses,” defense attorney Mark O’Mara wrote in a motion to the court.

Prosecutors say Zimmerman, a volunteer crime watchman in his Sanford, Fla., neighborhood, profiled, pursued and fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February 2012. Zimmerman, a licensed gun carrier and part-time criminal justice student, says he fired in self-defense after being attacked and beaten.

Zimmerman also wants to ban certain phrases from opening arguments:

“He got out of the car after the police (or dispatcher) told him not to.”

“He confronted Trayvon Martin.”

Motions seeking to limit evidence in a trial is not uncommon, but they seldom target phrases or characterizations.

It doesn’t sound like they’re confident about the verdict. They basically want to ban any mention of the incident that put George Zimmerman in that courtroom.

George Zimmerman’s brother spreads racist non-argument

Daily Dot:

George Zimmerman is currently awaiting trial for the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager he shot and killed in what he claims was self-defense.

His brother, Robert Zimmerman, stands accused of being really racist about it on Twitter.

Robert sent out a flurry of tweets Sunday evening, all containing the same image. It compares a Martin with purported photo of 17-year old De’Marquis Elkins, who was arrested Friday for allegedly shooting and killing a 13-month-old baby during a robbery.

He tweeted the same photo three times, tagging several media personalities, the National Rifle Association, and amazingly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Of course, people had plenty of questions — like, “WTF planet are you from where any of this makes any damned sense at all?”

“I get it. You’re out to smear your brother’s victim,” replied @Pinkomomma.

“so now it’s acceptable to murder a teen for flipping the bird to a camera?” asked @juniper_breez.

Zimmerman tried to offer an explanation that the image could imply something other than black teenagers who have fingers are likely to shoot people. “Pics like those R usu[ally] prod[ucts] of raising kids w/a cash/cars/bit*hes mentality,” he tweeted.

He probably should stay away from arguing about the way people have been raised. After all, if George’s brother is sending out racist pics, what’s that say about the the family in which Zimmerman was raised? And that line of thinking does not lead people to think good things about his guilt or innocence in the shooting of an unarmed black teen.

If Robert Zimmerman thinks he’s helping here, he’s so wrong.

Stories to Watch: 5/11/12

More than 200,000 will lose their unemployment benefits this weekend. Happy Mother's Day!


Mittens likes to argue that markets are way too over-regulated these days. About that...


Trayvon Martin's mom has a Mother's Day appeal.


Barney Frank has professional homophobe Tony Perkins for lunch.


Consumer confidence is at a 4-year high. Yes, those are beads of sweat on the GOP's lip.


Mittens gets incoherent on foreclosures.


Related: Steve Benen's Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XVII.


Cops being trained to hate Muslims.


Finally, homophobes believe the craziest horseshit.

Related articles

• Chris Matthews & Barney Frank Own Tony Perkins
• If you like JP Morgan's $2 billion loss, you will like Mitt Romney and love Ron Paul
• Banks have only themselves to blame for more regulation

News Roundup for 3/27/12

A couple of lowlife thugs in hoodies

-Headline of the Day-
"Geraldo Rivera sorry for ‘life-saving campaign’ against hoodies."

In response to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Geraldo Rivera went to war against clothing. "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was," Geraldo said. "You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a gangsta — you’re going to be a gangsta wannabe, well people are going to perceive you as a menace. That’s what happens. It is an instant, reflexive action."

That didn't go over real well. It seems that a lot of people thought this was a classic case of blaming the victim, while a whole lot more thought that maybe wearing a hooded sweatshirt probably shouldn't be viewed as a fashion crime worthy of the death penalty. Rivera got beat up on the twitter machine for a while and he learned that wasn't fun. So now he's offering what may be the lamest excuse for an apology in history.

"I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my ‘very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies,’" Geraldo said.

In other words, "I'm sorry for being right."

I think he can count on being whacked around twitter for a while longer. (Raw Story)


-Romney clarifies-


Click for full strip

Personally, I think he's a yoyo. (GoComics)


-Bonus HotD-
"Conservatives Ban Guns At Their Own Conferences To ‘Keep It Safe.’"

They want nuts with guns everywhere -- except in their immediate vicinity. (ThinkProgress)

Stories to Watch: 3/22/12

Short one today. It's not that there's nothing much going on, it's that there's nothing much interesting going on. Or maybe I'm just tired. Anyway, here's the news...


Another way the GOP's War on Women is a self-inflicted wound: a new Pew poll finds that voters are getting sick of all the religious talk. The largest group of respondents -- 38% -- say there's "too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders."


The Sanford, FL Police Chief steps down -- temporarily -- in response to the Trayvon Martin killing. I doubt anyone outraged by the killing will find his self-imposed vacation very satisfying.


Taxes don't chase rich people away.


A quick reminder: Mitt Romney is a serial liar.


A weakened insider trading bill goes to the president's desk. Bernie Sanders and Pat Leahy are displeased.


This is what happens when you don't have a constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech. Don't doubt that there are people in America who would love to see this here.


Finally, which congress critter is most guilty of serial nepotism? Ron Paul.

Related articles

• Sanford, FL City Council Passes 'No Confidence' Vote Against Police Chief over Trayvon Martin Case (crooksandliars.com)
• Million Hoodie March In Honor Of Trayvon Martin Held In NYC [PHOTOS] (hiphopwired.com)
• Rev. Al Sharpton: Why race matters in the Trayvon Martin tragedy (thegrio.com)
• Trayvon Martin case sparks dialogue on racial inequality, meaning of justice (news.blogs.cnn.com)

Stories to Watch: 3/17/12

Happy St. Pat's! May the wind always be at your back, may your ears only hear kind words, may eyes see only beauty... may we finally get past all this sentimental horsecrap and drink some damned beer? Now here's the news...


Imagine if phone companies suddenly took it upon themselves (under pressure from the White House) to listen in on phone calls and make sure you're not selling drugs. Would you be cool with that? If not, you probably won't be cool with this. The march toward a surveillance society goes on.


A redditor consumes only rightwing news sources for a week. Read the depressing, but unsurprising, conclusions drawn from that experience. Long story short, avoid conservative news like the plague, because it will make you stupid.


Is the weather unseasonably nice where you are? Yeah, there's a reason for that.


Trayvon Martin died begging for his life.


David Brooks wrote something stupid again.


How many listeners does Rush Limbaugh actually have? It's hard to say with any certainty, but it may be fewer than you're told.


Finally, Wisconsin's voter ID law takes a major blow as a judge refuses to stay an injunction. We're going to kill this thing yet.

Related articles

• Vigilantes and guns in Florida (brobrubel.wordpress.com)
• Holder calls voter ID laws a 'solution in search of a problem' (twitchy.com)
• 911 Tapes Released in Trayvon Martin Killing (theroot.com)
• Racist Imagery Used to Push for Minn. Voter-ID Law (theroot.com)