Ferguson, Missouri: Trayvon Martin Case 2.0

To understand what is happening in Ferguson, we have to revisit the case of Trayvon Martin.  Unarmed black teen (Trayvon Martin) minding his own business while walking through an unfamiliar predominantly white neighborhood in Florida gets followed by overzealous neighborhood watch leader (George Zimmerman), who thinks said teen might be the burglar who has been committing robberies in the neighborhood.  While unconfirmed, one can reasonably assume that Zimmerman had an unnecessary negative confrontation with Martin as events quickly escalated and Zimmerman had no business following Martin to begin with as he was repeatedly asked by the 911 dispatcher to not pursue Martin.  The resulting escalation ends with a dead black teen who no one can claim had any ill intentions prior to being confronted by Zimmerman.  Yet, Zimmerman escaped all criminal charges and a country was torn in half as people of all walks of life scrambled to take sides.

Between Martin's death and Zimmerman's not guilty verdict, we had the misfortune of seeing the ugly parts of America on full display.  Many a heated debate was had over whether young black men should be wearing hoodies.  The mainstream media could not help themselves in distorting the facts of the case, from constantly representing Martin's likeness by using a much younger and more innocent looking photo to doctoring Zimmerman's 911 call in order to make him appear overtly racist to trying to conceal Zimmerman's substantial injuries that he suffered during the physical altercation to misleading the American people about Zimmerman's race (any other story, Zimmerman would have probably been identified as Hispanic instead of Caucasian) to flat out omitting key facts of the case to blaming Florida's Stand Your Ground law even though legal experts generally agreed that this unique Florida law did not apply to this case.  Don't blame me for that run-on sentence from hell.  Blame our glorious left leaning mainstream media.

Not that the right leaning media on Fox News was perfect either.  This was an opportunity to have a much needed national discussion about the unequal treatment of African Americans in this country and conservative pundits could not have cared less.  They spent more time blaming young black men for wearing an item sold in every clothing store in America than talking about the racial injustices in America today.  Many pundits even seemed to take pleasure in defending George Zimmerman.  Let this be clear.  Zimmerman by all accounts is a slime ball and there is zero debate that A) he committed wrong doing that night and B) Martin would still be alive had Zimmerman done what he was told by the 911 dispatcher.

Fast forward to Ferguson.  On the one hand, we have a St. Louis area police department that is infamous for racial mistreatment at worst and highly aggressive and questionable treatment of African Americans at best.  Not all police officers.  Maybe not most police officers.  But enough police officers.  We have a St. Louis police department that left Michael Brown's dead body lying in the street for 4 solid hours, a disrespectful move they later had to apologize for publicly.  We have a St. Louis police department that, from an optics standpoint, went out of their way to appear overtly self-serving with their messaging to the public regarding the Michael Brown shooting and seemed to use excessive force in quelling protesters, many of whom were peaceful but still found themselves on the receiving end of police brutality.  And then of course, we have a white police officer killing an unarmed black teen whose account of events could not sound more suspicious if it tried.  Regardless of whether Officer Darren Wilson is innocent or not of legal wrongdoing, it is not hard to imagine that some aspects of his account are not entirely accurate.

And here we go again.  The left leaning mainstream media cannot help themselves.  They stoke the flames every chance they get.  They trying to hold back facts of the case that don't fit the narrative of a white police officer murdering a black male teen in cold blood (how lovely).  The right wing media pretends that the black community is simply imagining that white police officers in many many cities across this nation are mistreating African Americans and sometimes executing illegal searches simply because they can get away with doing so.  The left leaning mainstream media pretends that video footage of Michael Brown committing a very physically aggressive robbery does not provide any context to the subsequent altercation with the police officer.  Conservative media acts like Michael Brown had it coming to him because of said robbery.  The mainstream media refuses to report that the most important elements of Officer Darren Wilson's account were corroborated either by forensic evidence or multiple eye witnesses who happened to also be African American.  The cold hard facts of the case presented to the grand jury are conspicuously missing in most media coverage.  The right wing pundits continuously fail to question whether police officers need a better accountability system given some of the examples of heinous abuses of police power across this country that have come before the public's attention in light of the events in Ferguson.

What a mess we have on our hands America.  What a mess indeed.