Trayvon Martin
Unless the permissible extrajudicial penalty for smoking grass has been significantly raised, it's hard to see what possible relevance a little weed has in the death of Trayvon Martin. The guy who shot him didn't mutter, "These asshole tokers, they always get away." He didn't say "fuckin' stoners" under his breath.
The fact that the 17-year-old had been suspended from classes because marijuana residue was found in a Baggie he was carrying leaked to the media from authorities today just as other bits of information in this case have leaked over the four weeks since the shooting.
No doubt Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the right-wing ratpack will seek to make a big deal of the news. But what also transpired Monday was confirmation from the state Department of Juvenile Justice that Martin had no juvenile record whatsover.
Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, and family attorneys said the leak and news coverage about the marijuana-related school suspension was all about demonizing the teenager. "The only comment that I have right now is that they killed my son and now they're trying to kill his reputation," Fulton told reporters. Officials in Sanford, Fla., where Martin was killed, said there had been no authorized release of the information. Family attorney Benjamin Crump said, "If he and his friends experimented with marijuana, that is completely irrelevant. What does it have to do with killing their son?" Exactly right.
Meanwhile, at a meeting this evening of the Sanford City Commission:
Speaker[s], one after the next, in a packed Sanford Civic Center, have pressed city council members to say — for the record — whether they believe George Zim[mer]man should be arrested [...]
"Go on the record today in support of the arrest of George Zi[mm]erman," said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. [...]
Trayvon's father, Tracy Martin, was forceful.
"We're not asking for an eye for an eye. We're asking for justice, justice, justice," Tracy Martin said, pointing his finger for emphasis.
Zimmerman's friend Joe Oliver keeps making the rounds trying to persuade everyone that the "real" story hasn't been told. Regarding the racial slur recorded during a police call Zimmerman made while he was following Trayvon Martin, Oliver
told Chris Matthews on MSNBC's "Hardball":
That’s a term I listened to over and over on there and to me, it’s a matter of interpretation of whether he’s saying ‘coon’ or ‘goon.’ There are a lot of parts of this country where people proudly call themselves ‘coon asses,’ in Louisiana in particular.
Puhleez.
If George Zimmerman is wise, he will phone Joe and tell him he has stopped payment on the backhoe he rented because that hole his friend is digging is deep enough.