The folks over at Breitbart’s joint are feverishly striving to exonerate Trayvon Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman. Their web sites are plastered with stories that either defend Zimmerman or shift the discussion to other persons or subjects.<\/p>\n
In one article, Breitbrat Dan Riehl makes the inane argument that ABC News was “reckless”<\/em> in their decision to release a police videotape showing Zimmerman arriving at the police station for questioning. The video is significant in that it contradicts prior assertions that Zimmerman had been beaten and bloodied by Martin. There is no evidence of any injury to Zimmerman in the video.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Riehl advances rebuttals that sound as if he is working for the Zimmerman legal defense team. He begins by suggesting that the video was too low quality to reveal anything conclusive. Then, contradicting himself, writes, “True, there appears to be no blood on Zimmerman’s shirt.”<\/em> Then Riehl invents scenarios wherein Zimmerman was allowed by police to change his allegedly bloody clothes before arriving at the station, which would be a severe violation of procedure and ethics. What’s more, it makes no sense because a bloody shirt would be evidence of a struggle during which Zimmerman could claim to have felt threatened. Why would police suppress evidence that would have justified their decision to release Zimmerman?<\/p>\n Riehl’s account is blatantly biased and incoherent. And he tops it off by blasting ABC for releasing the video saying that the network “should be ashamed of its reckless highlighting of a non-story.”<\/em> So apparently Riehl is of the opinion that ABC should have kept the video a secret. That’s how Breitbart’s BigJournalism practices the craft of journalism.<\/p>\n Another article, this time by Joel Pollak, editor of Breitbart’s BigGovernment site, seeks to tie President Obama to the Martin story. Pollak’s theory is a nearly incomprehensible mashup of Martin, Obama, and Derrick Bell, the subject of Breitbart’s failed attempt<\/a> to expose the President as a college radical.<\/p>\n Pollak’s article is titled, “Critical Race Theory and the Trayvon Martin Case.”<\/em> Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a legal\/academic concept that Bell had written about and studied. It holds that there is more to racism than just the attitudes held by individuals, that it is also ingrained in society via traditional economic and judicial hierarchies. Pollak simplistically and falsely begins his narrative by defining CRT as “characterized by white supremacy–an idea Obama invoked by insisting that Americans ‘examine the laws’ that supposedly led to Martin’s death.”<\/em> To be clear, Pollak is referring to the comment Obama made in response to a reporter’s question:<\/p>\n “I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened.<\/p>\n “And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m not sure how any fair person could object to that. Yet that’s the statement that Pollak regards as an evocation of white supremacy. If anything, the Martin tragedy supports CRT by demonstrating the flaws in the judicial system. This is a case where after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed, his body was tagged as a “John Doe”<\/em> and tested for drugs. The shooter, on the other hand, was never tested for drugs or alcohol and was released by police with his weapon and no plans to investigate or indict him for any crime. If that isn’t reason enough to examine the laws than what on earth would be?<\/p>\n