The Patriot Post® · The Zimmerman/Martin Case

“The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice.” –George Washington (1779)

(Note: A day after this column posted, Obama, unannounced, stepped back into the case with remarks at a White House press briefing. Read my rebuttal to Obama’s comments.)

Barack Hussein Obama asked a couple of questions about the Zimmerman/Martin case this week. I have a couple of answers.

As you know, George Zimmerman, who the media tagged as a “White Hispanic,” was found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the February 26, 2012 self-defense shooting of a 17-year-old “child” named Trayvon Martin, who his defenders claimed was just out buying candy and a drink. The state of Florida pumped all its resources into the high-profile case, including the appointment of special prosecutors by Gov. Rick Scott, and a judge who accepted the prosecution’s desperate 11th-hour request to add the lesser manslaughter charge when it became readily apparent prosecutors were not going to win a murder conviction.

Justice prevailed, however, and, consequently, legions of Democrat race-bait hustlers and their Leftmedia talkingheads were struck with acute apoplexy. The Left’s pretentious political agenda aside, it was evident to the jury in this case – and every unbiased viewer of the wall-to-wall media coverage of the trial – that not only should Zimmerman have been acquitted, but this case never should have come to trial.

Predictably, as the “not guilty” verdict was read, the race hustlers speed-dialed the Obama administration to insist that BO bring federal “hate-crime” charges against Zimmerman. But last year, the FBI conducted an exhaustive inquiry into Zimmerman’s views on race, interviewing dozens of people who know him best. What did the Bureau find? Not only was there no basis for even suggesting racism was a factor in his altercation with Martin, but Zimmerman was very “tolerant and inclusive,” in the current race-conscious vernacular. Thus, there is no basis for a civil rights case.

Countering the calls for federal charges, one of the most liberal defense lawyers in the nation, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, concluded, “I think there were violations of civil rights and civil liberties – by the prosecutor. The prosecutor sent this case to a judge, and willfully, deliberately, and in my view criminally withheld exculpatory evidence. … The prosecution should be investigated for civil rights violations, and civil liberty violations.” (This is the first time Dershowitz and I have agreed on something.)

Sixteen months ago, Obama launched this case into the national headlines with his reckless “If I had a son” rhetoric – making the case a strategic re-election rallying point for his black constituents. But his outward response to the verdict this week amounted to a whimper.

Obama released a short statement in which he asserted, “We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this.”

Well, let’s do ask ourselves those questions…

To his first assertion that “gun violence” claims lives, more accurately it is sociopathic gangbangers who claim lives, and they will continue to do so regardless of what weapon they use.

Obama is clearly attempting to change the subject with this question, and to reinvigorate support for his “sensible gun control policy” by using Trayvon Martin’s death as a political rallying point. It’s a disingenuous hoax – and just the latest shameless chapter of his effort to use coffins as a political platform.

The “culture of violence” so often decried by Obama and other “progressives” is propagated primarily on urban “poverty plantations.” These, of course, are the product of generations of Socialist Democrat Party policies. A solution, therefore, requires an honest and thoughtful re-evaluation of those policies – not more gun laws. The sociopathic products of urban welfare plantations simply do not regulate their conduct according to the law.

Attempting to make Trayvon Martin a poster boy for “hate crimes” diverts attention from a terribly inconvenient truth: that a grossly disproportionate number of murder victims in any year are black men, women and children – about 9,000 annually. And most of these victims are murdered by other blacks – with only a handful of cases that might be associated with racism.

In Obama’s hometown of Chicago alone, since the death of Trayvon Martin there have been more than 700 murders of black residents, almost all of whom were killed by black or Hispanic gangbangers. Obama hasn’t mentioned a single one of these deaths, because they have no political value other than the errant claim that “gun control” would solve the problem. Well, it would not have helped the latest victims: Yesterday an 8-year-old girl was strangled to death and a 24-year-old man was stabbed to death – both victims were black.

Of course, neither Obama nor the Leftmedia report on the daily black-on-white attacks and murders in urban centers across the nation because those crimes don’t fit the Left’s racist political narrative either.

Backing up Obama’s efforts to avoid the real causes of gun violence is his hyper-partisan attorney general, Eric Holder, who called Martin’s killing a “tragic, unnecessary shooting.” This is not how the jury saw it. (One of Florida’s state attorneys, Angela Corey, shamelessly referred to Zimmerman as a “murderer” after the “not guilty” verdict.)

Holder then noted “We must not … let this opportunity pass” – shades of former Obama White House Chief Rahm Emanuel’s Black Rule, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Holder then added “stand your ground” laws in 22 states to the list of things that need to be rectified. “We must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence [rather than] contribute to more violence,” he declared. “It’s time to question the laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense…”

Yes, let’s oppose anything that might “expand the concept of self defense…”

For the record, Zimmerman’s prosecutors did not mention Florida’s “stand your ground” law, perhaps because black defendants in Florida criminal investigations assert “stand your ground” twice as often as whites.

Obama’s effort to convert Zimmerman/Martin into fodder for his gun control agenda is a transparent charade – so let nobody claim that his promise of a transparent administration is totally unfounded.

As for Obama’s second question of how we “as individuals and as a society…can prevent future tragedies like this,” I think that question is better answered by two high-profile black entertainers from different generations.

Much has been made of “profiling,” and the assertion that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin – and that generally, police and white people unfairly profile black people.

For some perspective on “profiling,” I turn to comedian Chris Rock. A few years back, before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live and hosting his own show on HBO, Rock devoted part of his rude and irreverent standup routine to the subject of racial profiling.

“Who’s more racist,” he asked, “black people or white people?” More than a few of his fans objected to his answer: “Black people, and you know why, because we hate black people too. … There is a civil war going on with black people right now, and there are two sides – black people and n—–s.” He then eviscerated the black sub-culture of criminal thugs and gangsters, who cast an unfortunate profile pall over the rest of black America.

Rock’s delivery is crude, but that is the culture of his primary audience. But there is another entertainer, and educated social critic, who does not joke about the ugly side of black culture.

Bill Cosby, a name rightly recognized around the world, has challenged a very different audience demographic to consider the real problems plaguing black culture, and he is very forthright in his insistence that black folks take responsibility for those problems rather than blame white folks. That was the subject of his 2007 book, “On the Path from Victims to Victors.” (Of course Obama sets the standard for blame-shifting to white folks – especially to George W. Bush.)

In 2004, Cosby boldly delivered a keynote speech at the NAACP’s Gala Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. He shocked much of the audience with his speech, “The Truth About Black America,” which outlined the key issues which, then as today, are dutifully avoided by Democrat NeoCom cadres of race hustlers.

Cosby advocated personal responsibility, which is antithetical to the Democrat Party’s political objective of fomenting division and victimization.

That was the last keynote Cosby delivered at an NAACP gala.

Perhaps I should also mention a third man who was up front in his criticism of black culture over the course of his public life – a man whose name is synonymous with the fight for civil rights.

In 1961, Martin Luther King stood before a black audience and told them what none of his surviving civil rights cadre, much less Barack Obama, would dare say today: “Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards. We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”

In 1968 just prior to his own death, King went to Chicago to meet with then-Mayor Richard Daley. Chicago was a hotbed of racial hatred then, and has only gotten worse under the current mayor, Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanual. King observed of that enmity, “This is the most tragic picture of man’s inhumanity to man. I’ve been to Mississippi and Alabama and I can tell you that the hatred and hostility in Chicago are really deeper than in Alabama and Mississippi.”

The fact is, racism exists. Another fact, however, is that the Left’s constant (and unfounded) cries of “racism!” don’t address the cultural issues enslaving black Americans on urban plantations – and the tragic consequences of creating and maintaining a permanent underclass. The hard reality is, Leftist economic and social policies, by design, oppress minority constituencies – in order to maintain those constituent votes for Democrats.

When Obama took office, the national poverty rate was 13.1 percent. It is now 15.1 percent, and the welfare state has expanded to historic proportions. The latest evidence of the “success” of Obama’s socialist economic policies is that almost 100 million Americans now depend on food subsidies.

That explains why Obama doesn’t say much about poverty. In fact, according to a recent Georgetown University study, Democrat presidents since Kennedy have referenced the plight of the poor in 70 percent of major speeches, and Republicans in 62 percent of major speeches. Obama, however, has referenced the poor in only 25 percent of his major speeches – a record low. Clearly, he doesn’t want to remind those at the bottom of the economic ladder how many more impoverished Americans he’s heaped on top of them!

And by way of demonstrating that Obama is nothing more than a consummate liberal hypocrite, he may talk about the poor less than any other modern president, but he’s on pace to break another presidential record – his 2011 benchmark of 34 golfing junkets, often with Air Force One and his full entourage along for the ride. Indeed, he may just reach the 50-round milestone this year.

Obama’s sycophantic adherents rally around all his racist and classist rhetoric, while he and Michelle live on taxpayers dollars the lives of opulent rich and culturally famous. Will they ever wise up?

(P.S.: After George Zimmerman settles with NBC for editing his 911 call to make him sound like a racist, he should take the proceeds, buy an island in the Caribbean, and enjoy retirement at NBC’s expense. That would be true justice.)