Sigh.

This morning, NYT's black columnist wades into the gossip-girls news... something about somebody calling the president a metrosexual Abe Lincoln. Yawn.

(When will the mainstreamers discover that if they ignored these fringe sidestories, instead of wasting column inches on irrelevant topics that give voice to the extreme, they would disappear? Cover the news that matters. If they had, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and all those other candidacies would have died for lack of oxygen. Instead, the media seems to have their own reasons for ... igniting these types of newsstories, and then keeping them alive long after it becomes clear to everyone else that it simply doesn't matter to real America.)

But Charles Blow, in his own way via brief Twitter chatter, did weigh in last night on the accumulating body of evidence that will make it difficult in the minds of many to convict George Zimmerman. Both legally, and in the marketplace of public opinion, assuming unbiased jurors:

"Martin Spoke of ‘Crazy and Creepy’ Man Following Him, Friend Says" "...she heard rising fear in Mr. Martin’s voice that peaked with words like 'get off, get off,' right before she lost contact with him..."


There is that scene in "A River Runs Through It" where they tell the father that the all bone were broken in Paul's hand after he was... ...beaten to death & the father simply asks "which hand?" They say "His right hand," and the father turns away with a sense of satisfaction. Charles M. Blow

Sigh.
Violence begets violence, Charles. Don't you get it?
Blow has written in the past of how his own participation in fraternity hazings* -- citing pledges being beaten with 2x4's -- helped him mature and grow his career. He seems almost proud.

Does he think that non-black people will cow in fear from violence and accept injustice as some type of white guilt penanace? I think those days are gone, of liberal whites appeasing the black community out of worry for what "they" collectively might do.
No fear.

I also think the days of O.J. Simpson-style justice are over.
Hope and change and all that...
Some remember Rodney King; plenty still remember Reginald Denny too. Here's a picture reminder too, of the kind of violence that can be done, even without a gun.
(People, can't we all just peacefully move along? Bigger matters to tackle, despite what you might read in the daily papers.)
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* Much more sympathetic to me are the parents of the gay, black Florida A&M band member beaten to death on the bus by non-student black men in their mid to late 20s. This is not normal behavior, not acceptable. The parents are intend on "cleaning house" and are shining light on a situation that was overlooked for years and years, out of misguided respect for "tradition" through the band generations.

Those parents were doing it right. Their son was in school, active and participating in marching band, for heaven's sake. If violence can penetrate the school bus designed to take students to and from their public performances, where will end?

Something tells me, these two parents -- working to bring an end to the violent culture that ultimately claimed their own son -- will find a far greater "satisfaction" in the end than Martin's family will from any pictures of a bloodied Zimmerman, roughed up by the reported mixed-martial-arts attack style blows delivered by Trayvon as he sat atop his victim, trying to beat the life out of him. Luckily, a gun intervened, when no neighbors could physically intervene and the police were just minutes away.

Robert Champion. That was the murdered black man's name.

Why do you suppose his name isn't as well known in media circles, or as well discussed around American dinner tables -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian, in gay, straight and mixed families -- as Trayvon Martin or George Zimmerman? Or sadly, Mitt Romney's decades-long gone dog?

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Here's Carl Hiaasen's take (columnist at the Miami Herald):

Eleven of the 13 people who allegedly participated in killing Florida A&M drum major Robert Champion have been charged with “a hazing resulting in death,” a low-grade felony. The two others are accused of misdemeanors.

You can’t blame Champion’s family for being disappointed, and a bit confused.

Champion was singled out for an attack, then beaten until he died. That it occurred during a hazing doesn’t mean it should be handled differently from any other violent homicide, yet it is being handled differently.
Way differently.

Not one of the 13 suspects was booked for murder or even plain old manslaughter, a second-degree felony that can bring up to 15 years in prison. By contrast, causing a death by hazing is only a third-degree felony for which the maximum term is six years.

In other words, a gang-style lethal assault in Florida is more leniently appraised when it’s a moronic college ritual gone awry. Six years behind bars isn’t light time, but it’s much better than the high end of a manslaughter conviction.

What do you think would have happened if Champion had been killed by a mob of strangers in a barroom, or on a street corner?

For starters, authorities wouldn’t have taken more than five months to make an arrest, especially if they had the names of everyone involved. You can also be sure that the defendants in such a case wouldn’t be charged with “hazing” — they’d be facing much heavier felonies.

Here’s how Champion died. The 26-year-old man was made to walk down the aisle of a chartered bus, parked outside an Orlando hotel, while fellow band members (and possibly others) repeatedly kicked and punched him.
Evidently this is what passed for dear tradition within the famed A&M Marching 100, now in disciplinary limbo.

Eventually, Champion collapsed. Later somebody dialed 911: “One of our drum majors is on the bus, and he’s not breathing . . . He’s in my hands, ma’am. He’s cold.”

If Champion was cold to the touch, it was likely he’d been down for a while.

Lying there, dying among his own band mates after a football-game performance.

In December, less than a month after the incident, the Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Champion’s death was a homicide, the autopsy showing “extensive contusions of his chest, arms, shoulder and back with extensive hemorrhage.”

Although coroners found no bone fractures or damage to Champion’s internal organs, there was “significant rapid blood loss” from the injuries he’d received. The cause of death was reported as “hemorrhagic shock due to soft tissue hemorrhage, incurred by blunt force trauma sustained during a hazing incident.”

So it was manifest from the beginning that Champion hadn’t fallen down the steps of the bus 20 or 30 times. He’d been battered — and not by teenagers gone wild. Most of the suspects are men in their 20s.
The state of Florida didn’t need a special anti-hazing law in order to prosecute. Long-standing criminal statutes specifically address assaults that end in death.

Nowhere in this country is it legal for 13 persons — or six, or two, or one — to strike another person if he or she isn’t a threat. Theoretically, it shouldn’t matter to prosecutors whether the assailants are wearing band uniforms, fraternity jerseys or the do-rag of a street gang.