It would be nice if some of the people that told us to stop criticizing George Zimmerman earlier this year would tell us what they think about him now.
In case you missed it: George Zimmerman is back in the news. The Florida man who was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin back in July was arrested in Seminole County Florida recently after allegedly threatening his girlfriend with a shotgun, breaking a table, throwing her out of the house and then barricading himself inside. When the police arrived Zimmerman offered his own version of events:
“I never pulled a firearm. I never displayed it. When I was packing it, I’m sure she saw it. I mean, we keep it next to the bed.”
He also said [his girlfriend] Ms. [Samantha] Scheibe was responsible for the broken table when she started “smashing stuff, taking stuff that belonged to me, throwing it outside, throwing it out of her room, throwing it all over the house.”
This is not the first time Zimmerman has been back in the news since he was acquitted in the summer. Back in September he was detained by police in Florida after an altercation with his estranged wife and her father. There were also conflicting accounts in that event as well, George claimed he acted in self-defense after his wife began hitting him with an iPad and her father challenged him to a fight. The iPad was the only casualty in that altercation and no charges were filed.
We of course shouldn’t forget that being charged with a crime is not the same as being found guilty of one and Zimmerman remains innocent until he is proven guilty, if ever he is. But while we are on the subject of things not to forget, I think it’s important that we not forget how differently Zimmerman was treated as recently as this summer.
A lot of things were said about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman over the last year and much of it wasn’t pretty. Personally, I think it is a waste of time to try and get internet trolls, Geraldo Rivera, or Fox News to be introspective about these new revelations. But there were a lot of more respectable people back then announcing that those of us who told the simple story of Trayvon Martin being in the right and George Zimmerman being in the wrong, were ourselves being wrongheaded.
Richard Cohen of The Washington Post told us back in July that Martin had put himself in danger and Zimmerman was being quite reasonable when he got out of his car to follow him. Why? Well because of how Trayvon was dressed, “But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize.”A hooded sweatshirt isn’t a piece of clothing you see, it’s a signal of menace, the uniform of the common criminal. Wear one at your own risk.
Over at Slate back in July William Saletan informed us, in a piece entitled “You Are Not Trayvon Martin,” that the reasons Martin died were “assumption, misperception, and overreaction.” Saletan concedes that Zimmerman made some mistakes. That Zimmerman was wrong when he assumed Martin was a burglar out on the prowl, that he shouldn’t have followed Martin on foot, and that he failed “…to imagine how his behavior looked to Martin.”
Unfortunately Saletan then went on to point out that Martin was not blameless in his own death as well because Martin, “was profiling Zimmerman… If Zimmerman’s phobic misreading of Martin was the first wrong turn that led to their fatal struggle, Martin’s phobic misreading of Zimmerman may have been the second.” You see responding in an impolite manner to a stranger following you around in their car and then on foot in a deserted neighborhood is just asking for trouble.
These are not the comments of kooks or internet trolls, they are opinion pieces written by some of the most prominent members of our political media: a columnist at a major American newspaper and a writer at one of the most popular news and opinion sites online. Does Richard Cohen still think Trayvon’s dress was the reason why Zimmerman decided to follow him? Does William Saletan still think that Trayvon Martin was committing a “phobic misreading” of George Zimmerman, or might he have actually been acting in a pretty prescient manner?
George Zimmerman has already told his story to the world, and it doesn’t seem like he will change it anytime soon. Meanwhile Trayvon can’t tell us his side, but when it comes to the writers who scolded us for our imprudent judgments about Zimmerman earlier this year? Well, they are still very much around. And I think we still deserve answers.
Photo by Joe Burbank/AP
@John Gottman, probably the same way the O.J. Simpson supporters feel.
@Archy Real Talk.White people don’t often percieve themselves as threatening to others.But if you’ve been called nigger by random whites and threatened with bodily harm as I have been you might see it differently.Clearly,the jury couldn’t relate to this experience many blacks have had.
By your logic, it’s perfectly reasonable for a white dude/gal to feel nervous around any black person if’n they’ve had a bad experience with a black person before. Childish. Dumb. More than a bit hypocritical.
@Archy Real Talk.If some white guy follows me down a lonely street,I’m on red alert and I’m looking for two things: an escape route AND A WEAPON for self defense.White people don’t often percieve themselves as threatening.But if you’ve been called nigger by random whites and threatened with bodily harm as I have been you might see it differently.Clearly,the jury couldn’t relate to this experience many blacks have had.
@Archy Real Talk.If some white guy follows me down a lonely street,I’m on red alert and I’m looking for two things: an escape route AND A WEAPON.
i too was interested to see what those who defended zimmerman were saying. so i went to free republic forum.
looks like this most recent accusation is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
whereas with the previous incident involving his wife, the majority of commenters were still supporting him while taking a presumed-innocence approach.
the majority of commentors were now doubting george greatly (a quite a few angry at how his behaviour could impact on gun control debate), with some now even pointing out his record of violence predated the trayvon trial.
Hi James,
That’s pretty interesting, thanks for reporting your original research! The whole rise and fall of George Zimmerman is a pretty sordid affair, the worst aspect for me was how quickly he went from perhaps the most hated man in America to political martyr after, and only after, President Obama gave his “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” speech. The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates really captured the strange twist in his big story about Obama and race in America from last year: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/
@John Gottman This link was great.I am a history major so I knew most of the historical references but for those that didn’t may this article was enlightening.Generally speaking, the ignorance of white people of their own history is why we are stuck on this treadmill of racial animus.They simply do not understand the depth,range or prevalence of white supremacist ideology.
Very well said. I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s funny how everyone was defending him when it was a “young black thug” the he got violent with, but now people won’t come near it
Hi Steve,
I think that was always one of the big (perhaps the biggest problem) with how this whole story was covered. Zimmerman was always treated as a sort of upstanding everyman just minding his own business in his neighborhood watch program. Meanwhile the worst was always assumed about Trayvon, even when it was completely made up.
Saying that Zimmerman was “always treated as a sort of upstanding everyman just minding his own business…” is an outright lie and either you know it, or I don’t see how you can manage the simple task of feeding yourself.
Personally I don’t know much about this new debacle taking place involving Zimmerman, nor will I bother to read up on it because frankly I just don’t care anymore. He may have been found not guilty, but his life is more or less ruined and like Rodney King, he has started down the path of perennial f-ups. Figures. Who can go through the media meat-grinder and come out sane on the other side? I have a question though: Why do his detractors use these latest f-ups (however embellished the stories may be) as some kind of retroactive proof of his… Read more »
Dude was as sane as a wingnut can be in the first place. And these behaviors are not proof of guilt in a specific circumstance but rather evidence to a pattern of violence, paranoia, and avoidance that may speak to Zimmerman’s mindset the night he followed Martin.
As a rule of thumb if you have a problem with everyone else, the problem usually isn’t everyone else.
I’ll say the same thing as I said last time. If Travyon bashed his head into the ground, after Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back then the shooting was justifiably self-defense. Of course Trayvon wasn’t blameless, you bash skulls into the ground then do not be surprised if you get shot..it’s simple life or death at that point. If someone is following you, you still don’t have the right to go bash them. Wasn’t his reason for following because Trayvon was SKULKING around/acting suspicious?…for example if you peer into houses here, you’ll get cops called on you quick… Read more »
Hello Archy, See here’s the problem with these sorts of lines of argument, nobody other than George Zimmerman actually knows what happened that night since the only other eye witness to the event is now dead. So you can argue something like “the jury was right to find Zimmerman not guilty because the State of Florida failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed second degree murder or manslaughter” (this is an argument I have a lot of sympathy for by the way). But you can’t argue something like “Trayvon wasn’t blameless, you bash skulls into the ground… Read more »
Not sure if I made it clear or not, but I was saying IF it happened that way it’d be justified homicide in self-defense. It’s a he says vs prosecutor’s guess.