Assault on Trayvon and Lady Justice

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin reportedly pounded George Zimmerman's head on the pavement just prior to getting shot and killed. But I maintain that what has really taken a pounding here is not the shooter's head but Lady Justice herself...she has been violently bloodied and ravaged and continues to limp along as the many pundits apply their interpretation to what the verdict in Florida really means.

Our nation has become the victim of Mr. Zimmerman, just as painfully as the young man who lost his life as a result of the actions of a self appointed vigilante who was unwilling to follow the specific instructions given to him by the authorities, "Stay in your car..." What part of that simple instruction was Mr. Zimmerman unable to understand? 

Personally, all other facts of this case simply become background chatter to the glaringly simple fact that had George Zimmerman acted as the authorities instructed him none of this would have happened.  Trayvon would have finished eating his Skittles, would have gotten home safe and soundly, his mother would have berated him for being out too late, George would have met the police on the corner and said "He went into that house there" and the police would have done whatever they do when a vigilante is too eager to identify every shadow as an opportunity to live out his personal dream of power.

But his irresponsible actions bring into focus a lot of other imbalances in the whole sequence of events.  Why did the authorities not prosecute him immediately for failure to follow their admonition to stay in his car? Wouldn't that have qualified as criminal endangerment?  Why did the authorities assume that his story did not require investigation? Why was the prosecution based on ANYTHING other than the strictest recitation of the facts...This man's refusal to heed the instructions given him directly resulted in the unnecessary escalation of events resulting in the death of a young man. No assumptions required of whether he was profiling, whether Trayvon had the intention of doing something illegal or not, whether Trayvon was a nice young man or a troubled teen, whether Zimmerman is a bigot or a racist or whether he felt his life was in danger; no assumptions required. He failed to follow instructions and this failure on his part ALONE resulted in the death of a person.  PERIOD. 

Why shouldn't we question the objectivity of the proceeding when the obvious was not done?  Why shouldn't we be concerned when the brother of the accused deserts the court house the day before the verdict and publicly stated that he did so to be prepared for the media because they had received a good indication that the verdict would be "not guilty"?

History has proven that we are a brave and just society that faces our shortcomings with wisdom and courage and makes the corrections that are required to truly live up to the ideals of  being the "land of the free, sweet land of liberty." Citizens of all ages, of all races and political convictions are waiting for some serious answers.  The questions are all too apparent.

The Media-Dangerous Allies of Evil

The Media-Dangerous Allies of Evil

Our era of political correctness has erased all sense of common sense.  We appear to want to cleanse our past by pretending that it didn't exist and that our personal and shared history is not what taught us lessons but that somehow we collectively became better people by pure grace.  This pretense is a very dangerous thing and is somehow reminiscent of the Soviet Union where people could disappear from history books and photographs because having to admit what they stood for was not convenient to the new political forces.

It is an unsavory reality that we were a slave nation. Not only did portions of our nation embrace and relish slavery but those same factions were willing to fight a war to defend that practice, disguised as a war to defend state's rights. History has engraved the results of this reality with more than a century of consequences including discrimination, abuse, murder, resentment, social inequity, poverty, crime, stigma and struggle. The revolution that was the Civil War caused an evolution within our society ... one that is STILL in the process transforming us.We are all living with evolving standards whether we choose to recognize it or not. The most recent victim of this charade of pretense is Paula Deen.

I do not know Paula Deen other than through her presence within the media as a chef and a proponent of cooking with ingredients that are shunned in today's search for healthy alternatives. When I have seen her in public she has been witty and lighthearted. Using the "n" word is ugly and demeaning but it's use alone qualifies one for the title of insensitive but not necessarily a racist.

Most of the deposition has to do with the reality of running a business with a family member, of the jealousies and nit-picking that occur in any organization, common behaviors that when put under a microscope appear very damning but are an everyday part of learning to live in community. We have all done or said things we are not particularly proud of but our character is defined by how we act and react to the lessons those moments teach us.  And one of the most important lessons we should have learned by now is to get the facts before we jump to conclusions.  I have no idea if the accusations made against Paula Deen Enterprises, her person and her brother are correct. I do know that the lawsuit and the deposition are two different things and that if we are to judge the veracity of the lawsuit by the treatment being afforded the deposition we must proceed with great caution.

The deposition itself is quite long, 145 pages of actual discussion...most media pundits probably wager that not many people are going to invest time in reading the whole thing and will be perfectly happy to accept their choice of excerpts as gospel and a trustworthy reflection of Paula Deen's statements and character. Well, I read it and frankly, I find the lawyer's behavior and the media's handling of the report more reprehensible than what she admits to saying. Click here to read it yourself... Paula Deen Deposition. I can faithfully say that the lawyers were trying very hard to entrap her and that the media has done a bang up job of misrepresenting the facts.  The maelstrom of inaccuracies and unjust consequences of those inaccuracies should be a lesson to us all on how dangerous the media has become. No matter what side of the debate they decide to attack, once the media decides to embrace showmanship rather than truth they become dangerous allies of evil.  And to those who wish to refer to the accusations made against her which are not reflected in the deposition but are the basis of the law suit, please be reminded that those are accusations.  The accusations are what the party demanding $1.5 million in damages alleges.  Remember the adage, "Innocent until proven guilty?"  That is what is supposed to happen in a court of law, not on television.

Regarding her use of the "n" word...very little, if any, coverage has been given to the following excerpt: (Page 23)
PD:  "But that's just not a word that we use as time has gone on. Things have changed since the '60s in the south. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior" (Emphasis mine)


Or this excerpt when asked if using racial slurs constitutes harassment:

(At the bottom of page 81)

PD    …. If you were doing it against a Jewish person and constantly talking about – bad mouthing Jews or lesbians or homosexuals or Mexicans or blacks, if you continually beat up on a certain group, I would think that that would be some kind of  harassment.

Lawyer:  Okay

PD          I don’t know.  We don’t do that--I don’t know.

And the whole issue of the Plantation style wedding...oh please!  The lawyers gave the whole thing the 'slave' connotation, not Paula Deen.  What she said was that she had really respected the level of  professionalism provided by a staff of waiters at a Southern restaurant she and her husband had eaten that recreated a by-gone era. I surmise that she was referencing the famous Southern gentility.  The lawyer then went on to create the analogy and the impression that what she was after was to glorify slavery.

(Top of Page 130)

PD:  Well, it -- to me, of course I'm old but I ain't that old, I didn't live back in those days but I've seen pictures, and the pictures that I've seen, that restaurant represented a certain era in America.

Lawyer:  Okay.

PD:  And I was in the south when I went to this restaurant. It was located in the south.

Lawyer: Okay. What era in America are you referring to?

PD:  Well, I don't know. After the Civil War, during the Civil War, before the Civil War.

Lawyer: Right. Back in an era where there were middle-aged black men waiting on white people.

PD:  Well, it was not only black men, it was black women.

Lawyer: Sure. And before the Civil War -before the Civil War, those black men and women who were waiting on white people were slaves, right?

PD:  Yes, I would say that they were slaves.

Lawyer:  Okay.

PD:  But I did not mean anything derogatory by saying I loved their look and their professionalism.

Throughout our nation there are myriad examples of historical re-enactments...Civil War battles, gunfights in Western Towns, Medieval Jousts, Colonial villages, and yes, Southern Plantations. And here's a news flash!  Those re-enactments pertain to a time when all things were not morally consonant with today's standards. 100 years from now I suspect there will be re-enactments of things we take for granted but that will offend the sensitivities of those of the future."What?  You mean our ancestors actually executed citizens?"

Paula Deen deserves to hear voices of common sense.