RANGER AGAINST WAR: Pulp Non-Fiction <

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Pulp Non-Fiction

2.

Woman Tells of Encounters With Killer in Martin Case


Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual
and lost the original black box,

they still remembered to use the stones

--The Lottery
, Shirley Jackson

I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem—
vengeance is walking Salem

--The Crucible
, Arthur Miller


Do you take it upon yourself to determine
what this court shall believe
and what it shall set aside?
--ibid.

___________________

The above the second most viewed story in the New York Times at 2 p.m. yesterday.





Number two not in a tabloid, but #2 in the ostensibly top paper in the United States. These are the things that make me embarrassed to be a liberal today. Zimmerman's fate relies on the decision of a unbiased jury. In his case, as with any similar, the laws will be applied to his actions to arrive at a decision.

So why is the liberal press so assiduously committing character assassination in this case? This headline is naught but indictment sans trial, replete with dime store title: The Killer I Knew. This is nuts -- who is making these editorial decisions? These are the same journalists who would have been horrified by the tactics of the McCarthy era witch hunt trials, so why the about-face? Why feed us this prurient and lurid non-news, and why do we feast upon it?

Unfortunately, an overzealous press in the mistaken business of swaying public opinion has been scrambling to dredge up anything which will heap an adjudication of "guilty" upon Zimmerman's head, even before his case goes to trial (if it even does). The reason for this is unclear.

The WaPo's Jonathan Capehart and the NYT's Charles Blow have embarrassed themselves by keeping up the drumbeat of insinuation against Zimmerman (it is said his family likes blacks as long as they behave like whites ... -- living in South Georgia, I can tell you that attitude blindsided me. Yup.) This is pathetic gruel for a paper of supposed note to be indulging in.

So why is Zimmerman being publicly pilloried in the top paper in the nation? Why are we reading pulp fiction heads like "Woman Tells of Encounters with Killer"? The late Paul Fussell called it "prole drift" in his, "BAD -- the Dumbing of America".

And what were those "encounters"? Zimmerman apparently diddled her under a blanket while they watched t.v. when she was 6 and he 8.


Says witness 9,
"a lot of kissing, groping. He would put his hands under my shirt and just rub and grab my chest and put his hands down my pants again ... ". It happened a few more times over the years, but when she was 18, boy, she just got up and left him high and dry: No more groping, so there!

Now, not one to encourage groping, but it does happen, and is not a marker in the making of a murderer. Now, if they could come up with some singed cats or dogs over the clothesline (whoops, that's what pro football players sometimes do.)


Did the victim, Trayvon, ever diddle a girl? We are not told, making him seem virginal, locked in amber in a moment of the press's creation, iced tea and Skittles in hand. Zimmerman grows more heinous with each lurid innuendo, like something on a late night werewolf movie.


Anyway, I don't get it. This coverage is so blatantly inappropriate on so many levels. That the U.S. president spoke out sympathizing with the victim hopelessly biased the case.
Why must Zimmerman be martyred for our collective sense of guilt? The witch hunt is so pagan and atavistic in nature.

He must have hairy palms, which would further prove something, if they can just trick him into opening them upwards.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This whole thing is so bizarre and so stupid. The worst part is that so many fellow citizens are buying into it.

Where I live there are a lot of homocidally idiotic drivers. For a small rural county there are a heck of a lot of traffic fatalities; most didn't have to happen. Drunken idiot runs through stop sign at 70 miles an hour and T-bones someone else killing that person and paralyzing another. Idiot drunk and high on multiple substances doing 80 in a 30 mph zone blows stop sign and ends up flying their car through an old lady's living room. Texting fool swerves out of lane and hits a tree and car bursts into fire killing driver and three passengers. Someone out for a stroll at night, wearing dark clothes and walking on the side of the road gets nailed by a passing car driven by some pot head who's wacked out of his gourd. That sort of thing. At least one a week. Often more than two in a week.

These unfortunate incidents get a blip in the local paper for a day and then they disappear. Once in a while they re-appear for another brief blip when a surviving idiot appears in court to be tried for vehicular homocide or some similar charge.

To my mind the Martin/Zimmerman thing is pretty much the equivalent of one of these traffic accidents - two parties fatally colliding and each party contributing to some extent to the sum total of negligence and bad decision making - only a gun was the instrument of death as opposed to a car.

If we need to talk about race in America, can't we just talk about race?

If we need to talk about guns, then let's please have that discussion in an honest, direct and transparent manner.

avedis

Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 7:03:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Lisa said...

avedis,

Yes -- bizarre and stupid.

Your last two lines tell the story. Notice no good liberals respond to this absurdity ever fronting the paper? Because they cannot, or will not, risk being seen as anything but a "good liberal", which today is as meaningless as being a member of the tea party. It means buying into the party line, which is whatever the purveyors of Truth say it is. (If you're liberal, that would be the NYT.)

Everyone abdicates their reason in order to affiliate, and by gaining affiliation, to feel safe and superior.

I ask the questions, because I don't affiliate, and call b.s. when I see it.

Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 1:28:00 PM GMT-5  

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