Are children being scared to death because of Trayvon Martin?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Anderson Cooper, Part Deux, and a devoted mother: Are children being scared to death because of the death of Trayvon Martin?

Last night, Anderson Cooper aired Part 2 of his attempt to discuss “Race and Justice in America.” Overall, we’d call his efforts weak. In a later post, we’ll discuss comments made last night by Sunny Hostin and Mark Geragos, who conducted a vaudeville act with Cooper each night during the Zimmerman trial.

We think topics like these deserve better. They won’t likely get it from Cooper.

Last night, Cooper spoke with a mother who is concerned for her 14-year-old son. Christy Oglesby works for CNN in Atlanta. It’s perfectly obvious that she is a good, decent, smart, caring person.

Oglesby is concerned for her son. At one point, she described her son’s reaction to the Zimmerman verdict:

OGLESBY (7/23/13): I've certainly done my best sacrificially to give him the education he needs, to give him the world exposure that he needs. And it is heartbreaking. And what you said—

On Saturday night, I made sure that I was at home when the verdict came in. I had been at work, and I made sure I was at home. And what he said to me, is "So for the rest of my life, mom, I'm a suspect?" And how does that make a mother feel?

And it's something that—you know, and what I have to explain to him is that, "Drew, it is not your burden. This is someone's perception of you. And what someone thinks of you is not what you have to think of yourself."

[…]

So it is a rough road, because I didn't want to fall out in tears when he says, "So for the rest of my life, I'm a suspect?" So I waited until he went to bed before I wept.

For the rest of his life, is this young man a suspect? We wondered why the verdict made him ask that question. More specifically, what has this young man been told about the events of that night in Sanford? What has his decent, devoted, caring mother been told about those events?

Many people have gone on TV and misled that young man. Cooper, a child of great wealth and best-dressed-list vacuity, has permitted various people to do this night after night.

Why did George Zimmerman describe Martin that night as “a real suspicious guy?” Was Martin actually doing something odd or inappropriate? Was he doing something that would have made him seem “suspicious” to a reasonable person?

Because we weren’t present that night, we can’t tell you. But how often have you seen any discussion of what Zimmerman said that Martin was doing, first during that 911 call and then to police investigators?

On cable, Zimmerman’s claims have been declared beyond the pale. Beyond that, there have been very few discussions about the claim that Martin attacked Zimmerman as he walked back to his truck.

Is that claim true? Again, we don’t know. But some of the evidence from the trial was directly relevant to this claim. But did you ever see a discussion of that evidence? For example, did you ever see a discussion of where the altercation occurred?

Cable has been dominated by Soviet-style story-telling. All suggestions that Martin may have done something tragically wrong have been declared beyond the pale. As a result, children all over the country have been handed a tremendously frightening story:

An innocent child who had done nothing wrong was shot dead, shot through the heart.

They’ve been told that this child was shot through the heart because he was back. That is the only story millions of kids have been told.

Parents have heard that story too. They too may not realize how much is being withheld.

Did Trayvon Martin do something suspicious? We don’t know, but obviously, it’s possible.

Did Trayvon Martin attack George Zimmerman? Same answer. But on cable, very bad people have issued a witch brew composed of two kinds of facts. Many of their facts have been false.

Others have been withheld.

Very bad people have crawled over cable to discuss the Zimmerman trial. It takes a special kind of cretin to want to scare millions of children (and parents) so much—to scare them by refusing to give them the full range of the known facts.