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This afternoon NPR's news show had, after a long segment of gloating over how the Affordable Healthcare Act is going down in flames while the nasty old men on the Supreme Court whitter on and on about the relationship of the individual and the federal government, a lovely (sacrastically speaking) segment on the human side of the Trayvon Martin murder. That is, they spoke to two parents of other murdered young people who became activists. One was a boy who was shot on a bus by gag members who were shooting at someone else and the other was the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They asked them sensitive and respectful questions about what it's like to be the parent of a child whois cut down like that, and about the horrors of participating in public affairs in the wake of the event, and the dangers of becoming politicized in the process.
You can see why this is a despicable move. One: they have lumped all of these things together in a way that erases the fact that Trayvon Martin was executed extra-legally for being a male black child on a public street, and that this is a pervasive problem in American society. Two: by the very leading questions that they asked, and the order in which they are arranged, the take-away message appears to be the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving urgently warning Trayvon Martin's parents to be wary of the exploiters who will attempt to politicize their personal tragedy. To take time to mourn and grieve privately, to avoid becoming politicized themselves.
Excuse me. Trayvon Martin, and his family, were politicized long before he took that walk to the corner store. Neighborhood Watch is politicized when it believes that a teenager walking down the street is automatically a suspicious person. The State of Florida politicized every enounter on the street when they passed the law that results in people not even being held for questioning when they shoot somebody down, so long as they are the right sort of person and so long as they claim that they felt that they were threatened in some vague way.
Edit: Democracy Now of course has a better example.
You can see why this is a despicable move. One: they have lumped all of these things together in a way that erases the fact that Trayvon Martin was executed extra-legally for being a male black child on a public street, and that this is a pervasive problem in American society. Two: by the very leading questions that they asked, and the order in which they are arranged, the take-away message appears to be the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving urgently warning Trayvon Martin's parents to be wary of the exploiters who will attempt to politicize their personal tragedy. To take time to mourn and grieve privately, to avoid becoming politicized themselves.
Excuse me. Trayvon Martin, and his family, were politicized long before he took that walk to the corner store. Neighborhood Watch is politicized when it believes that a teenager walking down the street is automatically a suspicious person. The State of Florida politicized every enounter on the street when they passed the law that results in people not even being held for questioning when they shoot somebody down, so long as they are the right sort of person and so long as they claim that they felt that they were threatened in some vague way.
Edit: Democracy Now of course has a better example.
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