LITTLE ROCK — We got the bubble-headed bleach-blonde
Comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash
With a gleam in her eye.
It’s interesting when people die.
Give us dirty laundry.
-Don Henley NEWS FLASH! Hot off the Internet! Don’t touch that dial! You’ll be shocked by this next segment-we guarantee-and we’ve got exactly two minutes and 25 seconds to bring you this story before moving on to the weather!
The death of a young person. Incredibly sad. He was shot down on a street in Florida. Sandi?
Yes, Gil, a terrible tragedy. Incredibly sad. Can we get the photo on the screen? How about the graphic showing where it occurred? Yes, that is indeed a map of Florida. Thanks to the graphics guys. Gil?
Do we have pictures of the grieving family? Good. This is incredibly sad, Sandi.
Incredibly, Gil.
Uh, we have a flash, Sandi. Al Sharpton has weighed in.
Thanks, Gil.
It seems The Reverend took the first flight to Florida and is in front of the microphones now. Our cameras are there, and we’ll bring you that news conference as soon as we edit it all down to the best sound bites. Stand by, Sandi.
More news coming over the headset here, Gil. Louis Farrakhan has tweeted. Something about retaliation.
Can this be true, Sandi? They’re selling T-shirts at these press conferences? Can we confirm that? Incredibly sad.
Rush Limbaugh on Line One. Get him on the set. Man, this should’ve happened during sweeps week.
Now we go live to Florida where Geraldo-
Sorry to interrupt, Gil, but we need to take our audience to a live press conference at the White House. The president is expected to be asked about this shooting in Florida, and the handling of the case. This ought to be good. He is expected to speak in about five minutes, so we’ll bring you there live-
Commentators at MSNBC are blaming talk radio for the shooting, Sandi.
Gil, the first eight stories on Drudge are about this incredibly sad case.
Incredibly sad, Sandi.
Is the president about to speak? Great! And we take you there in three, two, one . . .
IN ALL the talk, talk, talk, one voice is not heard. His voice remains still through it all.
His name was Trayvon. He was a teenager and life awaited. Until it didn’t. Now his family will never know what he could have become. The rest of us will never know, either. We don’t even know just how this could have happened. Speculation is rife, facts rare, if not beyond ascertaining. Versions conflict.
We’ve definitely entered Al Sharpton territory, where assumptions and demonstrations trump any calm examination of the mere facts. Facts? Those just get in the way of a good story. They might spoil a scoop. Can’t have that. Speed, indignation, presidential press conferences. That’s what counts. Accuracy? What’s that got to do with journalism? (Sandi, just between us, who is Emmett Till? I keep hearing his name in connection with this case.)
There is no end to the things thatdisturb about this story-and its coverage. One is how so many of us in the media treat this case as just another flash in the news cycle instead of how it should be treated-responsibly, not as another day’s sensation. Or even a season’s. We forget that when every trial is the Trial of the Century, none is. They all fade into one indistinguishable blur of glitz and contention.
For the moment, the death of a young man in cloudy circumstances is mainly fodder for the Rev. Sharptons out there. And all those others who swing into reflexive reaction whenever there’s a racial issue to be ignited. (Gil, can you work the 1957 Little Rock Crisis into the next segment? That’s always a good angle.) THIS MUCH, and not much more, we do know: We’ve lost-we’ve all lost-yet another young man and the world he would have perceived, reflected, influenced, made. As each of us creates our own world. (“Whoever destroys a single life, it is as if he has destroyed an entire world.”-The Talmud.)
Trayvon Martin’s world has been lost in this televised, tweeted, fractured, fragmented age, when concentration and deliberation-calm judgment-become next to impossible in all the electronic haze. We become too busy to be anything but busy.
In all the hurly-burly, how easy to forget that Trayvon Martin, 17, was a real person. We’re too busy turning him into a cause, a symbol, a rallying cry for the Deep Thinkers to make what they will of him and his fate, to use him as a jumping-off point for their own speculative ruminations about the state of race relations, of the world, of everything. We’ve lost count of all the talking heads and deep-voiced analysts who would use the death of a teenage boy as a springboard for their own political/racial theories. And agitations.
As soon as Al Sharpton enters a case, any case, only the historically amnesiac will fail to wonder if this is really a great cause or just another Tawana Brawley affair, hoax and scam, which he orchestrated as only the Reverend Al can.
The anger in Sanford, Florida-and all around the country-is understandable. All too understandable. If answers aren’t carefully, deliberately, lawfully provided, law enforcement down there may have even more problems-and inspire even more protesters. And counter-protesters.
Lest we forget, there is someone else being reduced to a stereotype in all this hubbub-a real, live person named George Zimmerman, who fired the fatal round. He, too, deserves justice. No one should want American justice to be lost along with Trayvon Martin. Its wheels may grind slowly, but let us have faith that they can still grind exceeding fine. If given the chance.
So could we at least wait to hear from a grand jury before reaching a verdict? Or has that possibility, too, become unthinkable in an age when communication long ago outpaced judgment?
One news report said a website had collected two million signatures demanding George Zimmerman’s immediate arrest. Is this the pass we have come to in this country-arrest warrants issued by popular demand? The once vaunted rule of law, which is supposed to distinguish this republic, now replaced by million-vote plebiscites?
Two names are at the center of this controversy, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, but so is a principle-the rule of law.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 03/28/2012