Those who believe the verdict in the Zimmerman trial was justified might send a thank you note to Ed Schultz for his inadvertent help in bolstering their argument.
The bellowing radio host and denizen of the seldom-watched wasteland known as MSNBC weekend has been on a self-righteous tear since a verdict in the trial was announced Saturday night. (Audio clips after the jump)
Do we have a broken system? Should we have people of color and diversity on, on, in, in juries or we don't move forward with a trial? You know, I thought about that last night, I thought, you don't know what it's like to have red hair unless you have red hair! You don't know what it's like to be Asian unless you're an Asian. You don't know what it's like to be a terribly overweight person unless you have to live with it every second of your life. You don't know what it's like to be black. And so how can this woman (juror interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper) think that Zimmerman's heart was in the right place? That the only thing he's guilty of is poor judgment. And oh by the way, she thinks that Trayvon threw the first punch. Not sure, but thinks! Enough to think that it's OK that he's dead and the guy that caused the death should walk scot free! I do not believe that a person of color would have come to that conclusion! Because a person of color has different life experiences. This, of course, was absent in the jury. And what is absent is (sic) our guts to discuss it. I think it is a vital discussion that we have to have in this country, that until you walk a mile in somebody else's shoes, you really don't know.
We do know that Zimmerman had a firearm and I think we can easily come to the conclusion that he felt pretty safe. And when he didn't feel safe, and by evidence he was getting his ass kicked, he decided to take someone else, someone else's life.
Put another way, Zimmerman decided to defend his own life before the assault escalated from ass kicking to something much worse. And it wasn't just that anonymous juror talking with Anderson Cooper who thinks Martin threw the first punch -- so does Martin's girlfriend, Rachel Jeantel. Speaking with CNN's Piers Morgan, Jeantel shed further light on the confrontation by telling Morgan that she wondered aloud while talking with Martin by phone if the "creepy-ass cracker" Martin said was following him wanted to rape Martin. And no, you'll never hear a word about this on MSNBC, ever.
Schultz's remark about Zimmerman "getting his ass kicked" by Martin, right before Zimmerman decided he'd had enough of that, wasn't his only curious remark on his radio show yesterday. There was also this (audio) --
It's all about profiling! If you go right down to the root cause of how this horrific event all unfolded and how lives have been changed and hearts have been broken, it's all about profiling! Because if George Zimmerman had never profiled, if he had just thought, oh that's just another kid walking by, but it was more than that, which I think is a disease! I do. I think he needs some treatment. I think society needs some treatment when it comes to profiling. Now, Reverend (Jesse) Jackson on this program yesterday I thought said something very profound, that it was a miscarriage of justice ...
How odd indeed that Schultz neglected to ask Jackson if he sought "some treatment" after once saying that "there is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."
