James Taranto considers my warnings against counter-Trayvonism.

In his Best of the Web column today. Excerpt:

We are... dubious of Althouse's assertion that counter-Trayvonism plays into the hands of the left....

Saul Alinsky's fourth rule was: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." The counter-Trayvonists may ultimately be wrongheaded, but if they can provoke as conventional a liberal as Josh Marshall into disparaging "the racial victimization bus" — a colorblind sentiment if ever there was one — then perhaps they serve a dialetical purpose.

The conservatives' high ground on race is colorblindness, and they'd be fools to abandon it.

That's a general piece of advice I'd like to deliver, prompted by this specific headline, seen just now at Twitchy:

Slain World War II vet Delbert Belton honored at candlelight vigil [photos]

I know there are those who think there's a need to rebalance public opinion after the distortions that surrounded the George Zimmerman case, which skewed racial discourse in this country over the past year, but it's a terrible idea to go looking for incidents in where the killers are black and the victims are white and to exploit them in what seems like an effort to undo the distortions. I saw this happening earlier this week over the Christopher Lane murder, I labeled it "counter-Trayvonistic," which was a too-subtle way to say: Don't fight skewing with skewing in the opposite direction.

Conservatives have rested on the principle of colorblindness for a long time, and they've taken abuse for it. Look at how left liberals abuse Chief Justice Roberts for writing, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." They consider that kind of talk naive (at best). They push the perceived sophistication of what Justice Blackmun said back in the first affirmative action case: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."

Those are the 2 well-defined and socially presentable opinions in this country, and decent, sincere Americans have argued from these positions for decades. Now, we're seeing some conservatives who seem frustrated by this taking account of race that's been done on the left. They seem to think it's a good time to spotlight violence committed by black people. This is not a good idea! It's fine to mourn Shorty, but these candlelight vigils are intended to stir hearts the way hearts were stirred at the Trayvon Martin demonstrations.

Trayvon Martin — an individual human being — was used by demagogues to score points about the suffering of black people in America, but this is not a game, and it is delusion to imagine that there is a need to score points on some imagined other side. This is not a game. There is no score. And we are all on the same side.

To paraphrase the Chief Justice: The way to stop skewing public opinion based on race is to stop skewing public opinion based on race.

To stir hearts counter-Trayvonistically is to nurture feelings that white people are oppressed by black people. This alternative to colorblindness is profoundly stupid. 1. It abandons the easy to express, principled position that many people perceive as the high ground. 2. It steps into the arena of taking account of race, where the left liberals would love to take you on. And 3. It gives air to the white supremacists among us. These people have been outcasts for a long time, but they exist, perhaps not quite yet recognizing what they are.

What sparks catch fire in that candlelight vigil for Shorty?

Using the Christopher Lane murder to argue for gun control.

Promoters of gun control seem willing to use any shooting as an argument for gun control, but the murder of the jogging Australian baseball player is especially inapt. Here's Steve Clemons polemicizing in The Atlantic:

I have been greatly affected by sad news from Oklahoma today, another case of a victim of gun violence that deserves as much attention and public concern as the more grisly mass slayings we have heard so much about and which still have not produced progress on gun control....

The young college baseball player... was allegedly shot and killed by three juveniles, one of whom confessed to the police saying,  "We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody."

The accused teenagers were in a car. Lane was jogging by the side of the road. If it's really true that they were simply bored and wanted to amuse themselves by killing that particular man in that situation but they didn't have a gun, they could have run Lane down with the car. Wouldn't that have been easier than taking aim while driving? And if their mental state really was what the reported confession makes it sound like, wouldn't that have been more entertaining?

***

In last night's post about this murder, I said "Why is this murder story the lead story? I've got to assume it's counter-Trayvonistic." That is, unlike The Atlantic, some commentators are presenting this story as an example of black people targeting a white person, as if to rebalance things after media made the Trayvon Martin incident the symbol of a larger racial problem. I recommend noticing who's doing what in America's endless discourse about race, but what I want to add here is that Trayvon Martin — according to evidence presented at trial — beat George Zimmerman's head against the pavement. As Zimmerman's lawyer put it in the closing argument, Martin armed himself with the concrete curb. The pavement was appropriated as a deadly weapon, and Zimmerman used the gun in self-defense.

Promoters of gun control portray handguns as a special sort of object, because they are useful only for wounding or killing other living beings and they are designed and possessed for exactly that reason. Concrete curbs and automobiles are designed, purchased, and used for nonviolent purposes, though they can be repurposed to maim and kill. If you like gun control, this difference is important. If you don't, you'll probably say: Because there are so many ways to inflict violence — including innumerable household objects and the bare fists of whoever happens to be stronger — decent people have a right to bear arms in self-defense.

***

Only yesterday, in New York City, a cab driver, in a rage, turned a car into a deadly weapon.

“It was like a damn movie,’’ said the bike messenger, Kenneth Olivo.

He and rogue hack Mohammed Himon, 24, of The Bronx were heading north on Sixth Avenue when the cyclist cut off the cabby, law-enforcement sources said. Himon, in his yellow cab, chased Olivo to 49th Street, where the cyclist allegedly banged on the taxi. Himon “wanted to turn, but he didn’t want to wait . . . He wants to be Number 1,’’ Olivo said.

“I told him to calm down . . . He gets angry, he honks his horn, and he accelerates, and that’s it — I’m on the hood of the car, and the woman is under his car . . . He accelerated, because I couldn’t escape him.”

The woman, a British tourist named Sian Green had "her left leg... severed below the shin, and part of her right leg was left hanging by just the skin. "

Yeah, Mohammed Himon. Let's see if anyone jams this story into their larger "global jihad" template.

Drudge has the upper hand.

There's a hand theme at Drudge right now:

But who can see all that hand business when it's tucked down underneath this in-your-face racial presentation of a murder?

The links are:

COPS: 'Bored' Black Teens Kill White Baseball Player 'For Fun'...
Were Accused Killers Really 'Bored?'
Australian tourists urged to boycott USA...

Why is this murder story the lead story? I've got to assume it's counter-Trayvonistic.

Trayvon Martin's stepmother Alicia Stanley wants you to know: "I exist... I'm the one... I'm the one...."

You don't see her at the trial where the biological mother sits with the biological father, and she's not the "father's fiancee" whose residence was near where the shooting took place, but she sees herself as Trayvon's real mother.

I don't know who made the decision to keep her in the background. Perhaps the Martin family's lawyers thought there were already too many mother figures in the Trayvon story and decided she should be eclipsed. If so, they should have worked harder to obtain her cooperation, because, as you'll see in the interview — here — she feels aggrieved. She wanted her time in the spotlight, and I'd be interested in knowing the details of the decision of the Anderson Cooper show to put her on. There's a "woman shunned" quality to much of what she says, and I suspect other news shows determined that it's too women's television or too outside the racial justice template.

If you have limited time, begin with Part 2, where Stanley — asked if she thinks Zimmerman "zeroed in" on Martin because of his race — says "I'd be lying if I said yes, so I'm going to say this: no." From there, she goes on to her "I exist... I'm the one... I'm the one..." monologue, which is quite dramatic. I felt like I was watching the Halle Berry performance in the role of Alicia Stanley. I wonder if she had this part scripted in advance and what we see on screen is acting.

I mean, she seems to be saying her lines in the fashion that actresses use when they are bidding for an Oscar, but those actresses are purporting to represent real people. Alicia Stanley may be exactly the kind of real person that actresses will want to study in order to give Oscar-worthy performances. Most real people — like the various witnesses I'd watched in the trial — speak in a rather flat and matter-of-fact style when they're invited to speak on television. You just know that if they made a movie out of this trial, the actors would have to punch up the emotion. Which is why I loathe most courtroom scenes: To avoid blandness, they've got to be phony.

But Alicia Stanley isn't a witness in the courtroom, she's a guest in the comfortable gaze of Anderson Cooper. She's not under oath, but maybe she's utterly genuine. Consider that line: "I'd be lying if I said yes, so I'm going to say this: no." Who answers like that instead of just saying no? A person who consciously and actively decides that not only shouldn't she lie, but she's got to be honest even about considering lying.

Now playing in the Theater of Racial Reconciliation: the George Zimmerman trial.

TalkLeft says:

Lawyers for the [Trayvon] Martin family now say the case is not about racial profiling or race.... Then why did Benjamin Crump say race was "the elephant in the room." Racial injustice was the core of their argument. It was always about race to them. Race was what they used to transform this local shooting into a case of national importance.

Meanwhile, at Instapundit:

IT’S REALLY BEGINNING TO LOOK AS IF CHARGES NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT HERE: Neighbor, cop back George Zimmerman’s account of fight with Trayvon Martin.

Watching much of the trial these last 3 days, I've come to believe that the prosecution is conducting a theatrical performance in racial reconciliation. It wasn't politically easy to decline to prosecute Zimmerman, even though the evidence showed he could not be convicted, so this prosecution was mounted to demonstrate to the public that Zimmerman should not be convicted. I'm not condoning this use of the power to prosecute. I'm simply observing what is happening. I think the trial is theater, and if it's done right — with people like Crump contributing what they can — the people who got stirred up in Act I can experience catharsis.

Remember Act I? It had that wonderful cameo performance from President Obama:



He told us this was "a tragedy." Catharsis "is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of tragedy on the spectator":

In his works prior to Poetics, Aristotle had used the term catharsis purely in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the katamenia — the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material).  Here, however, he employs it as a medical metaphor. F. L. Lucas maintains, therefore, that purification and cleansing are not proper translations for catharsis; that it should rather be rendered as purgation. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."...

"In real life," [one scholar] explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean." Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels."

In the end, one must hope, we will come into balance.

Rachel Jeantel's inability to read cursive leads to articles about why we're even teaching cursive anymore.

Here's one: "Is cursive writing dead?"

A single sentence, uttered in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin, has catapulted an issue into the national spotlight.

When asked if she could read a letter in court, witness Rachel Jeantel, her head bowed, murmured with embarrassment, "I don't read cursive," according to court testimony.

Jeantel was embarrassed, so let's all stop. Let's find everything that some people can't do and feel embarrassed about. And let's ask: Is this really necessary? Is this serving a purpose... other than to make some people feel embarrassed?

Jeantel is an icon not only in the fight to end education in cursive handwriting, but the fight to spare everyone embarrassment. This is the necessary extension of the struggle against bullying, a struggle to control deliberate meanness. But think of all the unintentional things that create emotional burdens for some people. There was a time when sidewalks lacked ramps for wheelchairs, not because anyone was out to make life difficult for wheelchairs, but simply because we failed to notice. Step up — wheel up — and become aware of all the needless barriers out there.

ADDED: When I learned cursive — in the late 1950s in northern Delaware — the word "cursive" was not used. We just called it "writing," "handwriting," or — I think — "manuscript" or "script." Consequently, the word "cursive" has always seemed strange to me.

I hear the ugly words "cur" and "curse," but, looking it up in the (unlinkable) OED, I see the etymology is connected to the Latin for "run" — cursīvus — and the idea is: "Written with a running hand, so that the characters are rapidly formed without raising the pen, and in consequence have their angles rounded, and separate strokes joined, and at length become slanted."

The word "cur" — meaning a low-quality dog — goes back to Middle Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian.

Middle English curre corresponds to... Norwegian (widely-spread) dialect kurre, korre ‘dog’, etc. The latter is generally associated with the onomatopoeic verb Old Norse kurra to murmur, grumble, Swedish kurra to grumble, rumble, snarl, Danish kurre to coo, German obsolete and dialect kurren to growl, grumble, murmur, coo....

So hear the grrrr in "cur."

The word "curse," the OED says, has unknown origin: "Late Old English curs, of unknown origin; no word of similar form and sense is known in Germanic, Romanic, or Celtic."  (Of connection with cross, which has been suggested, there is no trace.)"

Interesting to see that people have imagined that "curse" had to do with "cross," even as I imagined that "cursive" had to do with "cur" and "curse." What words have influenced your understanding of other words? Isn't that something that happened to you a lot when you were a child? Did you ever find it emotionally difficult to learn about something because you made an imaginative connection like this? Would "cursive" be easier to learn if we called it "script"?

Rachel Jeantel made it sound like Travon Martin profiled George Zimmerman... or... what is a "creepy ass cracker"?

TalkLeft describes "a train wreck" witness:

She said (on direct exam no less by the prosecutor) that shortly after first spotting Zimmerman, Martin described Zimmerman to her as a "Creepy-a*s Cracker" and later, described Zimmerman a few times as "this ni*ga" (as in this ni*ga following him.) The two minute clip above is of Rachel and the prosecutor repeating creepy a*s cracker over and over as the court reporter struggles to make out what she's saying, Rachel explaining that creepy as* cracker means a white person, then and expressing concern the creepy guy might be a rapist.

So "cracker" is a way of saying white guy, but "ni*ga" is apparently just a way to say guy? I can understand that, but I'd like to ask a few questions — out of curiosity. I'm not saying the defense lawyer should ask this on cross-examination. (Which should make for some interesting TV today.) I'd like to know whether perhaps Trayvon Martin perceived Zimmerman as a person of color and not a white man at all. You assume that there's no way he'd say "cracker" if he didn't see him as white? But he didn't say "cracker." He said "creepy ass cracker." I understand the use of "ass" as an intensifier connected to the adjective "creepy." Creepy-ass cracker, as in very creepy cracker.

But "ass" could go with "cracker" — "ass-cracker." The conversation continued, according to Jeantel: "So... he told me the man was looking at him, so I had to think it might have been a rapist."

Why rapist? A man raping a man? How common is that as a fear? But it was the first thing Jeantel thought to say after he said creepy-ass cracker/creepy ass-cracker. The term "ass cracker" could easily mean a man who rapes a man, especially one who goes after a teenaged boy.

Urban Dictionary has some definitions of "ass cracker" that predate this trial:

1. ass cracker...
One who not knowing the code or combination to a particular slice of ass is nonetheless able to get inside the ass...

2. Ass Cracker...
One who engages in anal sex.
That wanker is an ass cracker.

3. Ass Cracker...
A term used to describe a man with a large enough penis, to brake the anus of the woman or man he is having anal intercourse with.
"Damn, his's cock is so big, he is definatly an ass cracker!"

The word "creepy" makes special sense if you reinterpret the "ass" to go with "cracker." Martin said a man was following him, looking at him. He might have thought Zimmerman was a man out looking for sex and was watching him for that reason. What conversations had Martin had in the past with Jeantel about worries of this kind. She "had to think it might have been a rapist."

TalkLeft says:

She describes how Martin was "right by his father's house" after he lost Zimmerman, and refused to run home. I think he had plenty of time to go home, he obviously chose not to....

Why didn't Martin take Jeantel's advice and run home? The rapist/ass-cracker theory makes sense of Martin's decision to go after Zimmerman. If he saw Zimmerman as a sexual predator, he might think confrontation was a good idea or even an important step: These creeps in the neighborhood need to know that I'm not their prey. It's not enough to run inside daddy's house. My manhood must be established here and now or I can't walk free around here anymore.

"There's been a spate of new pleadings in the George Zimmerman case."

TalkLeft explains it better than anyone else, as far as I know.

ALSO: "Slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin's cellphone texts and photos show him chatting with friends about marijuana, fighting and guns, new potential evidence shows."

"Look at this Boston bombing. The pictures of those two brothers. Aren’t they cute?"

Said I, as quoted in The New Yorker today in a piece by Paul Bloom called "The Dzhokar Tsarnaev Empathy Problem." I was being sarcastic and criticizing the media for using a strikingly baby-faced picture of Tsarnaev in practically every report.

Bloom concludes:

Relying on the face might be human nature—even babies prefer to look at attractive people. But, of course, judging someone based on the geometry of his features is, from a moral and legal standpoint, no better than judging him based on the color of his skin. Actually, both biases reflect the parochial and irrational nature of empathy—if Tsarnaev were black, would he evoke the same response from the mothers [Hanna Rosin described here]? When someone talks about the warm feelings she has for Tsarnaev because of his sweet face, we should treat this with the same wary understanding that we would give to someone who admits to caring more about those who have the same color skin. It’s an empathetic response, and a natural one, but hardly one to be proud of.

Bloom says nothing about the baby-faced picture of Trayvon Martin that the media tended to use. Sweet faces manipulate us emotionally even when they are black. And an individual's face isn't quite the same as his skin color, because the mind is revealed through the face (albeit incompletely and often deceptively). Bloom displays the media's favorite photo of Jared Loughner and declares that we don't feel much empathy toward that face. But the problem with that face is not inborn ugliness. It's craziness in the expression. We are properly repelled by that.

It is the true sociopath — I would suggest — whose does evil things but keeps a normal-looking face. We need to challenge ourselves to recognize the sociopaths in our midst. And let's not try to overcome our aversion to faces like Loughner's or Adam Lanza's. These people have terrible problems that we ignore at great risk.

ADDED: The post title corrects a typo that appears in The New Yorker ("bothers" for "brothers").

"'Expert' Reports in George Zimmerman Case Disclosed."

And TalkLeft is skeptical:

In the first report, despite the cries on the 911 call being deemed 'minimum-to-marginal material for identification purposes'... The report seems worthless. But even if one accepts it, since [Trayvon] Martin is excluded as the person screaming in three of the last four screams the logical conclusion is he wasn't the one crying out for help. The inference I take from this is that Martin may have yelled as he started hitting Zimmerman (the first two cries) but Zimmerman was the one crying out in the rest of the screams, which fits with him being punched in the nose and having his head slammed into the ground.

The second report is so absurd I'm wondering if it wasn't a joke. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny.

[A]pproximately one second after the start of CALL3, Mr. Zimmerman makes a seemingly religious proclamation, "These shall be." His speech is characterized by the low pitch and exaggerated pitch contour reminiscent of an evangelical preacher or carnival barker....

... The first state report is equivocal and a guesstimate. The second is a joke. The court should exclude these expert reports.

"Trayvon Martin targets were not for target practice but were a 'no-shoot training tool'..."

"... says the Florida cop who was fired Friday for showing them to colleagues."

George Zimmerman opts out of "stand your ground" hearing.

Why? His lawyer claims there's too much time pressure preparing for the jury trial, but there must be a better reason.

University of Florida law professor Bob Dekle [thinks it's likely] that [Zimmerman's lawyer] O'Mara doesn't want to go through a bench mini-trial and possibly tip off the prosecution about its strategy should the "stand your ground" plea fail.
"If you're not 100 percent sure you're going to win the 'stand your ground' hearing, you just end up telling the state what your defense is and you've got nothing with which to surprise the state at trial," says Professor Dekle. "What you want to do at trial is catch the state with their britches down."

Several new developments suggest that Zimmerman's defense attorneys are having some success finding information that could raise doubts among jurors about the state's version of events. For one, the defense has been digging furiously, with the judge's permission, into Trayvon's social media history, which may present a more complex, edgier picture of the youth.

Also on Tuesday, a key witness for the prosecution was caught in a second apparent lie amid probing by the defense. A woman who says she was on the phone with Trayvon as Zimmerman pursued him originally gave her age as 16, though she was really 18. And she also said she missed Trayvon's funeral because of a hospital stay, which wasn't true.

And here's Jeralynn Merritt, noting that at the "stand your ground" hearing, Zimmerman would have the burden of proof (by a preponderance of the evidence), but at the trial, the prosecution has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Even though the defendant could lose at the "stand your ground" hearing and still go on to win at trial because of these different burdens, you can see why you might avoid the pre-trial hearing unless you were quite sure you'd win. And:

O'Mara can still file a motion to dismiss based on ["stand your ground"] immunity... at the close of the state's evidence and renew it at the close of his case, before it goes to the jury. The judge would determine the motion based on the evidence presented at trial. If denied, O'Mara can still argue self-defense, including self-defense based on the immunity/stand your ground statute, to the jury....

If the jury rejects self-defense, including that based on the immunity statute, Zimmerman can argue on appeal that the court erred in not dismissing the case based on the immunity statute before it went to the jury....

Much more at that second link.

"George Zimmerman has filed his defamation lawsuit against NBC and three reporters for their false editing..."

"... of his non-emergency call to police to report Trayvon Martin..."

The 24-page complaint alleges “NBC News saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.”

ADDED: More detail here.