We may contain multitudes, but there are limits

In the comments of one of Other Scott’s recent posts, the tired discussion about whether we’re contractually obligated to agree with each other arose. We’re not. Nor are we obligated to write about whatever your pet issue happens to be. I say this because I don’t know what the other bloggers here think about the George Zimmerman case and I don’t particularly care to write about it. But if I did care and were I to write about it, I might write something like this:

the political melodrama should also not be allowed to obscure the reality of this trial: it is about the death of an unarmed 17-year-old, who was not a felon, who was on a neighborhood run to get Skittles, and whose life has been extinguished. Given that the young man was unarmed and that he inflicted very superficial injuries on his adversary during their scuffle, Zimmerman’s claim that he was in fear for his life has to be taken with a grain of salt, to say the least.

But never something like this:

In the Trayvon Martin case, the media withheld details of the crime that were damaging to Trayvon in order to protect him and indict Zimmerman—that the mainly white community he had entered at night had been the target of a rash of recent break-ins and burglaries by young African -American men; that the hoodie Trayvon was wore was a uniform for burglars; and that Trayvon had been suspended from school after burglary tools were discovered on his person along with unaccounted-for jewelry. At the same time, the press flooded the airwaves and front pages with sentimental photos of Trayvon as an innocent adolescent, while withholding others of the six-foot-two, 17-year-old who beat the smaller Zimmerman to the ground, smashing his head on the concrete and causing him to scream repeatedly for his life before he fired his gun in self-defense.

Especially not the part in bold. Even if I somehow did, I’d be sure not to publish another article on the same site on the same day in which I wrote that Martin “inflicted very superficial injuries on his adversary during their scuffle, [meaning] Zimmerman’s claim that he was in fear for his life has to be taken with a grain of salt[.]”

Then again, I’m not David Horowitz.