It’s been over a month since the incident, but the details of the Trayvon Martin controversy still aren’t clear to a lot of people. Yet as some have noted, there seems to be a rush to judgment, including a call to action, particularly by MSNBC “PoliticsNation” host Al Sharpton.
On Monday’s “The Laura Ingraham Show,” host Laura Ingraham asked what if everything were unfolding the same way, but you changed the race on the participants in the controversy — whose fault would it be if something bad happened?
“Let’s say that the facts were different,” Ingraham said. “And let’s say that a 17-year-old white kid had been shot by a black neighborhood watchman and similar facts — similar facts, things you don’t know, things you know, and a white cable host started showing up in the area, holding rallies, demanding with that way of talking ‘justice for the 17-year-old boy, justice! We’re not encouraging violence, but we need to get Zimmerman!’ You know whatever, saying something like that. Let’s say something then happened to the shooter or his family members, something terrible. Maybe something violent, or even threatened — what do you think would be said? Well, that conservative cable host is pushing the narrative, driving the narrative and is culpable if something should happen, something terrible should happen.”
Ingraham’s guest Pat Buchanan explained that early on at MSNBC, network executives agreed Sharpton wouldn’t be considered to be a “news analyst” but instead as a “movement figure,” exempting him from some of the rules. However, Buchanan took Ingraham’s analogy a step further and substituted the Ku Klux Klan for the New Black Panther Party, who has a $10,000 bounty out on accused Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman.
“Your analogy is very good,” Buchanan said. “Suppose that white talk show host was down there howling his head off and then the Ku Klux Klan announced a $10,000 bounty on the head of that black security guard. Do you think the country would have been as silent as it is when the Black Panthers did that?”
Buchanan claimed the promotion of this narrative was more about the American left attempting to fulfill a conservative stereotype, which could backfire because of the lack of details.
“What this is all about, Laura is this is all about race as you pointed out when you change the race of the various figures,” he said. “And in the mind of the American left, America is a deeply racist society and there is a tiny Klansman inside of every conservative fighting to get out. And they wait, and wait, and wait for an incident that confirms their caricature of America. And they thought they had it here, but they don’t because this is a very confused picture right now.”
He did say that Sharpton was stopping way short of where others have taken narrative, pushing the terms way over-the-top.
“I will say this about Sharpton — he has not used the rhetoric that some of the others in the [Congressional] Black Caucus in Washington, D.C. and Rev. [Jesse] Jackson and others have used,” Buchanan said. “They have talked about murdered and martyred. They have talked about this boy was shot down or hunted down like a dog, shot in the street and his killer is at large. They have talked about executioners. There is nothing in this case to justify that kind of rhetoric. I think the rhetoric is inflammatory and the president of the United States has an obligation to speak out and say, “Cool it folks and let justice take its course. He has not done so, I think and that is a dereliction of duty.”
Buchanan and Ingraham also took issue with the comparison of the Trayvon Martin shooting to the incidents in Selma, Ala. and Birmingham, Ala. during the struggle to advance civil right in the 1960s. Buchanan called comparison between this tragedy and the 1955 Emmett Till lynching by some “an outrage.”
