“It is unclear how the new documents might bolster or undermine the state’s case against Zimmerman, who has a Peruvian mother and a white father.”
—-The Washington Post, reporting on the release of evidence and testimony in the Trayvon Martin shooting.
Other sentences that would have been just as reasonable and appropriate:
- “It is unclear how the new documents might bolster or undermine the state’s case against Zimmerman, who is a big hockey fan and hates cheese.”
- “It is unclear how the new documents might bolster or undermine the state’s case against Zimmerman, who really liked his second grade teacher, Miss Felton.”
- “It is unclear how the new documents might bolster or undermine the state’s case against Zimmerman, who can do this really gross trick with his tongue.”
This was a shooting. There is now no evidence whatsoever that it was racially motivated or in any way a hate crime. There never was. In order to manufacture a national race incident, the media allowed race-baiters to transform George Zimmerman, a man who, if he were running for the Senate in Massachusetts or on the Harvard faculty, would have the same people who shouted in March that he was a white racist arguing now that he was African-American. The man is as mixed-race as Tiger Woods, meaning that the “this is another example of how racist America is” narrative piled on his fatal encounter with Trayvon Martin was malicious, false and cynical, and the fact that it was abetted by the media ( and the President) must not be excused with a lame “Oops…guess we got excited and made a little mistake!”
As for the Post’s ridiculous line about Zimmerman’s genetics, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Is it a pusillanimous effort to correct the record that the Post helped mar? Is it a risible effort to keep race in a story where it never belonged? Is it just wretched journalism, attaching irrelevant information to a story like a junior high school reporter? What is it? As a long time reader of the Post, I know that it has a policy of not citing the race of the accused in a crime unless it has significance in the story. What is that sentence supposed to signify? That half Peruvians aren’t racists? That they are?
And the ethics train wreck rumbles on…
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Source: Washington Post
Graphic: New York Public School Parents
Ethics Alarms 
And Peruvian at that. John Wayne’s wife Pilar was Peruvian, too! That must mean that George Zimmerman is the reincarnation of that two fisted pistolero patriot who (as we all know) hated blacks, Indians and Democrats and would have killed us all if Walter Brennan hadn’t restrained him!! Yarggghhh!!!
That’s hilarious, what the Post published. Had me belly-laughing before I even finished reading the sentence. Surely that is an editing oversight. Sometimes, in a train wreck, like in the aftermath of a tornado, it is possible to observe the most improbable things – and they have nothing to do with the train wreck or tornado – or even, with the train or the weather!
I want to see the gross tongue trick and does anyone really hate cheese?
I see that we’re all getting super silly on this super silly article.
I don’t think the article is supercilious at all, despite the comments made by super silly us.
–Dwayne
I think the point of the post was spot on. The sentence, as published, was ridiculous and irrelevant. All the reasons why that could be may elevate the sentence from ridiculous to frightening. It is too depressing to hash through those reasons because none of them are good. Hence the cheese remark. I agree with you and didn’t mean to trivialize the post, just my response to it.