Topic: WorldNetDaily
The other day, we surmised that WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill -- who has a WND-published book coming out soon trashing Trayvon Martin and lionizing George Zimmerman -- was feverishly working on a way to spin Zimmerman's arrest on domestic violence charges in such a way as to absolve him of guilt.
We speculated correctly. Cashill's Sept. 12 column indeed paints Zimmerman as a victim, painting as a racial martyr on the scale of Clarence Thomas:
Dismayed by the not-guilty verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, they are trying to criminalize Zimmerman in the public’s mind if for no other reason than to save face.
The media have made Zimmerman’s speeding tickets national news stories. They made his wife, Shellie, a celebrity for divorcing him. They giddily turned a routine divorce spat into the Gunfight at O.K. Corral.
As with Thomas, fair-weather supporters grow weary of defending Zimmerman. They begin to doubt their own judgment. They begin to question the story Zimmerman told and the verdict itself. They shouldn’t.[...]
An Obama supporter, he helped a black homeless man, Sherman Ware, find justice. He was helping guide two black teens through life. He helped a terrified mother secure her house. And he had recently volunteered to serve as neighborhood watch coordinator in a crime-plagued community, a responsibility he took seriously.
Cashill then amped up Zimmerman's martyr status to that of neglected Vietnam veterans:
In his battle with the Democratic-media complex, Zimmerman had few of the resources available to Thomas, including high-powered allies and the support of a stable, mature wife.
In this regard, he more closely resembles those lonely, traumatized veterans of the Vietnam War who returned from the field of battle to a public hostile to their cause, indifferent to their struggles, and eager to move on.
Zimmerman did not choose to represent us in the culture wars. The media thrust that role upon him. He does not deserve our scorn. He deserves our prayers. If we abandon him, the unthinking left and their media allies win.
Cashill has done his whitewashing, book-protecting duty. The spin he'll have to do to respond to a police chief's statement that Zimmerman is a "ticking time bomb" and another "Sandy Hook" waiting to happen, however, may take a little more work.
