Can’t believe your lying eyes? It depends on the beholder

EDITOR’S NOTE: Clicking any of the links highlighted below will open a new window to the sourcing material used in this report. While doing so may be time-consuming and break up the flow of the story, we encourage readers to read as much background material as possible as an enhancement to understanding.

In August 2014, John Crawford picked up a toy gun in an Ohio Walmart and chatted on his cell phone while his girlfriend was shopping. Another Walmart customer, Ronald Ritchie, called 911 and reported a man was waving a gun and threatening store patrons. Police responded and shot Crawford dead. His girlfriend, Tasha Thomas was aggressively interrogated and threatened by police before being informed Crawford was dead. No charges were filed against the responding officers, nor were charges filed against Ritchie, who later recanted his story.

In 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was returning from a local convenience store with snacks he had purchased to watch the NBA All-Star game. On his way to his father’s house, he was approached by George Zimmerman, and during the ensuing scuffle, Martin was shot dead. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Zimmerman was not charged and was released. In later months, Zimmerman was charged, tried and acquitted. Martin became the target of a campaign that painted him as a wannabe gangsta or “thug” who attacked Zimmerman and deserved his fate. There were even viral memes going around with photos purporting to show the REAL Trayvon as opposed to the fresh-faced kid in the Hollister t-shirt.

After the verdict, President Barack Obama spoke as an African-American man, husband and father.

It didn’t go over well.

In the years since he killed Martin, Zimmerman made quite a name for himself as a defendant, but his time as “victim” is what initially gained the most notoriety.

Jussie Smollett turned himself in to Chicago authorities today to face felony charges that he fabricated an assault and hate crime to bolster his professional profile as an actor on a hit TV show. While this may be true, it is understandable that a “rush to judgement” was made by many of Smollett’s high-profile supporters considering the climate of our times. However, the willingness of the mainstream media to follow the developments in this case is indicative that regardless of what comes out of the White House, facts matter.

This can’t be said of the right-wing media or President Trump, who, as usual, quickly whoop-de-doood the developments that ultimately saw Smollett morph from a victim in the court of public opinion to a defendant in a court of law.

In contrast, Nick Sandmann, in the ultimate example of white male privilege, is suing the Washington Post for publishing photos showing him exhibiting the penultimate example of white male privilege on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. While sporting the “moral equivalent” of a Klan hood, the kid smugly stared down an elder man of color in an arrogant display of power and dominance that would make a horny peacock blush. Naturally, Trump is out front, leading the cheers in support of Sandmann, his parents and the Kentucky GOP.

So here we are once again, living through the old Marx Brothers routine: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Sandmann family representatives produced a longer video of the incident to show what “really happened.”  

We’ve seen this before. 

We saw the trial of the four cops who beat hell out of Rodney King on video . . . the jury saw that video and convinced themselves he had kicked his own ass.

The truth can only be found in the eye of the beholder.