Naive me had always assumed from all the news reports that the news media had access to a recording of Trayvon Martin's last phone call. After all, Matt Gutman of ABC News had trumpeted back on March 20:
Trayvon Martin's Last Phone Call Triggers Demand for Arrest 'Right Now'
A phone call from slain black teenager Trayvon Martin to his girlfriend seconds before he was shot dead by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain "blows ... out of the water" the shooter's self-defense claim and he should be arrested "right now," a lawyer for Martin's family said today.
Attorney Benjamin Crump spoke after ABC News reported exclusively the existence of a phone call between Martin and his girlfriend, which detailed the last terrifying moments of Martin's life as he was pursued, accosted and shot dead by George Zimmerman.
I didn't really think about it, so I just assumed from the word "existence" that the contents of the phone call were recorded by, uh, Echelon, or that kids these days have an app that puts every word of every phone call they make on their Permanent Records, or something like that. Obviously, I'm not really up on the latest technology, so I just assumed that if everybody is talking about the existence of a phone call, then it exists.
But, now, Gucci Little Piggy has pointed out that this phone call's existence is not "existence" in the sense that there's any record of what was said on the phone call other than what the girlfriend and attorney Benjamin Crump said weeks later was on the phone call. When ABC claimed:
Martin's father, Tracey Martin, and mother, Sybrina Fulton, listened to the call, along with ABC News, ashen-faced.
G.L. Piggy was wondering what the relationship between Crump and ABC's Gutman is. I suggested that he should read the sections in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities where attorney Albert Vogel, an ally of Rev. Bacon, takes reporter Peter Fallow out to lunches to feed him bits of the story.
It's called access journalism, and that's how the game is played. The cops and the D.A. have their favorite reporters, as well.
Movie stars play the game, too. If they slip up, like Tom Cruise did when he fired super-publicist Pat Kingsley and nepotistically replaced her with his amateurish sister, their media image can suddenly go from World's Greatest Guy to Manic Repressed Homosexual Cultist overnight. (If you look at Tom Cruise's actual movies, he continues to appear in consistently above-average films. All that happened was that he lost control of the access journalism game.)
It's called access journalism, and that's how the game is played. The cops and the D.A. have their favorite reporters, as well.
Movie stars play the game, too. If they slip up, like Tom Cruise did when he fired super-publicist Pat Kingsley and nepotistically replaced her with his amateurish sister, their media image can suddenly go from World's Greatest Guy to Manic Repressed Homosexual Cultist overnight. (If you look at Tom Cruise's actual movies, he continues to appear in consistently above-average films. All that happened was that he lost control of the access journalism game.)
G.L. Piggy points out that people shouldn't get over-invested in believing in George Zimmerman's complete innocence. There may well be evidence against him right now that is being sandbagged for use at a later juncture. That, by the way, was one of the late Andrew Breitbart's favorite tactics -- don't release everything right away. Release some of it now and then when the other side goes all in, whomp them with some more facts you already had in hand. Repeat as necessary.
The best guidebook to how this story will play out is of course Bonfire, with Trayvon Martin as Henry Lamb. Think back to how that plot ambiguously unfolds. Is anybody completely innocent?
Wolfe's Bonfire, by the way, is 25 years old, but nothing much ever changes. Every few years we go through another one of these re-enactments of Bonfire, like the Duke lacrosse hoax. Isn't it about time to admit that Bonfire has turned out to be, just as Wolfe bragged, the Great American Novel of our lifetime? Sure, the setting gets pushed out from NYC to some exurb in the middle of nowhere, the reporters are less alcoholic, and the Great White Defendant morphs into the Pudgy Mestizo Defendant, but the basics are here to stay. Heck, Al Sharpton is still around!
In case you are wondering, yes, the Rev. Bacon in Wolfe's novel is more or less Al Sharpton functionally, but their personalities are very different. Bacon is cold and serious, while Sharpton is very funny. Reporter Peter Fallow is not particularly Christopher Hitchens. He's more Anthony Haden-Guest, the illegitimate brother of actor / aristocrat Christopher Guest. Lawyer Albert Vogel is presumably radical leftist attorney William Kunstler. The Mayor of New York is roughly Mayor Ed Koch. The tall, rawboned explosively crazy white man who appears briefly in an early courtroom scene is likely Hunter S. Thompson.
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52 comments:
What doesn't change or never changes is the "victim"
The guy should be fired. He's acting as an advocate.
Swear to God, the whole nation is losing it: "The centre cannot hold...
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
When people who have access to millions at a time twist and turn things so that there can be but one outcome, we have lost it. There are NO journalistic standards at all. I feel as if every damn journalism school in America ought to be locked up, barricaded, shut down. They are useless.
I can't bear to watch 60 Minutes any more; I can't take Dianne Sawyer, Andrea Mitchell, Matt Lauer, that doofus on the NBC news, even an interview on C-Span with Tom Brokaw left me gagging so biased in favor of Obama is he.
It's insane.
"It may sound like they mean ABC News listened to Trayvon's last call, but, in reality, they all just listened to attorney Crump put the anonymous girlfriend through her paces for their benefit, and they weren't even allowed to watch her, just listen to her over the phone."
I had always taken this to mean that the attorney, the girlfriend, and the parents listened to the 911 call. That is how this was reported on tv a few days ago, in almost the same words, "turned ashen." I could swear it was in reference to the fact that the police dept. just released the 911 call and in the background everyone could hear "Help, help, help, help."
The parents tried claiming, along with their attorney and TM's girlfriend, that the voice was that of TM. The eyewitness said from day one that it was the man on the bottom in red that was screaming "Help, help, help, help" and when the 911 tape was released, the eye witness said it was just as he remembered it.
When I first read Bonfire of the Vanities, I felt sort of guilty for liking it so much. Now I tell people it is the greatest novel of the last half century.
On the flip side, isn't "To Kill a Mockingbird" pretty much the most overrated book of the last half of the 20th Century? Maybe it's because I was born after the 60s, but it seems like a Hallmark movie to me.
Steve,
Thanks for linking on this. To me, Zimmerman's or Martin's guilt or innocence or whatever is a far second to the mishandling by the media.
I've spent hours rehashing small facts in the case. For instance, "Trayvon Martin went to the store during halftime of the NBA All Star game."
Uh, no he didn't. The game started at 7:30 EST - the same time that Martin was pronounced dead.
"Trayvon Martin had nothing but Skittles and iced tea."
Maybe, but where has anyone stated that directly? Besides Ben Crump who may be reporting what he was told about where Trayvon was headed. Doesn't mean he didn't have those things, but it just shows that almost every fact in this case is disputable (except for the exchanges on Martin's Twitter and Facebook).
Here's another minor thing: it is reported by Crump and Gutlessman that Trayvon told his girlfriend that he was putting on his hoodie and walking fast from Zimmerman. Did he say "I'm putting on my hoodie now"? Did he actually call it a hoodie? Seems like a rote action that one wouldn't announce on the phone - it also plays directly into all of the hoodie-love surrounding the case.
The more I read of this kid's twitter feeds, the more convinced I am he would have gone after Zimmerman as he headed back to his vehicle.
I think any good attorney, should Zimmerman need one, could offer up these posts to a jury and convince them the kid was capable of violence.
This is probably unlikely to come out, but I'm more interested in a forensic analysis of the gunshot and a report on the condition of .
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/29/second-trayvon-martin-twitter-feed-identified/
"Naive me had always assumed from all the news reports that the news media had access to a recording of Trayvon Martin's last phone call."
This fron the guy who just questioned Marco Rubio's intelligence.
Reginald Bacon is closer to Jesse Jackson, and the shakedown stuff Bacon does sounds a lot like the Rainbow Push Coalition. Sharpton is too much of a doofus.
Anyone who accepts at face value even a single word in the MSM after this case is a total moron.
Another way to look at it, in pre-Internet days would any of us have had more than just a vague, uneasy suspicion that the original MSM narrative might be incorrect? After all, everyone across the ideological spectrum from National Review/Hannity/Fox to The Nation/Maddow/MSNBC accepted it, so it must be true, Q.E.D.
People who have brains should take this particular worrisome example and fully extrapolate it, across both space and time...
"On the flip side, isn't "To Kill a Mockingbird" pretty much the most overrated book of the last half of the 20th Century? Maybe it's because I was born after the 60s, but it seems like a Hallmark movie to me."
Actually, it is a well-written novel-- simple, direct. It captures the the Depression era and is Twainesque in its local color. Two simple mysteries move the narrative along, but it is the character development that is its greatest strength. A lot of novels deal with childhood and lost innocence, but this one does it with humor and poignancy, without bitterness or loss of faith in humanity. Maybe that's why people like it, remember it.
Many times a novel like this is considered a "girl's book" but in my experience, I'd say boys are moved by it as much as the girls. I don't know anyone that isn't moved by that which jogs his own childhood memories. I've observed a visible, palpable relationship established between the reader and the characters.
Sometimes people confuse simple with trite. It's a narrative told with simplicity and honesty and compassion, and it captures human nature in all its various forms.
Ah, HBD!
RKU said...
"Anyone who accepts at face value even a single word in the MSM after this case is a total moron."
It has made me reconsider all the news and newsmen I was raised on: Cronkite, Huntley&Brinkley, Reynolds, Severeid ( I loved his end of broadcast essays), all of them. Yes, sure, these were guys, like Murrows, who were trained journalists, but I wonder, just wonder, how biased were they in their selection of stories and just how much were their biases driving the narratives. Hopefully, I am wrong, dead wrong, about them.
I know Cronkite turned on the Vietnam War and gave his famous speech against it. I wonder if that was the beginning...
"This is probably unlikely to come out, but I'm more interested in a forensic analysis of the gunshot and a report on the condition of ."
That accidentally got into my post. Sorry. It was someone else's post from another site. I apologize to that person, whoever it is.
"RKU said...
People who have brains should take this particular worrisome example and fully extrapolate it, across both space and time..."
That reminds me, isn't it about time that the Times or NPR came out with another timely, hard-hitting story about Emmett Till?
RKU channels Buckaroo Banzai: People who have brains should take this particular worrisome example and fully extrapolate it, across both space and time...
Don't tug on that, RKU. You never know what it might be attached to...
Think the MSM will wonder why Obama will not answer the letters from British parents whose young sons were murdered in Fla. by a black dude?
Link provided by Drudge:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9173820/Parents-of-murdered-British-students-criticise-Barack-Obama.htm
Bonfire may be 25 yrs old, but I'm sure there are 2500 yr old literature on the same thing.
One of the most striking things for me about Bonfire of the Vanities was the transformation it underwent at (I presume) Wolfe's hands between the time it was published piecemeal in Rolling Stone as a serial novel and its final publication as a book.
In the first instance, while Tom Wolfe was amusingly grandstanding as a latter-day Dickens, I found the book pretty much unreadable. But like a great movie director, the author then put it through the editing machine and turned it into a great entertainment and a stunningly original and forward-looking work of art. I call this observation of mine "auteur theory," and I eagerly look to the day when the critical apparatus evaluates Bonfire through its lens.
Or not. Anyway, Steve Sailer beat me to the Christopher Guest connection. Damn him. Partially off-topic now, but I'm fascinated by Guest's reputation in the Industry as a standoffish dick, when in fact he's just tending to his own well- and excellently-plowed furrow and doing it in a totally deadpan way. Perhaps some journalists could learn from his approach.
I also heard that the nearest 7-11 was 2 miles away. And it was raining. It seems the first and simplest thing an investigator would do would be to find out where Trayvon was going and where he was coming from and whether this location was directly on the way to or from. I heard that it was a short cut but how can we be sure unless we know exactly where he was coming from/going to?
By the way, for more on Christopher Guest in his own words--here discussing the comic genius of the peerless Fred Willard--see this interview clip with egghead chatterbox (and constantly intern-smitten paramour of NYC development bigwig Amanda Burden) Charlie Rose:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nNT8DOIaiA
Jared Taylor on the matter.
Mr. Anon: That reminds me, isn't it about time that the Times or NPR came out with another timely, hard-hitting story about Emmett Till?
Ha, ha! It's certainly true that most of the MSM has been claiming that the Travyon Martin case is *exactly* like that of Emmett Till.
Frankly, I've never investigated the that historical event, and don't have a clue what really did happen. But these days it wouldn't much surprise me if those MSM claims about the very close similarly were actually 100% correct...
There are two monologues in Bonfire that neatly sum up the American scene for me: Reginald Bacon's "Steam Control" speech and Lord Buffing's "The Whirl" speech. Also, the reactions to these speeches: the Yalie liberal do-gooder's petrified reaction to Bacon; and the guests' bemused reaction to Buffing.
Actually, it is a well-written novel-- simple, direct. It captures the the Depression era and is Twainesque in its local color. Two simple mysteries move the narrative along, but it is the character development that is its greatest strength. A lot of novels deal with childhood and lost innocence, but this one does it with humor and poignancy, without bitterness or loss of faith in humanity. Maybe that's why people like it, remember it. !
That doesn't mean it's not overrated. And I'm just sure that's why people remember it! No other reason, no siree.
"That doesn't mean it's not overrated."
True enough. Depends on your criteria.
"And I'm just sure that's why people remember it! No other reason, no siree."
I think you might be referring to people who saw the film but never read the book, and they are legion.
I had the same, back of the mind impression about the phone call. But a couple of days ago I read that the girlfriend was having her identity protected as a '
minor. Then it hit me-- they don't have the call on tape, the news media either purposefully or carelessly conflated the 'girlfriend' phone call with the 9/11 tape.
But these days it wouldn't much surprise me if those MSM claims about the very close similarity were actually 100% correct...
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/tillaccount.html
As Carolyn Bryant would later tell the story in a Tallahatchie County courthouse, Till asked her for some candy inside a candy counter. When Bryant placed the candy on top of the counter, Till grabbed her right hand tightly and asked, "How about a date, baby?" When Bryant pulled her hand free and started to walk away, Till grabbed her by the waist near the cash register and told her, "You needn’t be afraid of me, baby I’ve [slept] with white women before.”
In other words, Till sexually assaulted Bryant (and scared her enough to make her run to her car for her gun).
Now, that doesn't mean Till deserved to be beaten to death and sunk in a creek. So "100% correct" is going too far. But we all learn that Till's offense was "whistling at" Bryant, sort of the way Zimmerman "stalked" Martin (ie, talked to him).
The Wikipedia entry is actually not bad:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till#Provoking_incident
Certainly has the ring of truth to it. So does Roy Bryant's confession to a reporter:
"Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a ninja in my life. I like ninjas—in their place—I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, ninjas are gonna stay in their place. Ninjas ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a ninja gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that ninja throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'"
That took me 10 minutes with the Google. Goddam these Internets are somethin'.
"Ha, ha! It's certainly true that most of the MSM has been claiming that the Travyon Martin case is *exactly* like that of Emmett Till."
Gee, if a little white wise ass walked into a store in a black neighborhood back in the fifties, and made sexually suggestive remarks to the young wife of the proprietor, uh, I wonder how many chunks of flesh he would have been carved up into.
When Sam Francis came up with anarcho-tyranny he left out anarcho-dishonesty and anarcho-stupidity. An oversight I guess.
The media has also constantly been saying that Zimmerman outweighed Martin by a huge amount. But this apparently isn't true:
"George Zimmerman weighs 170#; Trayvon Martin 160#"
https://www.examiner.com/charleston-conservative-in-charleston-sc/george-zimmerman-weighs-170-trayvon-martin-160
"Literally tens of thousands of publications and media outlets have reported that George Zimmerman weighed 250 pounds and Trayvon Martin weighed 140 pounds.
The weight of 250 pounds for George Zimmerman was based on a police report that was over six years old. He has since lost a lot of weight. Newer pictures of Zimmerman show a much slimmer man.
Media outlets have reported several different heights for George Zimmerman. They have ranged from 5'2" to 5'9". The Sanford police report from the night of the shooting lists Zimmerman at 5'9".
The police surveillance video, recently shown on ABC National News shows a fairly slender George Zimmerman the night of the attack. A close friend of Zimmerman, Joe Oliver, says Zimmerman is 5'8" and currently only weighs 170 pounds.
The police estimated Trayvon at 6'0" and 160 pounds when they wrote the police report the night he was shot. This was probably a conservative estimate, as his family has reported his height at 6'2".
Literally, thousands of media outlets have either reported false weights, or have stated "Zimmerman outweighed Martin by 100 pounds." As far as I can tell, not a single media outlet has printed a retraction."
"One of the most striking things for me about Bonfire of the Vanities was the transformation it underwent at (I presume) Wolfe's hands between the time it was published piecemeal in Rolling Stone as a serial novel and its final publication as a book."
Yeah, I remember reading a couple of serial chapters in Rolling Stone around 1984 and being highly disappointed. I'd been a huge Wolfe fan since about 1975 and was rooting for him to pull off his much discussed plan to write the Great American Novel about The Way We Live Now. But he'd clearly gotten himself in over his head.
So, I wasn't expecting too much when I bought the hardback in November 1987 in New York City on a business trip. I took the train out to meet my wife at her cousin's in Connecticut. She wanted to take the train back in to see New York but I kept stalling her all weekend because who needs the real New York when you've got Bonfire's New York in book form?
I've read it maybe four or five times by now, which is a big number for such a long and bumptious book (I've read Waugh's Scoop probably ten times, but that's much shorter and more elegant).
"A second witness, a 13 year old boy walking his dog, says he saw George Zimmerman on the ground being attacked by Trayvon Martin."
http://www.wrko.com/blog/todd/another-witness-zimmerman-beaten-trayvon
I've read it maybe four or five times by now, which is a big number for such a long and bumptious book (I've read Waugh's Scoop probably ten times, but that's much shorter and more elegant).
Do you still manage to read a lot of books? You seem pretty busy with the blog and reading online, blogs and news/current events.
I was under the impression that Fred Willard was in his 80s. I guess he's only about 73, but it still took him until his later 30s to get regular work. I have this theory that the funniest people are the guys who come across at first as natural leaders of men, the responsible-looking business executive types. Willard (who looks like Mitt Romney) is the best exemplar of my theory, with Phil Hartman second.
I try to read books that I might be paid to review. But that is overly cynical. I am, by nature, a bookish person whose favorite thing in the world is to walk to the bookstore, which I try to do at least every other day. Eventually, of course, there won't be any bookstores left to walk to. I'm already looking back to the age of big, beautiful Barnes & Nobles (c. 1990 to 201?) as a soon to be gone golden age.
Regarding novels, I try to read at least a fair sized chunk of the original novels that have been adapted into movies I review. I'm endlessly interested in the decisions that get made about how to adapt stories from one medium to another.
For me, reviewing movies is a semi-mechanical tool for not getting completely stale, which is the problem every writer faces. Every week or two, I have to deal with a new topic chosen by Hollywood, not by me. These days it's pretty easy to learn enough to know what you are talking about when it comes to the subject matter of this week's big new movie, but practically no other reviewer sees that as important. To each their own ...
I try to read books that I might be paid to review.
You mentioned reading older books 5 and 10 times. Is that an older habit you don't really have anymore?
No, I reread old books I own all the time. An old book is good for reading in the 45-60 minutes it takes me to fall asleep because I won't be kept awake to find out what happens. I usually notice some stuff that I hadn't noticed before because I know more now than then. I probably reread Waugh novels more than anything else because of the perfection of style. The British between the wars achieved a level of polish combined with ease of reading that's ideal for falling-asleep-reading.
This case reminds us yet again that ultra-rational HBD is not sufficient. It is necessary to choose sides... You may not be interested in cheap racial hustling, but cheap race hustling is interested in you.
Gilbert Pinfold.
"The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers."
-- The Simple Art of Murder
Raymond Chandler, 1950
Less than twenty-five years ago the mainstream media was the only show in town, making their version of things the only one available to the public. Fortunately, with the rise of the internet there is now a strong alternative source of facts and analysis. People no longer have to swallow the LSD (lies, spin, disinformation) of the mass media.
"No, I reread old books I own all the time. An old book is good for reading in the 45-60 minutes it takes me to fall asleep because I won't be kept awake to find out what happens. I usually notice some stuff that I hadn't noticed before because I know more now than then. I probably reread Waugh novels more than anything else because of the perfection of style."
I do the exact same thing, though I don't read much Waugh except for Brideshead Revisited. In fact, I started rereading The Great Gatsby the other night for just this reason.
Ronald Blythe's The View in Winter and Akenfield are excellent late-night reading material.
"Bonfire may be 25 yrs old, but I'm sure there are 2500 yr old literature on the same thing."
Well at the very least, there was The Front Page, circa 1929.
Sadly,the film BofV was a disaster, partly because Hollywood didn't have the guts to accurately reflect the novel's plot and characters.
No accountability.
What about tort law?
Gutman fabricated false "evidence" for the purpose of getting someone convicted of murder and disseminated that "evidence" to a large audience in order to (1) taint the jury pool and (2) generate political pressure to railroad the guy. That certainly sounds like conduct that "was outrageous" and "beyond all bounds of decency" and "odious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community".
I have this theory that the funniest people are the guys who come across at first as natural leaders of men, the responsible-looking business executive types. Willard (who looks like Mitt Romney) is the best exemplar of my theory, with Phil Hartman second.
Leslie Nielsen.
I thought about this, and I realized that of all the old books I reread, the ones I most often go back to are by Jack Vance.
Anthony Haden-Guest is an interesting case - he was born out of wedlock but his parents later married. I thought at one time you could be retroactively legitimized and still get the noble title, but apparently not (or at least not anymore), so Christopher, although younger, became Lord Haden-Guest.
just wonder, how biased were they in their selection of stories and just how much were their biases driving the narratives.
according to one of Jared Taylor's book, journalists (usually old democrats) did not even recognize the stories they had submitted about the civil rights movement - for example nearly all the negative stuff was removed (deliberate race baiting, drug use, public defication, etc)
"Chuck Rudd said...
Here's another minor thing: it is reported by Crump and Gutlessman that Trayvon told his girlfriend that he was putting on his hoodie and walking fast from Zimmerman."
Yes, that is strange. Why would he put up a hood that limits his peripheral vision when he was being followed, unless 1.) he was stupid, or 2.) that particular bit of information is BS.
And silly me, when EVERYONE was reporting that Zimmerman said "coons" during his 911 call, I assumed that he actually said it. Yet, no matter how many times I listen to that call, I hear something different.
And I'm by no means a George Zimmerman apologist. I started out thinking that he was definitely guilty, and I listened to the 911 recording in that mindset. Now, i just don't know.
I agree with the person who said that the media coverage is more troubling than the case itself.
Anyone who accepts at face value even a single word in the MSM after this case is a total moron.
Another way to look at it, in pre-Internet days would any of us have had more than just a vague, uneasy suspicion that the original MSM narrative might be incorrect? After all, everyone across the ideological spectrum from National Review/Hannity/Fox to The Nation/Maddow/MSNBC accepted it, so it must be true, Q.E.D.
People who have brains should take this particular worrisome example and fully extrapolate it, across both space and time...
Well said. Love that last line. And Moldbug hates you, so you really must be on to something...
Steve, what scene are you referring to with a character meant to be Hunter Thompson? I don't recall anything like that.
On Emmett Till (with Pound quote!).
There is a Narrative.
On Mockingbird.
Mockingbird is the official novel of the Obama adminstration.
That, from an administration that wants to put Section 8 housing everywhere and says about it:
"This is consistent with the president’s desire to see a fully integrated society,” said Ron Sims, then the deputy secretary with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Until now, we tended to lay dormant. This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire."
But that novel isn't propaganda.
At all. Yeah, right.
Now get ready for nap time, children.
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