<p>I prefer the president to make his public statements after the case has had its day in court. We don’t need his statements to unfairly influence the jury. His private statements should remain just that, private.</p>
<p>Do we know for sure he hasn’t reached out to the parents privately?</p>
<p>The mainstream press in the US didn’t immediately report the races of Zimmerman and Martin, either.</p>
<p>We don’t have to agree. I would like the president to publicly express his condolences to the family and the people of Australia.
Sally, the person filing in as press secretary said that the White House hadn’t been aware of the murder.</p>
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Zimmerman’s name totally faked them out.</p>
<p>Zoosermom, I live in Oklahoma and I wasn’t aware of this until I logged into CC. I asked several people at work and they knew nothing about it.</p>
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<p>I don’t know about this.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on your definition of mainstream media. The media didn’t pay any attention until the Martin family falsely alleged racism and of course race was mentioned immediately.</p>
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This was weeks after the crime. In this case, nobody had to wait for the family of the slain youth, because opportunists like Allen West were poised to act.</p>
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Ok, and? I suspect you aren’t a member of the diplomatic corps.
Again. we don’t have to agree.</p>
<p>Poetsheart, thank you for your excellent posts. This thread is like an open sewer.</p>
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What posts are offending you so much? Serious question. I’m seeing a thread of diverse viewpoints where people are grappling with an unfathomable atrocity. What am I missing?</p>
<p>Not your posts, is all I will say.</p>
<p>What I find troubling is that news stories like this are being so widely politicized within days of the underlying events, before anything like sufficient facts are known. In this case, for example, numerous inflammatory statements about race were made even before the race of the accused people was accurately reported (if it has been accurately reported even now). This is a really bad thing, in my opinion, because the more complicated truth often doesn’t catch up with the inaccuracy or error.</p>
<p>All this gang violence is due to the breakdown of the family. So many of these gangbangers have no father or father figure so they look to other gang members for some sort of validation or male role modeling. Their single mothers can’t control them.</p>
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Completely true. And then people get whipped up into a frenzy about things that may never have happened at all.</p>
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Well, this might be true in general–but it may not be true in this case. One of the three boys, at least, has a father at home, and another one had a stepfather in the home who died (I think in the last year). I don’t know about the third. This is kind of my point–it’s easy to say this is a hate crime committed by three fatherless black kids–but what if they aren’t fatherless, aren’t all black, and committed the crime for some reason other than racism? Is everybody going to say, “Never mind?”</p>
<p>I’m not sure if it matters so much (I’m not trying to be offensive so if this doesn’t come out the right way, I apologize) whether individual kids have fathers in the home, I think it’s the presence of the gangs that exerts pressure across the spectrum that is the culprit. Now many of the gang members may be from fatherless homes, but the impact is felt in a much wider area than that.</p>
<p>I do think the absence of fathers weakens the social structure in poor neighborhoods, and gangs take advantage of that weak structure. It’s certainly true that kids in those neighborhoods can get caught up in gangs even if they come from intact families. Like many issues, it’s a complicated, nasty mixture of poverty, race, culture, crime, weakened families, and more. Pulling on one thread will not untangle the problem. In my opinion, anyway.</p>
<p>I could just as well blame homeschooling. Or religion. Here’s an example: Israel Keyes, highly manipulative, apparently horrifically deadly serial killer. Raised in an extremely religious family - Mormons who, I’ve read, sometimes attended other services - and homeschooled. </p>
<p>Or adoption. Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz was adopted and raised by a loving Jewish family … and look how he turned out.</p>
<p>The basic error is extrapolating from one case to many. Random murder is an extreme act. The people who do it come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including wealth and stable homes though skewed toward loveless and unstable homes where abuse was common. But plenty of people grow up in those same circumstances and nearly all of them don’t kill. They may become social workers or teachers or investment bankers.</p>
<p>It’s obvious why the WH spokesman did not know about the case.</p>