Hold Up, Wait a Minute

Just gotta get something off my chest real quick. Or two things actually. I’ve been deliberately mum on Michael Brown & Darren Wilson, becaaauuuuse (drumroll please) …. (Eh hem, is this thing on? Y’all hearin’ me okay?) …. We … do … not … have … all … the … facts. I think it’s down right dangerous for The Times and now Fox News to leak out all this piecemeal info in dribs and drabs. Even more dangerous for them to keep feeding it all to their bow-tied, bespectacled, honorary-degree-donning, Monday-morning quarterbacks for self-aggrandizing, speculative, primetime pontification. They are stirring up the pot and inciting more unrest for the sake of a few bumps in readership and ratings. 

And while I’m breaking my silence on this case, let me put one more little nugget on the noggin. Remember the justification for George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin? While anti-GZ folks were outraged that GZ “started the fight” by unnecessarily pursuing TM, the pro-acquittal folks (among whom I begrudgingly count myself) conceded that once TM re-engaged GZ (the infamous “sucker-punch” and “concrete head-bashing”), then the fight began anew — with a new aggressor and a new self-defense analysis.

The same concept applies to Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. If MB accosted DW at the car, that’s one event, which likely warranted deadly force in self-defense. But IF … and again, we don’t know … but IF Mike Brown disengaged, retreated, aborted, ran, whatever — particularly if he did so after being shot once or by some accounts twice — then anything that happened after that is a new fight with a new analysis. I’m just sayin’.

I really wish the media would lay off for a while. This is too important.

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