The hoodie: et tu, Smithsonian?
So now we have word that the Smithsonian is “eyeing” Trayvon Martin’s hoodie for its new branch, the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
According to the branch’s director Lonnie Bunch:
It became the symbolic way to talk about the Trayvon Martin case…It’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol.
Because it’s such a symbol, it would allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.
What a novel idea! Now, that’s something we haven’t been allowed to do—talk about race in the age of Obama. Is that something like love in the time of cholera?
It seems to me we’ve been doing a great deal of talk, talk, talking about race “in the time of Obama.”
—The left would like to define that “talk” as their pointing out how racist Republicans and conservatives are, and having all white people respond by apologizing for being white like Chris Matthews has.
—Obama would like to define that “talk” as our listening to him give interminable, cliche-ridden speeches about the experience of black people and especially of himself, including topics such as his grandmother, the typical white person, and her fears.
—Eric Holder would like that “talk” to be about how cowardly we have been not to talk, or something like that.
I wonder if we’re not pretty much talked out at the moment. Despite that, I have a bit to add to the talk, and that’s this: it would be deeply deceptive and one-sided propaganda for the Smithsonian to display Trayvon Martin’s hoodie as a symbol of this case, because of what the hoodie has erroneously come to mean and the way it was used:
Zimmerman described Martin as wearing a “hoodie” the night he killed the teen, claiming self-defense. Protestors across the country wore hoodies in support of Martin as they called for Zimmerman’s arrest, prosecution and conviction.
Zimmerman’s words—like so much else about that night—have been repeatedly twisted to imply that he phoned in a call about Martin as a suspicious person in part because he was wearing a hoodie. But the evidence says otherwise.
Not that the left, Obama, Holder, or Lonnie Bunch (or the Smithsonian, unfortunately) care, but this is what actually happened, according to the transcript of Zimmerman’s call to the police that night:
Dispatcher: Sanford Police Department.
Zimmerman: Hey we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy, uh, [near] Retreat View Circle, um, the best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing?
Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He’s [unintelligible], he was just staring…
Dispatcher: OK, he’s just walking around the area…
Zimmerman: …looking at all the houses…
Anyone who knows anything about how the police work knows that they ask for a description of the subject. That description includes race (as here, in direct response to the dispatcher’s question) and clothing (as here, in direct response to the dispatcher’s question). What else could Zimmerman have said, if in fact Martin was wearing a hoodie, which he in fact was? No one’s paid a particle of attention to the other portion of Zimmermans’ careful description—jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes—because they can’t be used for propaganda purposes like the sweatshirt.
Thus are myths born. This one is a particularly pernicious one, fanned by the blames of racial demagoguery. And now, the Smithsonian wants to get into the act?
[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]
Well, now, who/what was it wanted to use the ENOLA GAY as a prop for a big display on the bombing of Hiroshima, and the horrors thereof?
Now, we’ve heard everything.
The curse of the Hope Diamond has found a home in Branch director Lonnie Bunch’s brain. Nothing else would explain this insanity.
Why not stick it in the Smithsonian fashion museum and accesorize Michelle Obama’s first lady innaugural gown with that hoodie and maybe OJ’s gloves.
The left is still trying to make this case of self defense a case of discrimination against a black teen because he was wearing a hoodie.
This is outrageous from sea to shining sea.
I take issue with there even being a National Museum of African American History and Culture, which, by the way, won’t be completed until at least 2015. As of now, African American exhibits are still part of the National Museum of American History. Isn’t that how it should be if we’re still supposed to be celebrating the whole country?
In any case, since the new museum is undoubtedly due to political pressure, why not go with the hoodie.
If the Holder justice department put a hold on returning the pistol to Zimmerman, one would presume this also applies to all other evidence, including the hoodie.
The disingenuousness of racial demagoguery finds ever deeper depths. Racial theorist objections are of no avail, Obama is an out and out racist, as his Holder, and very much the entirety of the administration including the pilers on, such as Micheal Eric Dyson. The whole bunch of them are nothing more than a black bash mob with suits and credentials.
As for the Smithsonian, why stop with the hoodie? You say you want a conversation? How about Skittles and Arizona tea, the choomer’s choice; Trayvon’s Facebook gangster poses, Trayvon’s kiddie porn. I have more suggestions for the new wing — the African American cultural exhibit; De’Marquise Elkins who shot white 13 month old Antonio West in the face — point blank; the aforementioned bash mobs; the end of the family structure in the black community. But before we have a talk about race I suggest the black community, from Obama on down to Al, and Jesse, and Julian Bond and the NAACP, and the Black caucus get together and talk about black culture. They might start out as is done in ten step programs — stand up, state your name, and admit to being a culprit.
Call me cynical but besides political pressure, I suspect the Smithsonian is looking at promises of increased revenue, in some fashion, for its new museum. And its a perfectly non-controversial project, after all it would be racist to even question its need, right?
This says so much about the “intellectuals” who try to tell us how great black street culture is. I’m sick of it. And I also read that Sharpton just referred to conservatives as white crackers. Funny how he hasn’t taken to heart MLK’s desire to have people judged by the content of their character. These types (and much of the black studies types) are the most racist, most provincial, and least empathetic people in the world. Do they ever stop to think how terms like Hymietown might offend or hurt people who barely escaped or lost relatives in Auschwitz? Of course not.
Ah, how nice. They’re going to build a shrine to “St.” Trayvon. They can display it between Dr. King’s “I have a dream speech” and a cast of Evander Holyfield’s bitten-off ear. Won’t that be nice!
As a side note. Here’s something I’ve been wondering about since this whole “Trayvon-Zimmerman” thing became news. What was the crime rate before Trayvon was shot and what is the crime rate now in that “gated community”? Has the number of break-ins gone down? or has it stayed the same?
Perhaps some other familiar cultural highlights will be on display to stimulate the national conversation, and instill community pride- like the drive by shooting wing, the crips and the bloods historical interactive centre, the teenage single moms ghetto-art display, and the photo gallery of Obama smoking pot with his fellow young intellectuals.
That reminds me of – how cool would it be if Michelle and BO went to work and had a son, and named him Trayvon Obama?
Kit…
You’ve got the makings of the perfect Onion parody.
Wedding hoodie!
Complete with dragging waistline.
The veil with a grillz motiff.
Perfect.
Racism
What surprisingly remains almost totally undiscussed, even on the hard core traditionalist Right, is the word’s origin. Did it come from a liberal sociologist? A 60’s Marxist college professor? Perhaps a politician in the Democratic Party? No. It turns out that the word was invented by none other than one of the principal architects of the 74-year Soviet nightmare, the founder and first leader of the infamous Red Army, Leon Trotsky.
the next logical question is what was Leon Trotsky’s purpose in inventing this word?
The History of the Russian Revolution 1930
To him, Slavophiles, i.e. Slavs that committed the “crime” of loving their own people and trying to protect their traditional ways were simply “backward”, and others like them were simply “racists”.
http://penetrate.blogspot.com/2010/01/racist-word-invented-by-ussrs-leon.html
he actual concept behind the word (even though he hadn’t invented it quite yet) — that ethnocentric “backwardness” must take a back seat to “enlightened” internationalism — was often used by Army-Navy Commissar Trotsky as a rallying cry for good Red Army communists to embark upon murderous rampages against peoples who resisted having their traditional way of life paved over and replaced with an alien system.[1]
Fast-forwarding to today in 2010, the only changes to the word and its underlying concept from 1930 (besides Marxists having perfected the art of achieving the same thing with less blood but no less misery) are that the word’s targets have expanded from just Slavs who won’t submit to the Marxist internationalist plan to uproot and destroy their culture and traditional way of life, to all white people, Slavic or otherwise, who won’t submit to that same vile Marxist plan. Also, those who arm themselves with the word have expanded from a handful of communists to the entire liberal and neoconservative establishment in nations all across the world.
What George Pal said.
Don’t fret. The actual tape will be conveniently lost someday, and all official transcripts will be altered to support every accusation against Zimmerman, Amerikka, and Whites. Why would Communists stop re-writing the past, when it has worked so well for them for the last 100 years?
I also thought immediately of the Enola Gay exhibit. The Smithsonian rats jumped the gun on that one — they didn’t wait until all our World War II veterans were dead. And they went ballistic.
“the Smithsonian Institution plans to mark the 50th anniversary of these pivotal events with an exhibit featuring the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum next year. What is not fitting is the tilt that the Smithsonian’s curators seem determined to impart to the exhibit.
>>”The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” which will open in May 1995, was conceived not as a balanced presentation of how and why the Pacific war ended as it did, but as an emotional attack on the US use of the bomb.
The script, tendentious and manipulative, plays up the suffering endured by Japanese civilians during the war and the mutilation caused by US strategic bombing. It portrays the United States and the Allies as militaristic and racist. Japan is depicted as yearning for peace — a yearning thwarted by the US insistence on unconditional surrender.
Ninety-six photographs have been chosen to show Japanese casualties of the Pacific war and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To convey the deaths of Americans, there will be seven.
Through so-called “controversy sidebars,” the exhibit intends to challenge the view that the bomb was used to end the war and save lives. Instead, visitors will be encouraged to ponder a series of revisionist suspicions:
“Would the bomb have been dropped on the Germans?”
“Did the demand for unconditional surrender prolong the war?”
“How important was the Soviet factor in the decision to drop the bomb?”
“Was a warning or demonstration possible?”
“Was an invasion inevitable without the bomb?”
“Was the decision to drop the bomb justified?”
In all fairness, the exhibit could be worse. In fact, it WAS worse. Blistering complaints from veterans’ groups, the Center for Air Force History, and Air Force magazine have forced the Smithsonian to soften the angry, politicized — even anti-American — tone its curators have chosen. As recently as May, the script included such history lessons as this one:
“For most Americans, this war was fundamentally different from the one waged against Germany and Italy — it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism.”
Western imperialism? It was not Westerners who proclaimed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,
invaded Manchuria, Malaya, and the Philippines,
devastated Nanking,
mass-raped Korea’s young women,
bombed Pearl Harbor,
and conducted the Bataan Death March [etc., etc.: see also “reprisals for the Doolittle raid,” where the Japs murdered 250,000 Chinese for helping the 70 American flyers escape].
The theme of “Japan as Victim” would be appalling in a 9th-grade term paper. In a Smithsonian Institution script, it is stupefying.”<<
Read more at the link. BTW, this was wwwaaaayyyy down the list of google "search" results. The first several pages were ALL America-hating apologists for the crimes of the Empire of Japan (which most of them know bupkis about, of course).
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/3027/smithsonian-drops-a-bomb-in-ww2-exhibit
The Smithsonian used to publish my favorite magazine. I've been there: it used to be a temple of learning.
But the Leftist maggots have taken over the joint. And the illegitimus who perpetrated this outrageous passel of lies, Martin Harwit, was not only unapologetic about desecrating our dead, he GLORIED in it.
As far as this racist shakedown goes, is anyone else getting “compassion fatigue”? I sure as heck am. They can go soak their heads.
And speaking of The Bomb, Beverly:
http://crossroads.alexanderpiela.com/ThankGod.html
which links to an excerpt of Paul Fussell’s book, “Thank God For The Atom Bomb”. He was expecting to be in the invasion of Japan.
Adm. Daniel Gallery (his carrier captured the U-505) wrote a number of books after retirement, in one of which he claimed we didn’t need to use The Bomb–we could have blockaded and starved them out. It is left to the student to discuss which would have been more effective and more humane.
Not enough. There is not enough hate. On either side, for the war to be resolved decisively. People are still sitting around in their Sitzkrieg talking. Talking. And talking. While the chess pieces of the Left’s Utopian Enforcement are prepared for the final battle.
The worst case scenario isn’t civil war, isn’t neighborhoods burning as Sherman burned Atlanta. The worst case scenario is that there is no War. Just a bunch of Jews led to be slaughtered, shooting fish in a barrel. And the best case scenario?
The best case scenario is that the LEft is defeated in a war, leaving an America weakened and unable to fight Islam. There’s a time deadline here where too much waiting absolutely guarantees long term defeat.
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When they were talking about the Army of Darkness, it seemed like a fantasy to the common people.
What kind of world would it be where evil spreads itself over the world, conquers all enemies, and nobody can stop it? That’s a fantasy world, for sure.
Then is our world a fantasy world?