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Breitbart.com’s Lee Stranahan Outs Sexual Abuse Victim

by Charles Johnson | Little Green Footballs

You know that woman who testified that George Zimmerman had molested her for years, and was identified only as “Witness 9?”

Breitbart.com’s Lee Stranahan outed her today: Trayvon, George, Witness 9 & Other Obama Political Casualties.

Welcome to the news cycle, Witness 9. The accusations of molestation by Zimmerman — who was one year older than his accuser, by the way — was all over the news today and will be for the rest of the week and beyond, where it will live in back of juror’s minds.

Try this test : don’t think about a pink elephant. Now, forget you ever heard about George Zimmerman and molestation.

The mainstream media will likely keep referring to ‘Witness 9′ for a few days but her real name is already out there and I’ve made the decision not to pretend it isn’t.

Did he mention that he was a close personal friend of Andrew Breitbart? Of course he did.

For better worse, a blog that I don’t remember seeing before — The Conservative Treehouse — has done the rapid research and outed Witness 9′s real name as [redacted]. The commenters also turned up other info on [redacted], including lots of personal data and what appear to be some legal issues.

The blog seems to have a Christian Conservative perspective and it has a big banner about Andrew Breitbart right up top. This is going to make some people’s heads explode — especially on the already conspiratorial left — even though the site has no official connection with Breitbart at all as far as I know. Since Andrew was a friend of mine and I worked with him on stories for months, I’m going to state as my personal opinion that Andrew wouldn’t have run that info on [redacted] until it was already well out there in the mainstream press. That’s not a criticism. It’s just my opinion and it’s worth what you paid for it.

(I redacted his text where it contained the witness’s name.)

And if you were wondering what kind of rationalization he could possibly come up with to justify such a total scumbag move, here’s the reason Stranahan gives (bold text in original):

The entire Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman story was amped up into a national story on purpose by President Obama with the help of his surrogate Al Sharpton in order to help win the 2012 election.

The Breitbart.com ideology in one simple sentence.

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‘Long Live Zimmerman’ Spray-Painted On Black Cultural Center Building

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The executive director of the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center called for the arrest of the person responsible for graffiti that might have been racially-charged after it was found on a campus building Thursday morning.

The words “Long Live Zimmerman” were found spray-painted on the walls of The Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center, located at 153 W. 12th Ave., on the Ohio State campus, at about 8 a.m., 10TV’s Kevin Landers reported.

Some said that the graffiti indicated support for George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in February.

The vandalism was found one night after a student rally took place in memory of Martin, Landers reported.

“Ignorance is bliss,” said Larry Williamson, the executive director of the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center. “We want the person brought to trial, caught. We want to make sure these kinds of things don’t happen.”

Police said that no witnesses to the crime were identified. The graffiti was power-washed from the wall later in the morning.

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Why the Right keeps smearing Trayvon Martin

It must seem incomprehensible to many at this point that anyone would still publicly defend admitted killer George Zimmerman — with the possible exception of Zimmerman’s family and his Black Friend/Acquaintance™, Joe Oliver. Even those defenses seem much more understandable than the rush of voices from the political Right that have not only sought to justify Zimmerman’s actions, but to also shame and shift blame onto his shooting victim, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Geraldo Rivera’s “hoodie” comments prompted him to apologize (for real this time) on-air today to Trayvon’s parents, but not everyone on the Right has been so regretful. Now, true enough, the legal aspects of the case — especially Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which then-governor Jeb Bush signed with the blessing of the NRA, and behind which Zimmerman is hiding — makes Trayvon’s case a political story. The racial stereotypes that perhaps led to Trayvon’s death and have been raised by those calling for Zimmerman’s arrest (he’s been free for all 36 days since the shooting) — that also makes it political. Even the involvement of certain leaders makes it so.

Sexual politics are a part of this, too, apparently. I came across an anti-abortion post today decrying the focus on Trayvon’s case, for fear we ignore the “killing of (unborn) black babies.” Another conservative Trayvon-related meme that the Right is disguising as concern-trolling is succinctly summed up as, “Why don’t black people protest black-on-black crime, too?” (Though he shouldn’t have had to do so, Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates disposed of that today with several examples of just that.)

But as Alex Pareene notes in Salon today, what really changed things was President Obama speaking up on March 23. If you believe folks like Newt Gingrich, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” is a racially divisive statement. If you believe Zimmerman’s dad, that’s a statement of hatred. Calling out everyone from Tucker Carlson to Peggy Noonan to libertarians at Reason Magazine, Pareene gives a number of reasons why the Right has gone there, so to speak.

The top three:

1. The conservative movement denies the existence (or prevalence or impact) of racism.
2. The president is extremely polarizing.
3. The killing was already political.

From reason number 1:

As Elspeth Reeve pointed out in a sharp piece for the Atlantic Wire, the Trayvon Martin case posed something of a problem: No one was accusing anyone other than George Zimmerman of racism. There wasn’t an obvious political partisan advantage to raising awareness of Martin’s death. But some right-wingers find any acknowledgment of racism by liberals to be blood libel against all conservatives. And so … they began defending George Zimmerman’s honor, and smearing Trayvon Martin…

The “highbrow” version of this barrel-scraping garbage is, say, Jonah Goldberg’s ponderous column and blog post on how middle-class blacks don’t understand that white racism is no longer a problem in black communities.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend that you read Jamelle Bouie’s remarkable counter-argument to that Goldberg post in the American Prospect. And though I touched on reasons 2 and 3, you should read the rest of Pareene’s post today — including the fourth and final reason why he thinks the Right may be doing this:

4. Racism.

Of course at the root of the most noxious material from the far right is simple racism — the sincere belief that if a black kid got shot, he probably had it coming.

Melissa led off Saturday’s show with a discussion about what theGrio’s managing editorJoy-Ann Reid called the “culture war” surrounding Trayvon’s death. Please take a look at the discussion, which also involved political science professor Frances Fox Piven and author, blogger and Feministing founder Jessica Valenti.

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A whiter shade of privilege - why George Zimmerman is white.

White … is not simply color, but privilege - not necessarily in the sense of wealth, but rather in the sense of having one’s personhood and individuality respected, a privilege so basic I doubt it registers with many whites as privilege at all. We’re talking about the privilege of being seen, of having your worth presumed, of receiving the benefit of the doubt and some human compassion, of being treated as if you matter.

Consider that, then consider the fair-skinned Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, who evidently stalked and killed an unarmed kid he wrongly thought was up to no good, yet was not arrested, nor even initially investigated. He said it was self-defense. Police took him at his word and sent him on his way.

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Any one on reddit?

This morning I posted this story found on tumblr about how right wing propaganda was using images of the wrong Trayvon Martin and trying to make him out to be the “bad guy”.

It’s been up for a while and received a few upvotes, but now the down-vote brigade has gotten hold of it.

If you’re a reddit member, please click on the link below and up-vote. The bullshit these right wing groups pull needs more attention.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/re7fl/rightwing_photo_purportedly_of_the_trayvon_martin/

A 10,000 bounty has been put on George Zimmerman.

I’m not going into details because it’s easy enough to find them if you search Google news and I don’t condone this behavior, nor do I want to give fuel to anyone defending Zimmerman.

That said, I understand WHY this bounty has been put on him. Just because I don’t agree with something doesn’t mean I don’t understand the motives behind it.

This is one of many reasons it’s so dangerous for law enforcement not to do their jobs.

When the cops fail to uphold the law, citizens will start taking the law into their own hands - this could all get very ugly before it’s all said and done.