Getting The Rope Ready. Natasha Lennard Approves.

Natasha Lennard of Salon is enervated by a story in TMZ which, she notes, reads

George Zimmerman fled Miami after someone threatened there was a huge bounty on his head.

Zimmerman taped an interview last Tuesday with Univision and Fusion, and then took his girlfriend, her kid and his brother to the beach.  While they were catching some rays, people noticed him, started harassing him, and then someone shouted out George had a $10,000 bounty on his head.

We're told it freaked him out and they all retreated to the hotel, but the crowd followed them.

Security swept their room to make sure no one tampered with their stuff and then stood guard throughout the day and night.  We're told Zimmerman did his CNN interview early the next morning and then beat it ... literally fleeing Miami.

In a Salon piece in early October, Lennard recognized

of the 1,348 executions that have taken place in the US since the death penalty restarted in 1976, more than half originated in only 2 percent of counties.

Given these statistics, any juridical claims (the very claims that ended a 1972 Supreme Court death penalty ban in the U.S.) that executions are determined in a fair and equitable fashion are laughable.
Application of the death penalty (which is prohibited in many places) does vary radically among jurisdictions, and Lennard appeared committed to the rule of law.

Less than five months later, Salon's assistant editor has changed her tune.  Now she comments

George Zimmerman reportedly received a small taste of vigilante justice on a recent beach trip in Miami. According to reports on (ever reliable news site) TMZ, Trayvon Martin’s killer was run off a beach when he was recognized by an angry crowd. Zimmerman, who had been in Miami to film a series of interviews and garner yet more undeserved platforms in the public eye, swiftly left the city following the incident. My hope is that the Miami mob set a precedent for how to treat Zimmerman henceforth.

Lennard's remark advocating vigilante justice does not justify even the qualification that the 'stand your ground concept' is seriously flawed, a point which may have been too taxing for Lennard to make.  She might have criticized the disturbing action of the Florida legislature to enact stand your ground, but instead suggested that "an angry mob" compensate for the decision of the jury in Sanford.

On its face, her remarks are reprehensible.  But they're worse: the TMZ article which Lennard quoted and to which she linked maintained the intimidation probably constituted no idle threat. The video on the TMZ site includes the statement "By next week we're looking forward to getting $1 million for the capture of George Zimmerman. We're going to force our government to do their job properly and if they don't, we will."







That sounds a lot like a bounty, the "vigilante justice" Lennard recommends.  It also bears similarity to a practice once all-too-common in the American south, something a blogger at a great news website should have noticed.

Share |