Image 01 Image 03

The hoodie: et tu, Smithsonian?

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.

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 (via ABC News):

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 flames of racial demagoguery. And now, the Smithsonian wants to get into the act?

[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

Carol Herman | August 2, 2013 at 5:15 pm

DREYFUSS

But we are without an Emile Zola.

Still, the truth is a funny business. Zimmerman got railroaded by a bunch of talent-less doofuses.

What stands out is that he was able to receive such excellent legal defense services from West. And, O’Mara.

How come people can’t figure out it was Zimmerman calling out for help? And, after calling out for help and getting no one to open their doors … He did shoot the perp. Where perps like this die every day in black ghettos.

All that Dee-Dee is show the contempt so many blacks feel towards our culture. And, I don’t see this staying buried. It’s like a silent cancer. It doesn’t kill you right away. Only after it metastasizes.

How many people tuned in the trial? It drew in audiences like nobody’s business.

Ahead, this story lives. And, also ahead, the truth about Benghazi will “out.”

Why does it take so long? Well, maybe it just does?

Carol Herman | August 2, 2013 at 5:17 pm

Even if the Smithsonian goes with the “hoodie.” What should become required seeing is Dr. Bao’s testimony.

Trayvon Martin was the product of failed parenting.
He was your typical loser, kicked out of school, and kicked out from home. He was actively engaged in street fighting, drug use, stealing, and was even trying to obtain a gun at his age.

Now the Smithsonian wants to perpetuate his image as representative of the entire black community. They want Trayvon Martin to become the poster child of an entire community. They want a loser to be a symbol of an entire community.

Who is the racist here?

I see this as an insult and a slap in the face of all the minority children who right now are busting their backs against all odds to succeed, to get the best education.
This is a mockery of every decent Black, Hispanic, Asian and White family in America.

Who is creating and perpetuating negative stereotypes?

Who is really being the racist????!!!!

Q: “Will Trayvon Martin Sweatshirt Be Displayed by Government as Sacred Relic?”
A: The lunatic-left d-cRAT socialist race-baiter extremists will treat it like Catholics treat the Shroud of Turin.

It should go to some for profit Wax Museum. See the Hoodie that caused it all.

inspectorudy | August 2, 2013 at 6:04 pm

Or as an alternative to the ubiquitous “Hoodie” we could use the “Kel-Tech 9” that GZ used to defend himself as the symbol to all that desire freedom from thugs and oppression. A concrete example of the “Equalizer”.

Lots of fun stuff on tap between now and the opening of the museum’s addition in 2015. And by fun, I mean lawsuits from the defendant’s direction. Lots. Did I mention lots?

southcentralpa | August 2, 2013 at 6:26 pm

Well, in this light it is not particularly surprising that Smithsonian Folkways has just about every sound ever recorded by Pete Seeger (America’s “most successful Communist” http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_urbanities-communist.html). Except, of course, for that one Almanacs album that got withdrawn because Moscow changed the party line…

*rolls eyes*

Will they putting the hoodie on a mannequin wearing jeans hanging off its rear end?

SMITHSONIAN & Hoodie=CANNOT Possibly Make This S*** Up!!

Anybody here NOT seen dozens of video footages on your local news stations of young hoodie wearing punk-thugs holding up convenience stores wardrobed in HOODIES???

Hello…HEELLLLLOOOOOOOO..!

Was this the same Smithsonian which turned an exhibit on the end of WW II into an anti-war memorial, focusing on pictures of burned Japanese civilians in Hiroshima?

Oh, TGIF! Sooo, after a sip or two of wine, I am in an Irish Poem mood:

Duds!

They gave his clothes to the Museum,
A public place, where folks could see ’em.
And a painting, so grand-
With his Skittles in hand!
But, I’d much rather see him, than be ‘im.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

PersonFromPorlock | August 2, 2013 at 7:41 pm

Carol Herman | August 2, 2013 at 5:15 pm

But we are without an Emile Zola.

How about a Rudyard Kipling instead? His ‘Bandar-lognailed modern activists 120 years ago:

“The monkeys called the [ruins] their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them…. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: “There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.” Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice them.”

Perhaps the Smithsonian will want to get hold of the nose pickings that Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Hillary Weiner Clinton so publicly dig for:
http://thefinereport.com/2013/05/the-nose-pick-3/

Name another national politician who was photographed digging into his nostril up to his or her knuckle in public.

Well, if you had a choice. One, make references to this story for a long, long time. (Where truth, as Shakespeare said, “will out.”)

Or have hoped this wouldn’t have been what the media hyped, because, they too, are in it for the money.

Rodney King proved not to be such a nice guy. So, again. You’re given a story. Sometimes it has riots attached to it. And, sometimes NOT. (In Floriduh it speaks volumes that this skittles kid didn’t set off riots at all!)

Doesn’t stop the media from “cashing in.”

Dee-Dee got her fifteen minutes … And, added “You’re retarded, sir” to our vocabulary.

You know, in the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said “no one will remember.” We remember, because Lincoln said it just right.

I expect the Zimmerman case will make a very big dent. Twenty, thirty years from now … people will still be referencing the injustice!

Even when the “penalty box” comes out looking strange … Like OJ being jailed for kidnapping and theft, when he was probably after someone who was trading “his stuff” for money without giving OJ a cut. You see lots of blacks parading around the prison that houses OJ with handmade signs that read “he must be set free?”

Zimmerman will be vindicated. And, I’d bet my bottom dollar that Obama’s kids are thrilled Trayvon wasn’t their brother! But the “Trayvon could’a been me?” Only if you’re a gangster. And, Obama is more than welcome to seeing the fruits of his blurted out “moment.”

He does blurt out whoppers.

Insufficiently Sensitive | August 3, 2013 at 12:21 am

One shouldn’t leave the MSM out of the discussion, now that the evidence has been exhibited and the verdict has been rendered. The prime exhibits being those post-trial articles which merely repeated all the half-truths and misinformation created by the media in its ‘reporting’ on the Zimmerman/Martin encounter prior to the trial. And from which it drew conclusions that justice was not served by the verdict – without examining or weighing one bit of the carefully presented evidence, without any curiosity about the State’s withholding of pertinent information, or its misbehavior in omitting any Grand Jury process to determine whether charges should even have been brought in the first place.

In short, the media acted as just the sort of cheerleader one finds whipping up a lynch mob outside the county jail in old Westerns, directing public hatred toward George Zimmerman for the sole reason that he killed a black man without being one himself.

Great credit is due the Legal Insurrection site for its thorough reporting on the trial in its entirety. Without such a reference, those who wish to pierce the MSM veil of viciously biased propaganda would ultimately drown in it.

Only if it’s accompanied by a can of Arizona Watermelon Juice, a package of Skittles and and a bottle of Robitussin w/codeine.

Seriously?

http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/2013/07/get-high-using-skittles-and-ice-tea/

Let me swim against the stream for a bit. Isn’t Monica Lewinski’s iconic blue dress worthy of display in the Smithsonian? How about Sen Robert Byrd’s KKK robes? Why should we not display Teddy Kennedy’s 68 Oldsmobile Delmont 88?

My point is artifacts mean different things to different people. Trayvon’s hoodie means something to me: The value of carrying a weapon for self-protection just in case some misguided youth thinks it appropriate to deliver some “whoop ass” on me because I looked at him wrong.

Uncle Samuel | August 3, 2013 at 8:49 am

Let that hoodie come to be the symbol
– of shame for irresponsible, abusive, addicted and/or absent black fathers, poor black parenting and modeling, and young black lives wasted by drugs, violence and sexually transmitted diseases…
– of the inability to study, to learn and hold down a job.
– of the dirty rotten greedy race industry that only fills its coffers and foments division and deception and does NOTHING whatsoever that is beneficial and redemptive for black citizens of any age.
– of the corrupt leftist Democrat party that keeps blacks down, dependent and poor in order to keep votes and power.

Uncle Samuel | August 3, 2013 at 9:08 am

In the heart of Trayvonia (aka Pinellas County, FL) Trayvon/Sons of Obama/Holder/Crump sighted beating younger kid on school bus.

Bus Driver CHARGED.

The State of FL DOJ needs to be investigated thoroughly.
And so does the State Crime Lab System.

    Exiliado in reply to Uncle Samuel. | August 3, 2013 at 9:35 am

    Disgusting.

    snopercod in reply to Uncle Samuel. | August 3, 2013 at 9:36 am

    Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent has publicly questioned the driver’s lack of action even after the offending teens had left the bus.

    That’s ironic since the courts have repeatedly ruled that the police have no duty to intervene to protect a citizen. I’m thinking of the recent disgraceful event where two NY cops ran and hid rather than help a citizen who was being attacked by a knife-wielding thug.

      VetHusbandFather in reply to snopercod. | August 3, 2013 at 9:29 pm

      I think the problem they have with the bus driver was that he did nothing after the incident was over. As, in he doesn’t need to try to stop or intervene with the attack, but once the attackers had got off the bus he should have at least gone back and seen if the kid was still alive instead of just continuing on his bus route. My money says that the bus driver’s defense would be he feared repercussions from other students in the future if he checked on the kid, which will probably be enough to get him out of any hot water.

    Hang on a minute, Uncle. They authorities are “Considering” charges for the driver. He has not been charged yet.

    The most interesting part about the video is most of the segment was dedicated to chatting about what the white bus driver failed or refused to do, not about the three black kids pummeling the defenseless white kid. Don’t you find that strange? It’s as if the black kids actions were almost mentioned as an aside.

The Smithsonian will also need to include Jeremiah Wright’s & Louis Farrakan’s diatribes, the Ebony Calf & charts showing the black on black violence in Chicago to be comprehensive in its folly.

Trayvon at the Smithsonian

http://bitstrips.com/r/KC049

After the trial I had a T-shirt made. It reads,”HEAVILY ARMED CREEPY-ASS CRACKA.” It goes well with 1911 I always wear on my hip. Thanks for a great line Dee Dee.