Trayvon Martin’s pictures

This morning we come to a point in the Trayvon Martin case in which America debates the pictures of a 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain.

The initial pictures released showed Trayvon as a smallish 12-year-old. A sweet boy. The later photo from his Twitter account has him as a 6-foot 3-inch teen wearing a wife-beater t-shirt, gold teeth and looking like a kid leaning to the peer pressure of gangsta rap.

I invite readers to take a look at this story, which delves into a part of the dueling pictures. What I do not invite readers to do is to try to make or dispell the core Trayvon Martin issue based on the pictures alone. It is important that we do not try to paint this picture like a cartoon.

A boy is dead. A man by all accounts a work-a-day human being given the responsibility of being the head of his community neighborhood watch program shot him.

How it happened and why it happened are the questions at hand. The noise about what he looked like or what racial critics say they think the neighborhood watch captain was thinking is unhelpful. The president's comments are also unhelpful and unwise in the extreme. (I am taking the week off from column writing this week. But I'll come back to explain in more detail in a future column or blog because it is important to point out that Barack Obama isn't just a guy anymore. He's the president and as such he commands the DOJ, our last line of defense for justice. He has compromised the DOJ from doing its job.)

For now, let's focus on the facts, no matter whether they reinforce our biases or not. No matter which way this comes out, we will be left with a tragedy -- Trayvon Martin is dead and all Americans who have raised kids and seen them them go through growing pains can only wince and wonder.

PS: You will note from the referenced link that Media Matters once again shows itself to be an intellectually criminal outfit for which the Democratic Party and all liberals ought to shun.