by Patrick Appel
Glenn Beck fixates on the race of Christopher Lane’s suspected murderers:
Adam Serwer looks at how the right has seized upon the story:
Twenty-two year old Christopher Lane, a student at East Central University, was shot dead in Duncan, Okla., on Aug. 16. Lane’s death has drawn national attention because the teenage suspects allegedly told police that they shot him because they were “bored and didn’t have anything to do.” Many Australian press reports have have focused on the easy availability of firearms in the United States.
Conservative media however, have honed in on the argument that the three suspects are black and the victim is white. In fact, one of the suspects is white, an official from the Stephens County District Attorney’s office told MSNBC Wednesday. “That is not the case,” the official said when asked whether all three suspects were black. “One is black, one is half-black half-white, the other is white.” Conservative media appear to have relied on an erroneous report in the Australian media about the identity of the suspects. Right-wing outlets have since singled out tweets from one of the suspects that include derogatory language aimed at white people.
Local officials have not presented evidence yet that the killing was related to or based on race, but for many conservative outlets, the assumed race of the suspects was proof enough that Lane’s killing was racially motivated.
Bouie adds:
Lane’s death has become fodder for conservative media, and in particular, its narrative of white victimization.
See, the two suspects charged with murder aren’t just teenagers, they’re young black men. And for these right-wing provocateurs, the identity of the assailants is a direct rebuke to the “Justice for Trayvon” movement and evidence of racial hypocrisy from civil-rights leaders and anyone else who spoke about the George Zimmerman trial.
“It’s worse than a double standard. This is a purposeful, willful ignoring of the exact racial components, but in reverse, that happened in the Trayvon Martin shooting,” said Rush Limbaugh, speaking on his radio show. “From Obama on down, didn’t care about Trayvon Martin. All that mattered was that incident offered them an opportunity to advance a political agenda.” He also dinged the media for not focusing on the “racial component of any of the people involved in this.”
Weigel counters Limbaugh et al:
[H]ow hard is it to understand how the Martin/Zimmerman case became a sensation? It wasn’t the only shooting of a black person by a nonblack person that year. Martin was shot on Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman was taken in by police but released after five hours, and not charged. The first national media stories about the shooting came more than a week later, and it took until April 11 for Zimmerman to be charged. Compare that with the Lane tragedy: He was shot on Friday, and the suspects were charged four days later. And the second wave of Zimmerman/Martin news came after Zimmerman was acquitted. On Earth-2, where Zimmerman is charged on Feb. 27, does this story from Sanford, Fla., become a national “teaching moment”? I don’t think it does.
The Dish 