we heard what a nice boy he was...yep, heard it all before

RW celebrity is.

who just snapped.

When unarmed blacks like Trayvon are gunned down in cold blood, the media tries to portray them as thugs who had it coming. They dig into their backgrounds and try to find anything they can to justify their deaths.

Rare is the cold-blooded killer who doesn't have a mother, aunt, sister, or family friend who describes him as sweet, loving, misunderstood.

Failing that, the kid's "troubled" or "abused" or "bullied."

Somewhere in there, there's always somebody who, unless buried in undeniable proof, will say that there's more to the story and that he's innocent. They have the wrong person. Or there's some reason he's not responsible--emotional or behavioral problems. mental illness, etc.

Even as the media portrays the guy as a cold-blooded murderer, they still find these people. It's an evergreen, a sop, a way of humanizing the person to make the entire event more horrifying.

The younger the perp, the more easily the friends-and-family justification plan is invoked.

The rest is bias, but mostly just confirmation bias.

because, let's face it, his classmate laughed like everyone else.

And the family friend didn't see what was right in front of her because she didn't think his jokes or his manner of dress were bad either.

She didn't see what she didn't want to see.

Like a fish doesn't know it is in water, implicit bias swims happily along, oblivious to the harm the acceptance of hate and hate speech can cause.

Oh, he was such a good boy with his racist jokes, his apartheid era patches on his clothing, and his confederate flag on his car.

Yeah...no tell-tale signs there.

He'd go out of his way to pick them up if young, talk to them if they were older. Carried candy with him to give to them. Sweet guy.

At the same time, he was responsible for thousands of kids who starved on the streets because their families were arrested or unemployed and considered undesirables, with most people either unwilling to feed them because they were believed to be "class enemies" or because if they helped a class enemy they, too, would be judged class enemies. That doesn't include those denied opportunities because of their parents, even if they were infants when their parents were killed, or those taken or born in GULags or prisons and who died there.

Stalin was a sweet guy. And he wasn't a sweet guy. Depends who he was interacting with and about. Children of class allies, "sweet guy Stalin" to the fore. Children of class enemies, and the big baddie was there ready to make sure their punished for the sin of their parents, not being of the right class.

Heck, he'd go from being a nice guy to somebody to having him executed a week later for perfidy. It's how he was built.

That's what humans are like.

I think the kind of vitriol being directed toward her here helps not one bit. You all know nothing about her. They tried to help. This only compounds the problem.

And world tell themselves it's just a joke

Remember that? George Carlin a very very long time ago...

Give him his fair trial and then take him out and hang him.

Sorry...I've had enough. I've had enough for a long time now...