On his radio show this afternoon, Rush Limbaugh referred to the response to Trayvon Martin shooting "as doing more harm to the black community than anything else out there right now."
"Now, Trayvon Martin was killed 60 feet from his house," Limbaugh said. "Where were his neighbors? Unrecognized or unknown for three days in the morgue? That's despicable. Everything about this story…this story is doing more harm to the black community than anything else out there right now. Nothing out there portends good."
Martin, 17, was shot and killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch member as he returned to the home of his father's fiance on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fl. George Zimmerman, the man who admitted to killing him, called the police and told them that Martin looked suspicious prior to the shooting, and said that he shot Martin in self-defense after an altercation. Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged in the killing, a fact that has outraged protesters around the country. Martin was black. Zimmerman's father is white and his mother is Peruvian.
"There's nothing in this story to get happy about on any side," Limbaugh said. "Problem is there are people who are. That's sort of what's disgusting… is that there are people really excited about this because of the opportunity it presents them. It's despicable if you ask me."
Limbaugh suggested that the news media wanted to help the president in an election year, although he did not specify how. "It's all about Obama's re-election, pure and simple," he said. "Until Obama or Jackson or Sharpton lead them to a story, the media's not going to go there on something like this, because it's all about building up or protecting Obama."
Right-leaning media outlets have come under criticism for their handling of the Martin case. Many conservative outlets did not cover the case, which had been national news for weeks, until around the time the president weighed in on March 23. "I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal state and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened," the president said. "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."
Last week, the Daily Caller, a site founded by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, published tweets from a since-deleted Twitter accounts used by the dead teenager, and the Twitchy, a web site founded by the conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, published pictures of a teenager with his middle fingers extended that it claimed depicted Trayvon Martin. The picture were actually of a teenager who was not Martin, and had first surfaced on a neo-Nazi website.
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