Zimmerman Verdict: Why Conservatives Applaud the Acquittal

Zimmerman Verdict: Why Conservatives Applaud the Acquittal

The killing of an unarmed teenage boy isn't something you'd expect to be political. You would certainly never expect it to inspire gleeful adulation from any American of supposedly "good conscience." But it appears that some Republicans -- and prominent conservative talking heads in particular -- have developed a metastasizing form of "Obama Derangement Syndrome" in the wake of George Zimmerman's acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin, such that Trayvon has become an object of their putrid ridicule and unapologetic racist innuendo.

What is most curious about the reactions to the Zimmerman acquittal this week is how easily, in these conservatives' minds, Trayvon serves as a proxy for Barack Obama. For, you see, what conservatives have wanted all along was to destroy the personage and legacy of this first African-American president -- for fear that his ascendance would signal a shift in the inequitable racial power dynamics that exist throughout American society.