A Tale of Two Tragedies

Last November, 2011, my nephew was attacked in his own home by a knife-wielding assailant during a break-in and robbery. He received multiple knife wounds as well as having his neck slit ear to ear, and was left for dead by the thief. Fortunately he was able to weakly dial his cell phone and ask for help at the emergency telephone-assistance number, “911.” An ambulance quickly arrived in minutes to stanch the bleeding, administer a large blood transfusion and rush him to a nearby hospital. He survived, just barely, facing weeks of convalescence, and was told that if the medical team had arrived only ten minutes later, he would have bled to death. My nephew was able to identify his attacker, a man living in the neighborhood, and last week, the assailant’s trial concluded in Detroit with the conviction of the defendant on all three counts: attempted murder, assault, and robbery. Despite the viciousness of the attack, not a word about it appeared in any newspaper, radio, television, or other news source.     Not a word ever appeared even in our local community newspaper! Not a word when the crime was committed, nor when the perpetrator was convicted. A crime is a crime, and although it really should not matter to the news media, the fact is that the attacker was black and my nephew is white.

Contrast the above with another such tragedy that occurred recently in the small town of Sanford, Florida. On February 26, 2012, seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed during an altercation with a neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman. For weeks now, the news media has been in an absolute frenzy about it, with news reports harping over it on every news hour all day long, week after week, usually parsing the same information already reported over and over. The “Project for Excellence in Journalism” report from the Pew Research Center stated that about one-fifth of the total news space during the first week in April was devoted to the shooting. Pew states that they sampled a broad cross-section of news outlets, including social media, blogs, newspapers, radio and television. One-fifth of the total news reporting in the entire United States, day after day, devoted to just one tragedy, when there are many thousands of murders and other crimes each year all across America!

It is impossible to ignore the stark difference in news coverage between the two aforementioned tragedies. Yet the unfortunate fact about this is that the sole reason for the media bias in such news coverage is the element of race. The victim, Trayvon Martin, is black, and his attacker (as we are told over and over to make absolutely sure we understand) is “white.”
In actual fact, George Zimmerman is only “half-white.” His mother is Peruvian, and in television news stories, Zimmerman actually appears quite dark complexioned. Yet in one news story after another, the emphasis is on the term, “White Latino.”

In all of this grossly-excessive news treatment, the left-wing controlled media outlets further purposely engaged in what they call, “spin,” to convince the listening audience that the death of Trayvon Martin was a racist attack by a white man on a defenseless black man. The Media Research Center revealed, for example, that the “Today” television show purposefully and deceitfully edited the “911” tape from the shooting to make Zimmerman appear to have been motivated by race. After internet blogs publicized this outrageous media falsification, the Detroit Free Press reported that “NBC apologized last week for ‘the error in the production process’ and promised an internal probe.” (4-8-12, 19A) But, of course, such falsifying of the news is no accident. Nor will it end anytime soon.

Why does the media go to all of these lengths to distort and twist the truth in their news coverage? To the agnostic leftists, “truth” is defined as whatever advances their cause. It appears that the Martin case was seized upon for psychological warfare to support their view of white America as “racist.” We are being conditioned to not oppose the influx of millions of non-Christians who are redefining our nation as “secular” and “non-Christian.” (Notice that the media has banned the term, “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented immigrant,” as if their citizenship status is just a formality.) The results of this can be seen in the decline in Christian religious faith and morality throughout our land.

As an example of this psychological conditioning tactic, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official, Al Armendariz, recently discussed government enforcement policies. MSNBC.com on April 30, 2012 quoted this government official as saying that the Romans conquered a village by taking “the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.” He added that the EPA, similarly, makes “examples out of people who are not complying with the law … you make examples out of them, use it as a deterrent method.”  Now do you understand the reason for the incessant news coverage of Trayvon Martin?

The reader should not assume that the above account of my nephew’s near-death is simply an isolated incident, as another example in my own experience will demonstrate. On a Saturday evening in April, 1990, our long-time church board member, Dorothy Ogburn, drove to a health food store on Grand River Avenue in Detroit to buy some items for our church banquet the following day. Since there was no parking spot open on the road, she drove behind the building to park. As she stepped out of her car, a gang of youths attacked and robbed her, beating her unconscious with their fists. A witness called the police, and Dorothy was transported to an area hospital only to die a few days later from her wounds. The attack was especially vicious, for she had severe bruises all over her body nearly from head to foot. Of course, our church members were horrified and upset about this sweet lady being beaten to death, so a few days later my associate pastor went to the police precinct to enquire on the state of the murder investigation. To his surprise, he was told that there was no murder investigation at all. The desk Sergeant told him, “She was just an old lady anyway.” It really should not have mattered to the media or the police, but Dorothy Ogburn was white, and her attackers were black, as was the police officer on duty at the police precinct.

Imagine if you will, the situation if the racial roles had been reversed. Suppose that a gang of white youths attacked, beat, and killed a defenseless black woman. It takes little imagination to realize that such a state of affairs would have resulted in extensive and continuing media coverage coast to coast. Why this racial double standard? Is the life of a black man or black woman more valuable than a white life? Where is the liberal paean to “color-blindness” and “equality”? The hypocrisy they show is incalculable.

Will things progress to a modern fulfillment of Christ’s words in John 16:2? “They shall put you out of the synagogues [or churches-jsb]: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”

The point to be made is that these events are a definite sign of the end times, and the “time of Jacob’s trouble” according to prophecy. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.” (Jer 30:7) Daniel wrote of this and added a note of encouragement saying, “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” (Dan 12:1) Amen!