On her Sunday morning news show, State of the Union, Candy Crowley expressed explicit support for more talk about race in America, commenting on the possibility that a nationwide conversation about race could emerge from the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman controversy: “We hope it does,” Crowley said.
Both the prosecution and the defense in the case stressed that race had nothing to do with the trial or the verdict. The controversy acquired its racial tinge when Zimmerman was falsely described by the media as “white” in March 2012, a mistake the was seized upon by racial activists such as Al Sharpton of MSNBC.
President Barack Obama added fuel to the fire when he said later that month: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” On Friday, in his second statement responding to the verdict, Obama said that Martin “could have been me” as a youth. Polls, however showed that Americans tended to agree with the verdict.
Crowley devoted almost all of the program to coverage of protests Saturday against the verdict, and to debate about the meaning of Zimmerman’s acquittal, as well as broader racial issues. She pushed guests, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), to oppose “Stand Your Ground” laws, and to pursue “Justice for Trayvon.”
Bizarrely, after an entire show devoted to the need for racial sensitivity, Crowley ended with a tribute to Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent who died Saturday. A ground-breaking feminist, Thomas’s career ended when she made bigoted comments about Jews–not just “Israel,” as Crowley falsely alleged.
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