A music and cultural critic said the shootings of black teens Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri were really proxy killings of the president.
Greil Marcus, who taught a course in American Studies at University of California, Berkeley, told Salon that “in a certain way,” the men who shot the teens — George Zimmerman and police Officer Darren Wilson — were really “killing Barack Obama.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist. I haven’t sat down and interviewed George Zimmerman or the cop who shot Michael Brown,” Mr. Marcus said. “I don’t know what their motives are. I don’t know what kind of people they are, what kind of childhood traumas they have experienced. But I don’t think it’s nuts that in a certain way, when that cop killed Michael Brown, and when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, they were killing Barack Obama.”
He also said that racism was alive and well in America — especially among tea party types and Fox News followers.
“I remember writing, right after Barack Obama was elected, that this country was not less racist the day after his election that it was the day before … and I’m not just talking about people at tea party rallies saying there’s a lying African in the White House and showing a picture of Barack Obama with a bone through his nose,” Mr. Marcus told Salon. “With Barack Obama, racism has become ordinary discourse since his election in a way that it wasn’t before, and the contempt and the ridicule with which Republicans treat him … I mean, the things that have been said about Michelle Obama, the way she’s talked about on Fox News. Can you imagine Laura Bush ever being talked about that way?”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.