In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, director Spike Lee thought it would be cute to tweet to his 250,000 Twitter followers what he thought was shooter George Zimmerman’s home address.
As some of you know (those who watch Fox News) it turns out that Spike got the wrong address and the wrong Zimmerman and caused an elderly Florida couple’s life to be turned into a living hell.
Lee, after finding out the couple lawyered up, apologized to the family. How sweet and convenient of Spike. Someone should interview the couple and find out what kind of crap they had to endure because of Spike’s tweet.
Before I continue to touch on how Lee seriously mucked up an innocent couple’s life with his stupid stunt and how I believe that sweet, old couple should sue him for the bollocks he put them through, let’s play a quick game of “What If,” shall we?
What if Spike got the right Zimmerman and his cabal charged in and beat and/or killed a man who had yet to be given due process under the law? Hmmm? Question: Would Lee be legally liable if one of his vigilantes said they got their 411 and motivation for mayhem from his tweet?
From watching cop shows on television—and with a little help from my Facebook friends—would Lee’s tweet be considered:
Being an accessory to a crime
Reckless and malicious endangerment
Incitement to criminal mischief
Conspiracy to commit bodily injury and/or murder
Interfering with a police investigation
All of the above
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Smells like all of the above to me. But what do I know? I’m just a goofy gringo. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Spike’s speech is protected under the First Amendment if his tweet was meant to incite violence.
I know that if a Caucasian man named Whitey Whitebread put out a fatwa like Lee did that Whitey would be charged with a hate crime, making terrorist threats, inciting mob violence, endangering the well-being of an innocent person and cyberbullying. Isn’t Hollywood coming out with a movie about bullying? Maybe they should show how they’re truly against it by boycotting Spike ‘til Jesus returns.
Now, before I plow ahead in condemning Lee’s tweet, let me go on record as stating that if it is proven in a court of law that Zimmerman did indeed pursue and kill Trayvon Martin for no other reason than Trayvon was a black kid wearing a hoodie and going through a gated community then George deserves the death penalty, his name needs to live on in infamy, and I want to be in the room when he is administered a lethal injection.
But back to Lee and his ill-fated tweet.
Aside from the above hypothetical situation, I’m a thinkin’ what Spike did to this elderly couple constitutes a need for some form of sanctions; there should be criminal charges levied against him, and the McClains should sue him for a cool million for the mayhem he caused them. Twitter should then yank his account because he transgressed their code of conduct.
The thing that I find most interesting is the moral blindness Spike sports. Isn’t what Lee loosed vigilantism in its purest sense? Isn’t Lee’s tweet akin to what he and his ilk are accusing Zimmerman of? Oh, the irony.
We’re going to have to wait and find out whether or not what Zimmerman did was, as Spike and others believe, vigilantism and a racist’s lethal rush to judgment. However, we don’t have to wait to determine the motivation and criminality of Spike Lee’s tweet. I guarantee if the roles were reversed and Whitey Whitebread had done what Lee did this past week he’d be in jail, there’d be a civil suit against him, and we wouldn’t see him on Twitter tweeting any longer.
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