Althouse: "This is now the clearest audio we have heard of George Zimmerman's 911 call, but it's readily apparent there will still be controversy over what he really said."

April 5, 2012

"This is now the clearest audio we have heard of George Zimmerman's 911 call, but it's readily apparent there will still be controversy over what he really said."

Says CNN's Gary Tuckman, closing a report that made it obvious that Zimmerman said "fucking cold" — on that cold, raining night — and not "fucking coons" after he saw Trayvon Martin, the young man he would later shoot to death.

Why would there still be controversy over what Zimmerman really said, and why would Tuckman end his report by keeping alive the sick hope that Zimmerman is a racist?

What there should still be controversy over is whether CNN feeds off racial discord — either for ratings or in pursuit of an insane political agenda.

48 comments:

chickelit said...: It sounds to me more like "fuckin' code" which just perfect, give the cryptic over-analysis.; 4/5/12, 4:26 PM
Carl Vero said...: 'Dupe and Dump' was the internal motto of the Democratic Presidential Campaign 2008.For Obama's reelection, it's 'Smear and Fear'.CNN and other media and individuals are implementing it.; 4/5/12, 4:33 PM
Martin L. Shoemaker said...: "What there should still be controversy over is whether CNN feeds off racial discord — either for ratings or in pursuit of an insane political agenda."

I'm not sure there's much controversy about that. They're demonstrating it repeatedly.; 4/5/12, 4:33 PM
Christy said...: How is this not intentional malice by the media?; 4/5/12, 4:34 PM
Rialby said...: Wow Carl, I love that.

Especially in light of the Lawrence O'Donnell piece on Mormonisn. And, as I called it many times, Harry Reid is nowhere to be found. Because he's a Lefty and a coward first.; 4/5/12, 4:35 PM
Bender said...: Just to prove how racist he is, Zimmerman handed out fliers last year in support of a black homeless man, protesting police coddling of a white suspect.

George Zimmerman handed out fliers at black Sanford churches a year ago, outraged that a white police lieutenant's son, captured on video sucker-punching a homeless black man, was not arrested on the spot, family members said.

The fliers urged blacks to go to a Sanford City Commission meeting to protest and demand that the police chief be held accountable. . . . (read more at link); 4/5/12, 4:36 PM
Luke Lea said...: I listened to the original tape. It didn't sound like he said anything. It was close to white noise. What do others think?; 4/5/12, 4:37 PM
raf said...: What there should still be controversy over is whether CNN feeds off racial discord — either for ratings or in pursuit of an insane political agenda.

I agree with MLS above. This science is settled.; 4/5/12, 4:37 PM
William said...: He's not white. He's not racist. He did not kill in cold blood. He did not say "coon". He does not weigh 220 lbs. He did suffer injuries at the hands of Trayvon Martin.....CNN et al. should make note of all the mistakes they have made in their reports to date. They should give notice of these mistakes as much airing as the original mistakes......It will never happen.in; 4/5/12, 4:37 PM
Rialby said...: I can totally see Zimmerman saying, "it's fucking cold" by the way. He's making idle chit chat about the weather, 1) because he's scared and 2) because it builds trust. Weather is the greatest ice-breaker subject between strangers.

The percentage of people who would get on the phone and start spouting racial epithets to a stranger, unprompted, is really pretty low.; 4/5/12, 4:41 PM
edutcher said...: Oh, please tell me they're going to be stupid enough to keep this up until November.

PS and only partly OT:

GodZero ticked off the head of the UMW over his cap&trade nonsense. Add this to ticking off Catholics.

Can you say, "Bye bye PA"? And maybe, "Bye bye WV"?; 4/5/12, 4:55 PM
Anonymous said...: Dear sweet jebus, people, doesn't anyone know anyone who has some regional dialect expertise or the like? Who says "coon" anymore? Is that even a word in common use as a derogatory insult against blacks? I haven;t heard it in 20 years. Pathetic. All the faux science-y bullshit and the chin-stroking analytical look on that tool's face. As if he's performing some crucial public service. Why isn't that Sherman Ware story out there more? Oh, yeah...; 4/5/12, 4:57 PM
Anonymous said...: Lots of rumors going around. Confused at where the "cold" came from in the link. According to another CNN story Z.'s lawyers reported the word was "punks."

"Zimmerman attorneys Hal Ulrig and Craig Sonner told CNN their client told them that he said, "F---ing punks."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/05/justice/florida-teen-shooting/?hpt=hp_t1; 4/5/12, 5:00 PM
Deb said...: Well, there's a Paul Simon song that says "people hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest." I would say that it certainly applies here. And it's a very sad state of affairs when major news outlets jump on a bandwagon driven by the likes of Sharpton and Jackson. So anxious to make this racial.; 4/5/12, 5:02 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Well said professor..

CNN is behaving not much better than Al Sharpton here.; 4/5/12, 5:04 PM
Brian Brown said...: Why would there still be controversy over what Zimmerman really said, and why would Tuckman end his report by keeping alive the sick hope that Zimmerman is a racist?

Because America is a bad place, Ann.

A place where white racism keeps blacks down and sometimes leads to whites being so racist, they shoot blacks for "looking suspicious."

Never mind that racism is such a trivial problem that public policy arguments are over preferences to college, and that blacks attack whites 7 times more often than the inverse, the narrative must be maintained.

As long as this dipstick "journalist" can hold out hope, the narrative can remain.; 4/5/12, 5:05 PM
Mary Beth said...: Outside of a song from "Hair", I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word "coon" to mean anything but a raccoon.

There will continue to be controversy because some people have their minds made up and won't let facts stand in the way.; 4/5/12, 5:08 PM
Brian Brown said...: And by the way, everything, every single thing, the left believed and said about this incident has been demonstrated to be untrue.

Kind of like global warming.

Kind of like Obamacare.

Kind of like Keynesian economics.

Kind of like the Duke Lacrosse case.

I'm sensing a pattern here.; 4/5/12, 5:08 PM
Bender said...: Outside of a song from "Hair", I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word "coon" to mean anything but a raccoon

Pink Floyd said it when he went through his neo-Nazi phase after building the Wall.; 4/5/12, 5:10 PM
Peter said...: Does that mean I don't have to hear CNN in airports anymore?

Oh, I didn't think so. They always say, "If you don't like it then turn it off." But sometimes there's no "off" switch.

I hate being a captive audience.; 4/5/12, 5:20 PM
Dan in Philly said...: Typical. Stir up a lot of artifical drama and when it hits the fan, it's all "Both sides feel strongly about this issue" and hide behind the same journalistic objectiveness you ignored when smearing the man in the first place.

Typical and sad.; 4/5/12, 5:25 PM
KCFleming said...: Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second nature in a journalist.

(Trooper meets Helen Rowland); 4/5/12, 5:25 PM
edutcher said...: Peter said...

Does that mean I don't have to hear CNN in airports anymore?

Oh, I didn't think so. They always say, "If you don't like it then turn it off." But sometimes there's no "off" switch.

You can always throw your laptop at the set.; 4/5/12, 5:29 PM
Michael said...: Gary Tuckman is famously stupid. Notwithstanding his insanely contradictory closing statement it was clear to him and to the "expert" that the word used was cold and not coon.; 4/5/12, 5:33 PM
coketown said...: This sounds like an example of pareidolia, in which insignificant occurrences are interpreted to have significance, often aided by suggestion. You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a CNN anchor playing the Zimmerman tape and a paranormal investigator playing a clip of white noise. In both instances, the tape will be played once with nothing discernible, then the presenter will say, "Did you hear it? 'Fucking coons/Geeeeet ooooout.' We'll play it a second time; listen closely!" Then, of course, the suggested phrase is obvious and you can't not hear it.; 4/5/12, 5:34 PM
Richard Dolan said...: For many here, CNN had no credibility on racially and politically charged stories like this even before this latest demonstration of "fake but accurate" reporting (I use the term only in the MSM sense). So the real question is whether this episode will impact how the other half views the reliability of their reporting. I think the answer is that the loss of credibility will occur only at the margins. Of course, you could say the same about how many regard the reporting on Fox.

We are becoming a society that is so distrustful of the motives and agendas, and so unwilling to listen before reaching conclusions, that confirmation bias is the new normal as a description of how we observe what's happening around us.; 4/5/12, 5:59 PM
JAL said...: I swear I could not hear a thing in the first clip. (You and me, LukeL.)

Of course they were playing all of a millisecondover and over. And I reeeaaalyy tried hard and finally thought (including what seemed like a lot of *breath* sounds) that there might be a scrap of a human articulation there.... but a word? And "clear?"

They smoking weed over at CNN?

Maybe not, but this absolutely convinced me that CNN and the left are racists. That is the first and olnly thing on their minds. How could anyone get "coon" out of that?

The *second* one played the whole two word clip -- and he commented on how short it was. Say what? Two weeks ago you used an indecipherable mini blip of a sound bit to indict a man -- and the two word clip is "short?"

The "O" sound in "cold" is actually quite different than the "O" sound in coon, just on case you never noticed.

But the biggy is that the "reporter" states that Zimmerman was "pursuing" Martin.

Does no one teach the English language in journalism school anymore? Oh yeah, they do.

It's called Propaganda 101.

pursue - to follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, or defeat

follow - to take the same route behind another person, e.g. by walking down the street or driving along the same road, deliberately or by chance

It's all in the nuance, dudes.; 4/5/12, 6:01 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/5/12, 6:19 PM
n.n said...: Semantic games and manufactured doubt is all they have left. They have defined themselves and are incapable of escaping their self-imposed confinement.

Well, they wanted an extrajudicial trial and the verdict returned was not in their favor. Let that be a warning to journalists who moonlight as activists.; 4/5/12, 6:22 PM
sane_voter said...: You can't trust anything on CooNN.; 4/5/12, 6:26 PM
CWJ said...: This keeping the story alive (because someone decided it was a good story) chills me to the bone. Its not news. It not journalism. Its a story, and we're going to tell it no matter how many real people might be chewed up in the process. I refrain from saying innocent people because I just don't know! But I DO know that real people (like Joe the plumber for another example) have been chewed up for no good reason whatsoever other than to flog someone's else's ideological superiority.; 4/5/12, 6:30 PM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: Mary Beth said...

Outside of a song from "Hair", I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word "coon" to mean anything but a raccoon.

I lived for 42 of my 48 years in the Southeast. I don't think I ever heard the word coon used as a racial slur more than once or twice.

Also, the Orlando area is really more of a New York/New Jersey Annex than part of the South. It's probably not been used there since the 1930's.; 4/5/12, 6:37 PM
ErnieG said...: The whole false narrative, which has been constructed to portray a big bad racist bigot gunning down a mere slip of a 12-year-old boy, shooting him "down like a dog", like the Plastic Turkey, will never die.; 4/5/12, 7:00 PM
Alex said...: No doubt pointing out the sheer evil of the MSM here will be spun by shiloh/garage into "LOOKEZ THE ALTHOUSE RACISTS ARE AT IT AGAIN"....; 4/5/12, 7:24 PM
Revenant said...: It always sounded like "cold" to me.

Then again, some people can see racism in a blank sheet of paper -- "look at all that white! Where's the diversity?"; 4/5/12, 8:00 PM
Mary Beth said...: Pink Floyd said it when he went through his neo-Nazi phase after building the Wall.

I forgot about all of the riff-raff in the room.

I love the album but "In the Flesh" isn't one of my favorites. I still feel bad for forgetting it.; 4/5/12, 8:05 PM
Revenant said...: The gay black comic author in "Chasing Amy" had a comic called "White-Hatin' Coon", if I recall correctly. That's the last pop-culture usage I can think of.

The last real-life usage I've seen was in documentary footage from the 1960s.; 4/5/12, 8:07 PM
granmary said...: It is called covering your bases. You don't want to be sued, yet you still want to do your part in pushing the desired narrative. After all you don't want your 'friends' in the race-hustling party to be offended.; 4/5/12, 8:10 PM
Hagar said...: Because if they can make Zimmermann say an "offensive" word, they might be able to squeeze out a "hate crime," even if they cannot prove any actual crime to have been committed.; 4/5/12, 8:18 PM
Sorun said...: I'll give the media a pass if "coon" rhymes with "punks." Otherwise, no.; 4/5/12, 9:15 PM
Carnifex said...: Maybe it's the rough crowd I interact with too often, but I have heard the word coon as applied to black people very frequently. But then we are talking DEEP COUNTRY. Dueling banjo's and bows and arrows country. I've heard just about every slur used (except for macaca, never heard that one used but for CNN. Connection?) The stunned silence and open gapes when I reveal my family tree is quite amusing. Because of my genetic hound dog mix, I get a lot of amusement watching people bicker about the dumbest thing in the world, the color of someones skin.

I also hear the Italian/wop stuff, actually I have heard the French called frogs. Catholics as mackeral snappers. And who can forget the hispanics with garbachos, and gringos.

No one is free from the racist taint. No one is innocent in this cluster fox trot, and to act so is disingenuous.

People break down into tribal affiliations. It's the old Floyd Boys song Us and Them. And that is simplistic, but it's the truth.; 4/6/12, 12:26 AM
SukieTawdry said...: First time I've listened to any of the tapes. Definitely a long "o" sound. Cold, snow, mope, coat. If it were coon, it would have a long "u" sound. Coon, bloom, dune, ruin. Gary Tuckman's a dope (long "o") and a tool (long "u"). I don't know why anyone would listen to anything he says.; 4/6/12, 12:38 AM
Carnifex said...: Story time:

One Christmas, at the family re-union, I was watching the kids. I often do this because they and I have the same intellectual level. Also, for some reason, babies, kids and animals are fascinated by me.(must be my kirlian aura).

Anyway, I have all the kids in the TV room, and have "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on for them. The real one, with Boris Karloff, not that Jim Carey abortion. Anyway, the youngest is sitting in my lap when the song "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" comes on. I fancy myself a fair baritone, and a pretty good mimic so I start singing along. Joe, the one sitting in my lap, looks around at me with big brown eyes. He slowly reaches up, and with his tiny hand clamps my lips shut. He says to me, "Shhh... You don't sing." So much for my vanity.

Anyway, the moral of the story is Joe is the best behaved of all the children there, and is darker skinned than Obama. His brother, John, is a ginger, and the rottenest kid you ever want to meet. In fact, I think he's in jail now.

As an addendum, his younger cousins are both blue eyed blonds, just like his mom is.; 4/6/12, 12:44 AM
Ken said...: "Why would there still be controversy over what Zimmerman really said, and why would Tuckman end his report by keeping alive the sick hope that Zimmerman is a racist?"

Because the Democrats and the lapdog media have nothing else. Obama's foreign policy is a disaster. His economic policies are producing high prices, high unemployment and hugh deficits. He is bitterly partisan and disrespectful of anyone who dares disagree with him. He cannot run on his record so he'll attempt to confuse the issues.

CNN is so deep in Obama's pocket that another millimeter and it would be a morals charge,; 4/6/12, 4:09 AM
Anonymous said...: Carnifex, very interesting. I thought it might be highly regionalized. Plus, while the genius media is debating Zimmerman's "race", I do wonder if coon is used at all among Hispanics or mixed race Latin folks. Whatever his ridiculous designation ends up being. Someone on the thread said that area is mostly New Jersey folks or something like that. But didn't anyone at CNN think to ask about the word itself? It's as if the tape could possibly be construed to be heard as Zimmerman calling Trayvon a "Moor". Sure, somewhere, maybe that's a word for "black". But who uses it? It's 100% idiocy, zero analysis.; 4/6/12, 9:18 AM
AF said...: Althouse: If it's so "obvious" that Zimmerman said "fucking cold," why are his lawyers saying it was "fucking punks"?.; 4/6/12, 9:28 AM
Anonymous said...: Yeah, I don't buy and never bought the "fucking coons" interpretation. I have not heard that term used non-ironically in over thirty years.; 4/6/12, 11:35 AM
CWJ said...: Just testing Freder's theory that every 19th Althouse post is a lie. And here it is, another George Zimmerman post exactly 19 posts after the last one. It must be a lie. I tell you that Fredero is brilliant.; 4/6/12, 6:45 PM