Joe Oliver, who for art thou if not for George Zimmerman?

I miss having satellite TV.  When I still had a full-time job, it was actually the only real form of “luxury” my family had.  Once I lost my job five months ago, that luxury ended — and it ended quickly — and we were pretty much left with no luxury at all other than the roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, clothes on our backs, heat and water and lights … the necessary luxuries that too many can’t afford at all.

Lawrence O'Donnell and Joe Oliver on MSNBC's "The Last Word."

But it’s times like these when I really miss having satellite TV with all its sports (the NFL Network … sob, sob), entertainment and, especially, news and current affairs channels.  So if it weren’t for the worldwide web and me having seen the blog post in the link below, I might have totally missed seeing MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and two reporters grilling Joe Oliver, a former Florida television news reporter and anchor and current “friend” of embroiled Sanford, Florida, Neighborhood Watch shooter George Zimmerman, on O’Donnell’s show “The Last Word.”

THE FIFTH COLUMN:  Lawrence O’Donnell And Charles Blow Give George Zimmerman Pal Joe Oliver Epic Grilling

In order to watch the fascinating two-part interview, I clicked on the link to Mediaiate.com below and watched it there.

Joe Oliver interviewed on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” in 2 parts

As a longtime former newspaper reporter and editor myself, I was glued to this interview.  O’Donnell, New York Times reporter Charles Blow, and Washington Post editorial page writer Jonathan Capehart handled Oliver brilliantly and with the utmost in journalistic professionalism.  They could tell when Oliver wasn’t answering simple questions, and they demanded straight answers from him.

What resulted were some questions in my mind:

• Does Joe Oliver even really know George Zimmerman beyond just a passing relationship?
• What does Joe Oliver hope to gain from this aside from some national attention, to become a media “face of the day?”  He offered absolutely nothing in the way of anything constructive or worthwhile, zero in the way of evidence, nothing more than — as O’Donnell pointed out bluntly — a “gut feeling,” which is worthless.
• Is Joe Oliver just a “token black man” being thrown out there as Zimmerman’s defense team tries to fight the charge that Zimmerman shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to death in Sanford last month was racially motivated?
• Is anyone ever going to address the issue that, as a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, George Zimmerman should not have even been carrying a gun and using it in his patrols at all?  That’s not a “gut feeling,” that’s a fact — a fact that George Zimmerman was just a “Dirty Harry wannabe” kind of law enforcement “cowboy.”

This whole story just goes from weird to weirder.  It remains tragic.  NOTE:  The video immediately below contains graphic language.

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