George Zimmerman, charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Trayvon Martin, is shutting down his old social media accounts. (Not helpful: The 2005 MySpace page where he wrote “I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars.”) Zimmerman isn’t going dark online, however. Instead, his defense lawyer, Mark O’Mara, started up a new Web page for his client this week, with Facebook and Twitter accounts to go with it.
O’Mara noticed that Zimmerman had raised $204,000 from a website he started in April, and the new page will raise money, too. More interestingly, O’Mara said that social media will be his tool for responding quickly and efficiently to “misinformation” about his client and the case. If his strategy works, O’Mara will be the Sarah Palin of defense lawyers: The guy who changed the legal publicity game via the Twitter and Facebook blast.
Interestingly enough I am not sure who this comparison hurts more, Sarah Palin or George Zimmerman?
However it is interesting to note how far Palin's brand has fallen, in that now her name can be attached to one of the most racially divisive, and politically sensitive cases in the news today, and that it may further damage George Zimmerman's defense to have that be so.
However it is an apt comparison in that Palin did indeed utilize the internet in an attempt to reinvent herself, while staying away from attempts to by the news media to cross examine her and reveal the pathology buried behind hr media persona.
It might be worth noting to Mr. O'Mara that in the end it did NOT work in Palin's favor. While, much like Zimmerman, she was able to retain her hard Right Wing fan base, her ugly personality managed to shine through in anti-Obama diatribes and defensive soliloquies (Think Blood Libel) which essentially destroyed any chance she had of ever being seen as sympathetic by reasonable, rational people.
Which of course is why we now see her name attached, even in a tenuous way, to such an incredibly racially provocative and emotionally sensitive case.
And you know, now that I think about it, this really does hurt Zimmerman more than it hurts the Palin brand. I don't believe the Palin brand can get much lower.
Well, that is until we see Bristol's new reality shows hit the airwaves of course.
