Seeing Mary's Face In A Tree Stump

... is what the whole George Zimmerman thing seems like to me.

I'd planned to avoid this topic, but the latest revelations - NBC doctored audio clips to make Zimmerman sound racist - are too juicy to ignore.

It's been a bad time to be a race-baiter. Nothing but gloom all around.

• We elected a black president.
• The Tea Party folks didn't use the N-word.
• The race riots at the Wisonsin State Fair went the wrong way.
• Dittos for the racial flash mobs in Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
• Britain is fussing about two of their kids being killed in Florida.
• The Chicago murder rate is skyrocketing with all of the familiar demographics.
• Voter intimidation has been going the wrong way, too.

And then, like a miracle from the heavens, comes George Zimmerman. Finally, some light in the darkness, a big, juicy chunk of traditional racism that everyone can latch onto! Marches! Speeches! Protests! Demands for justice! Like a battered church shaken in its faith that suddenly finds an image of Mary on a tree stump in its yard, it was too good to be true.

And it was, indeed, too good to be true. Zimmerman was a Democrat, not a Republican. He was half-Hispanic, not totally white. He's got a history of working with the NAACP. Spike Lee tweeted the wrong address and set the lynch mob out to string up an innocent, retired couple. The disappointments go on and on.

The image on the stump turned out to be stains from bug spray. The theological doubt wasn't banished at all. The problems of race-baiting in 2012 remain.

Not the Virgin Mary.
Update: Rereading this later, I don't think it really said what I wanted it to say. Spike Lee, the folks at NBC and the media people who hand-picked the photos of the two people involved wanted to find racism. They wanted it like any religious person wants to find proof of their beliefs. If it meant modifying the audio, well, that wasn't such a big deal, was it? And if it meant using out-of-date photos of Trayvon Martin, it was all for a good cause. And if they neglected Trayvon's Twitter stream at No Limit Nigga, who's to be a judge of such things? It goes on and on and on. It had to be standard racism, it just had to be. Their faith demanded it.

How deflating to stand back, look at all the distortions and realize it was just a bug spray stain.