George Zimmerman's Biggest Defender: A Racist With a Criminal Past
[Incarceration is the new slavery]
Frank Taaffe, Zimmerman's unofficial media emissary, is a convicted criminal who recently appeared on The White Voice, a virulently racist podcast.
| Thu Aug. 8, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
Frank Taaffe.
In April 2012, two days before George Zimmerman was arrested for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, he huddled with a fellow neighborhood watch volunteer, Frank Taaffe. According to Taaffe, who disclosed the meeting on Fox News,
Zimmerman asked him to share "several talking points" with the media.
Taaffe obliged. Indeed, as Zimmerman's legal drama unfolded over the
next year and a half, Taaffe emerged as his most visible and outspoken
defender. He gave hundreds of interviews to media outlets, ranging from
the New York Times to Fox News to CNN, and made near-daily appearances on cable news shows during Zimmerman's trial.
Taaffe used this platform to cast Martin as a drug-addled hoodlum and Zimmerman as a community-minded do-gooder ("the best neighbor you would want to have") who had every reason to suspect the black teen was up to mischief. He also railed against Zimmerman's critics, whom he accused of staging a witch hunt. "It's really sad that he has already been convicted in the public media and has already been sentenced to the gas chamber," he lamented in an interview with NBC's Miami affiliate last year.
Taaffe was hardly the ideal person to be weighing in on a case suffused with racial angst—or commenting on criminal-justice matters, period. A Mother Jones investigation has found that the 56-year-old New York native has a lengthy criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and burglary, and a history of airing virulently racist views. Just last Sunday, he appeared on The White Voice, a weekly podcast hosted by a man named Joe Adams, who has deep, long-standing ties to white-power groups and has authored a manual called Save The White People Handbook. (Sample quote: "A mutt makes a great pet and a mulatto makes a great slave.")
During a previous White Voice
appearance, on July 27, Taaffe argued that whites and blacks have no
business mingling. ("They don't want to be with us and we don't want to
be with them.") Taaffe also opined that if Zimmerman had racially
profiled Martin, he was justified in doing so because "young black
males" had burglarized homes in their neighborhood. "What if I—a
middle-aged white man—wore a hoodie and went through Trayvon Martin's
neighborhood?" he asked defiantly. Adams replied that "no sane white
person" would dare walk down their "local Marcus Garvey Boulevard."
"I'd only be there for one or two things," Taaffe shot back. "And I'm sure the vice squad would want to be interested in that." READ MORE
Taaffe used this platform to cast Martin as a drug-addled hoodlum and Zimmerman as a community-minded do-gooder ("the best neighbor you would want to have") who had every reason to suspect the black teen was up to mischief. He also railed against Zimmerman's critics, whom he accused of staging a witch hunt. "It's really sad that he has already been convicted in the public media and has already been sentenced to the gas chamber," he lamented in an interview with NBC's Miami affiliate last year.
Taaffe was hardly the ideal person to be weighing in on a case suffused with racial angst—or commenting on criminal-justice matters, period. A Mother Jones investigation has found that the 56-year-old New York native has a lengthy criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and burglary, and a history of airing virulently racist views. Just last Sunday, he appeared on The White Voice, a weekly podcast hosted by a man named Joe Adams, who has deep, long-standing ties to white-power groups and has authored a manual called Save The White People Handbook. (Sample quote: "A mutt makes a great pet and a mulatto makes a great slave.")
"I'd only be there for one or two things," Taaffe shot back. "And I'm sure the vice squad would want to be interested in that." READ MORE
