A Virulent Racist With A Criminal History Was The Media's Go-To George Zimmerman Defender
Mother Jones reporter Mariah Blake uncovers that Frank Taaffe, Zimmerman's "most visible and outspoken defender" in the media, was uniquely unqualified to pontificate on sensitive issues of race and criminal justice considering his "lengthy criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and burglary, and a history of airing virulently racist views." Taaffe volunteered for the same neighborhood watch as Zimmerman and told Greta Van Susteren in a recent Fox News interview that shortly before Zimmerman's arrest, the two men met and Zimmerman shared a list of "several talking points" he wanted Taaffe to promote.
The breadth of Taaffe's media footprint is staggering. He was quoted by numerous major newspapers and appeared on or was otherwise quoted by ABC News, CNN, NBC News, Fox News, CBS News, MSNBC, and CNN-spinoff HLN. Taaffe made more than 60 separate primetime appearances on HLN alone.
Blake reports that Taaffe -- who used his media platform "to cast Martin as a drug-addled Hoodlum and Zimmerman as a community-minded do-gooder" -- has made recent appearances on a podcast called The White Voice, hosted by a man with ties to white power groups. During these appearances, Taaffe has, according to Blake, "argued that whites and blacks have no business mingling" and talked about how the Zimmerman trial is "waking up white America."
Taaffe has saved perhaps his most odious comments for his Twitter feed, where he has written things like, "the only time a black life is validated is when a white person kills them."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/08/the-medias-go-to-george-zimmerman-defender-is-a/195298
= new reply since forum marked as read
idiot to anyone who used their own eyes. 
Truly, truly shocking. 
I'm not reprinting it here because it would absolutely be hidden by a jury.
the few times I caught him on tv.
He looks & sounds the part.
Imagine what his family has gone through having to live with him:
Many of the other entries on Taaffe's rap sheet stem from domestic-violence complaints filed by his second wife and their son. In 2000, he was arrested for burglary—the very crime he alleges "young black males" were committing in his community—after allegedly swiping some papers from his ex-wife's home. Taaffe pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of trespassing, and was sentenced to nine months in prison*. According to police reports, he was later charged with stalking and with child abuse after his son, William, jumped out of a moving car, allegedly to escape his father's angry, profanity-laced tirade. Taaffe maintains these charges stemmed from false complaints filed by his then-wife, who persuaded William to corroborate the accusations so she could get more assets in their divorce. "She used my son as leverage against me for her own personal and monetary gain," he told Mother Jones.
Taaffe—who has railed against absentee black fathers—was a marginal figure in the lives in his own children. Vincent, his eldest son from his first marriage, who died in a car crash last year, didn't speak to him. (Taaffe says this was because Vincent was outraged over his involvement in the Zimmerman case: "I was ostracized by members of my own family for supporting George."
William, who struggled with addiction and emotional problems after his parents' brutal divorce, cycled in and out of rehab before dying of a drug overdose in 2008. According to a source close to the family who provided photocopies, he left behind an angst-filled notebook, with these words scrawled across the final pages: "Fuck you, Dad, I never thought a father could be so bad…I'm your son, the one you ditched."
agenda is. 
