The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart says it's despicable that people are circulating a photo of tattooed Los Angeles rapper The Game and saying it's Trayvon Martin. He's says it a vicious attempt to defame the slain teen by portraying him as a thug.
People! Listen, and listen closely. The photo you're still passing around via e-mail is not that of Trayvon Martin. Not even close. The man in that photo is a rapper named Game. The picture was used in a May 6, 2010 story for XXL magazine. Game was 31 years old at the time.
In the last 24 hours, a friend and a reader separately forwarded me the e-mail making the rounds. “Recognize this guy? I didn't,” the text reads, “[W]hy would the media show us a picture of a little boy instead of a current picture?????” The people who persist in peddling the Game picture as Trayvon are despicable.
They say the smiling Trayvon in the Hollister t-shirt is 12 years old. And they complain that the media are guilty of a liberal bias for showing it rather that what they think is a more up-to-date image. I asked Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump about this in February. Trayvon was 16 when that photo was taken in August 2011. If folks want a more current picture before the teenager was killed by a single shot to the heart they ought to look at the one of him on a horse. It was taken about a week before he was killed.
Read Jonathan Capehart's entire piece at the Washington Post.
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