Fox News George Zimmerman Lawsplainer: Stay Strapped Because You Never Know When Iced Tea Will Attack

We weren't going to cover the jury selection in the trial of George Zimmerman, intrepid neighbor watch hero, because what is there to say except "yep, they're selecting a jury" and maybe "dude, try a skinnier knot on your tie because your head is ENORMOUS." Unlike Fox News, we clearly didn't think through all possible angles of coverage, however, because we clearly overlooked exploring the lethal potential of iced tea:  

A Fox News guest on Monday suggested that George Zimmerman’s lawyers will be able to argue that their client used reasonable force when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, who was only carrying Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea, because “you could kill somebody” with iced tea.

While waiting for jury selection to begin on Monday, Fox News host Jamie Colby and former federal prosecutor Doug Burns discussed the case on the network’s live Internet video stream.

That certainly is an innovative theory, Mr. Former Federal Prosecutor. It must be all your past prosecution experience that makes you so thoughtful and adept and, let's face it, really really good with the explaining of things:  

“If I’m getting beaten up in an ordinary fist fight that’s going to leave me — here’s the counterargument — with a broken nose and some cuts and certainly no life-threatening injuries,” Burns pointed out. “Broken nose, we’ll assume just hypothetically is not a life-threatening injury. Then so runs the argument, you can’t turn around and kill the person.”

“The counterargument is, ‘Well, wait a minute, you can die in a fistfight,’” he continued. “There’s certainly a very good argument to be made that the force used was out of proportion to what was going on, and the kid was unarmed. We didn’t even discuss that. Totally different case, let’s say the kid had a gun.”

Sadly, we cannot un-toss this word salad for you. All we want to know is: can we kill them if they beat us up? Can we kill them if we think they might just want to beat us up? Do they have to be blah people? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW, Mr. Former Federal Prosecutor. We are also still wondering how iced tea can kill. Can any old iced tea kill? Does it have to be sweetened iced tea like Snapple, Trayvon Martin's weapon of choice? Would it matter if it were sweetened with Splenda? This legal theory raises more question than it answers, people.

Oh. Sorry. Our bad. Apparently, you use your iced tea as a weapon by letting it run free:  

“The thing is, yeah, you’re spinning a lot of hypotheticals,” Burns agreed. “And you could break a bottle of iced tea, right, with the jagged edge, and you could kill somebody with it.”

This is perhaps theoretically true but for the pesky fact that Trayvon Martin did not break said bottle of Snapple, nor did he force feed Zimmerman Skittles (which actually might make us murderous as those things pulled out our heartbreakingly expensive dental work). We are pleased to know, though, that from now on the possession of sugary beverages long past their market share heyday allows you to shoot on sight because MAN we are going to have a good time picking off people as they leave the corner store.

[ Raw Story ]