The The Media Downplay Asa Coon's Race?

Well, the kid's photo has finally been released, I am I guess I can see where the Jack Black comparison's came from. Poor child. Between looking like that, going to a majority black school, and having a name like Asa Coon, I guess I understand why dude might have a little built up angst. Some heads, particularly the negligent principal, will roll over this whole ordeal, some lawsuits will be filed, and this Hot Urban Mess will get alot uglier before it gets prettier.

One thing that is still fairly puzzling is the media's downplaying of Coon's race, and the possibility that this attack might have just been racially motivated. Again, it obviously doesn't matter since Coon at the check-in desk in West Hell right now, but how else do you explain the relative overlooking of race in the coverage of this incident?

I listened to my favorite conservative talk show this morning on my drive in (you know the one), and there was no mention at all of this factor, nor did the Cable News Taliban (Beck, Grace, OReilly, Hannity) bother bringing it up. It took the press three days to release photos of Coon, despite the fact that the shooting victims have been splashed over the screen 24/7 since Wednesday. My girl Anne-Marie from BackYardBeacon said this was simply a case of access to the photos taking longer than expected. That's the AP's explanation, but I'm not buying it for a second. Early media accounts of this story either completely neglected to mention Coon's race, buried it deep in their stories as a mere footnote, or danced around it by offering visceral descriptions (Marilyn Manson fan, Goth MySpace page, black fingernails) of the shooter instead. It would have been very easy to take all this in and make the assumption that this was just another case of inner city Negroes wildin' out. Clearly it isn't.

I wonder if this hesitance to dwell on Coon's race and the role it might have played in his alienation and subsequent acting out is intentional. Clearly, white-on-black crime is all over the news right now; between the Jena Six, the proliferation of nooses (seriously, WTH?) "magically appearing" all over the nation, and the grizzly Megan Williams abduction in West Virginia. Could this be a case of purposely downplaying a particular element of a story to avoid a piling-on effect?

Who knows? I have my theories (c.o.n.spiracy) but I'm my more level headed readers will give me theirs.

Plain Dealer obtains first photos of Asa Coon [Cleveland.com]