ALLEN G. BREED and KYLE HIGHTOWER
1 hour ago
LAKE MARY, Fla. (AP) — Whether they think that he got away
with murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin or that he was just a brave
neighborhood watch volunteer "standing his ground," many Americans can't
seem to get enough of George Zimmerman. And he can't seem to stop
giving it to them.
So it's hardly surprising that everything
Zimmerman does produces a Twitterverse explosion and spins out into
heavy news coverage. Comedian Deon Cole nailed it during an appearance
on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" a couple of days after the July 13
verdict. Merely being found not guilty, he said of Zimmerman, "doesn't
mean that you're a free man."
He certainly hasn't been free from the spotlight.
—Two stops for speeding.
—A
cellphone photo of a smiling Zimmerman touring the Florida factory
where the 9 mm semi-automatic pistol used in the February 2012 shooting
was made.
—And,
this week, police dash-cam footage of Zimmerman kneeling in the street
to be cuffed after an alleged scuffle with his estranged wife and
father-in-law.
Like gangster Al Capone going to Alcatraz for tax
evasion and O.J. Simpson serving time for robbing some sports
memorabilia dealers, some interpret this series of unfortunate events as
part of some cosmic comeuppance for a wannabe cop.
But is he a
kind of George Ziggy-man, perpetually stalked by storm clouds, or more
like one of those California wildfires, creating his own weather
patterns?
Seems like a little bit of both, according to crisis management expert Mark McClennan.
"How
does he keep resetting his 15 minutes of fame?" said the Boston-area
consultant, who's on the Public Relations Society of America's board of
directors. "I'd say it's a two-way street."
Granted,
Zimmerman didn't expect his visit to the Kel-Tec CNC Industries factory
in Cocoa, Fla., to be a public event. But McClennan wasn't surprised
when TMZ published a photo of Zimmerman shaking hands with a Kel-Tec
employee — and Zimmerman shouldn't have been, either.
"Instead of
being a 24-hour news cycle, it's now a 24-second news cycle for anything
to spring up," said McClennan, a senior vice president at Schwartz MSL.
"You need to be careful of what you're doing. ... And if there's
anything you do that is newsworthy or interesting, people are going to
write about it, talk about it, share about it, tweet it, put it on
YouTube — because it's going to drive clicks, drive interest, and it's
going to spread virally."
Referring to the factory visit, Shawn
Vincent, a spokesman for the law firm that defended Zimmerman, told
Yahoo News: "That was not part of our public relations plan."
It's
not just his public outings and repeated brushes with the legal system
that have kept Zimmerman in the spotlight. Martin's parents were
prominent participants in last month's 50th anniversary commemoration of
the March on Washington, and several civil rights leaders have called
for the repeal of "stand-your-ground" laws, which generally remove a
person's duty to retreat if possible in the face of danger.
Even when he helped extricate a family from an overturned SUV in July, Zimmerman couldn't catch a break.
The
grateful couple canceled a news conference, defense attorney Mark
O'Mara said, "for the possibility of blowback against them." People
immediately suggested the incident was staged — or at least poked fun at
the timing.
"Let's get this straight," Nigel Stevens wrote on the
site www.opposingviews.com. "Zimmerman, in his only documented venture
into the real world, heroically transforms into Volunteer Paramedic and
rescues someone from deadly circumstances. Is this really happening?
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Spielberg couldn't have collaborated to come up
with that ending. "
Stevens — after dubbing Zimmerman "the most
vilified man in America" — went on to suggest the next acts on the
watchman's "Karmic Redemption Tour": Providing emergency childbirth
assistance to Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, balancing Detroit's
budget and capturing NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Zimmerman
certainly has his supporters. Several groups launched petition drives
urging the Department of Justice not to pursue federal civil rights
charges against him.
"The jury has spoken and found that the
prosecution failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that George
Zimmerman had malice or racism in his heart or even a reckless disregard
for Trayvon Martin's life when he shot the teenager," declared a
petition on dickmorris.rallycongress.com. "The Justice Department should
now butt out."
But the trial seems to have set in motion some forces that are beyond Zimmerman's control.
In
late August, Shellie Zimmerman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor perjury
charge for lying during a bail hearing after her husband's arrest. Last
week, she filed for divorce, and felt compelled to tell the world about
it. On ABC's "Good Morning America," she called her husband "selfish"
and accused him of leaving her with "a bunch of pieces of broken glass"
after the acquittal.
Zimmerman blames the trial for the implosion
of his marriage. His wife's attorney, Kelly Sims, said the couple have
been on a "Tower of Terror" — an apparent reference to the harrowing,
"Twilight Zone"-themed ride at nearby Walt Disney World — since the
shooting and had spent only a few days together before the divorce
filing.
But was it wise for Zimmerman to go to the home Monday and
take photos while his wife and her family were there gathering
belongings?
O'Mara said Zimmerman needs to be a lot more
"circumspect" about what he does, since every action is "hyper-focused
on and scrutinized."
"I
understand they're not private individuals anymore — never by their own
doing," said O'Mara, who continues to handle Zimmerman's defamation
lawsuit against NBC but does not intend to represent him if any charges
result from this investigation. "Now, with everything that has happened
in the past year and a half, it would be very nice if we could let them
separate and divorce as they need to in two separate paths because
they've decided they can't live together."
Zimmerman may be his own worst enemy. Defense attorney Barry Scheck notes that trouble often simply begets more trouble.
"The
pressure from the situation often adds an additional distortion to
their behavior," said Scheck, a co-director of the Innocence Project,
and part of the "dream team" that helped win Simpson's acquittal on
charges of killing his ex-wife and a friend. "So it's a very difficult
situation, and I think the people that have been most successful with it
are the ones that have a clear sense of what they're about and just
stick to it."
McClennan insists that no reputation — not even Zimmerman's — is "irreparably beyond repair."
"In
crisis management ... once you resolve the fundamental issues, you go
into purgatory for a while, where you start building it again and you
start making the positives," he said. "But any one misstep can bring it
right back to the beginning again, and you've got to start building all
over again."
Purgatory,
at least in Catholic theology, suggests a temporary expiation on the
way to a state of grace. Dr. Patrick Williams, a clinical psychologist
and founder of the Institute for Life Coach Training, isn't so sure
Zimmerman is heading in that direction.
Watching Zimmerman leading
up to the trial, Williams said he saw "somebody who thought he did the
community a favor, you know. Like he was some hero."
Williams said
Zimmerman could certainly use some guidance, but the doctor doesn't see
him "as a coachable person" as long as he keeps repeating the same old
patterns.
"You know, the biggest predictor of your future is your
past," he said. "If he doesn't get charged on this case, there'll be
something else. I think people kind of create their reality. And I'm not
sure he's learned to make good choices."
Martin's parents have
declined to weigh in on Zimmerman's continuing legal troubles and what
it all means. But their attorney, Benjamin Crump, noted that they "have
always leaned on their faith through this whole ordeal.
"And they've always said that the killer of their unarmed child would have to answer to a higher authority."
___
Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AllenGBreed.
Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter: http://twitter.com/khightower.
