Hey everybody! Did you hear the good news?
Apparently it's perfectly acceptable to kill a person as long as you save a bunch of other people from a car wreck.
That's the message I'm getting from Sanford, Florida, anyway.
Allow me to explain.
This week, we received word that just four days after being found not guilty of murder and manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman -- Martin's confessed killer -- helped pull a Florida couple and their two children from an overturned car in Sanford.
The couple, apparently, had flipped their car at a busy intersection near Interstate 4 and were stranded, upside down, with their children trapped inside, until Zimmerman and another good samaritan pulled them from the wreck.
Why is this important? Well, I'm not exactly sure.
I'll let Mark O'Mara, George Zimmerman's attorney, explain.
"This is quintessential George," O'Mara told Chris Cuomo on CNN's 'Piers Morgan Live.' "This is the person who I knew him to be."
O'Mara said Zimmerman is "Just a guy who's always involved in the community, always willing to, you know, lend a helping hand. And, here we go, four days after the event, something that I could not have planned, but turned out to be just pure George."
So there you have it. According to Mark O'Mara, saving a family of four from an overturned car -- even if you didn't plan it! -- absolves you from killing somebody. At the very least, it makes it a lot better. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the only message I can glean from this latest news coming out of Sanford.
It also helps if you're an all-around nice guy who, you know, is always willing to lend a helping hand in the community.
Forget about the fact that there are plenty of good samaritans who pull people from car wrecks almost every single day, without killing people. For example, there's this guy in Alabama, who pulled an unconscious man from a burning car last Thursday, just one day after George Zimmerman sprung to action in Florida.
There's these people in North Carolina, who pulled a driver from a burning car wreck the week before.
Heck, there's even this guy -- a rookie linebacker with the Tennessee Titans who pulled a woman, her three children, and their dog from a burning car while driving to training camp in Nashville this week.
Just like George Zimmerman, all these people saved other people from burning car wrecks, but you didn't hear about them. Why? Well, unlike George Zimmerman, they didn't kill somebody. So I guess it's not worth a mention.
George Zimmerman is the one good Samaritan who made the conscious decision to kill a kid, and as a result, his attorney -- and the rest of his supporters -- apparently feel the need to defend his honor. They've been very quick to point out this week that, just like a bunch of other people, George Zimmerman is capable of doing good things when he has to.
That's great, and I commend him for that, but you have to ask yourself -- why do these people feel the urge to defend George Zimmerman? Let's keep things in perspective. What these people are basically saying is that George Zimmerman is capable of doing what almost anybody else would do in the exact same emergency situation. Which makes him just like the rest of us.
He also happens to be a guy who killed a kid, which makes him very much unlike the rest of us.
So I guess the question is, do the two balance each other out? I don't think so, but that seems to be the message coming from his supporters.
I don't know George Zimmerman, and I never did. He could be a perfectly lovely, friendly, kind-hearted man who happened to make a bad decision on the night of February 26, 2012. That decision resulted in the death of an innocent teenager. He will have to live with that for the rest of his life, and no amount of exaggerated, epic tales of heroism will change that.
In the meantime, let's not build him up into something he isn't. George Zimmerman is a guy who pulled some people from a car wreck. Big deal; people do it every day. He also happens to be a guy who killed a kid for walking down a street. That is a big deal, and not everybody does that.
I don't think the two actions balance each other out, but apparently, depending on whom you talk to, if you pull a few people from a SUV, you'll forever be remembered as a nice guy who was always willing to lend a helping hand, regardless of how many people you kill.
Just ask Mark O'Mara.