NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana
When I had lunch Wednesday with Ali Akbar, he was talking about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and I had to confess that I didn’t know enough about the case to have an opinion. My main suggestions were (a) we shouldn’t “try the case in the media” by offering opinions based on incomplete knowledge provided by news accounts that might be misleading; and (b) we should urge people to calm down and let the justice system work.

Obviously, it’s a very bad thing for a kid to get shot while walking home from the store with Skittles, and it’s very difficult to understand why the cops didn’t arrest George Zimmerman, but I remember the way left-wing bloggers rushed to judgment in the 2009 Kentucky census worker case, and wouldn’t want to be a part of that kind of “trial by blog” reaction.

Besides, I’m covering a presidential campaign and I don’t need to get bogged down in . . . Wait! What’s this headline that just popped up at the top of Memeorandum?

Plouffe calls out GOP candidates
over Obama reaction
“Reprehensible.” “Irresponsible.” “Hard to stomach.”
White House senior adviser David Plouffe did not mince words Sunday when talking about the reaction by Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to President Barack Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting.
“Those two comments are really irresponsible. I would consider them reprehensible,” Plouffe said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think those comments were really hard to stomach, really, and I guess trying to appeal to people’s worst instincts.” . . .
A somber Obama on Friday commiserated with the Martin family and urged authorities to fully investigate the shooting.
“If I had a son he would look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “I think (his parents) are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we will get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”
Santorum said the president politicized the events, while Gingrich characterized Obama’s comments as “nonsense.”
“What the president of the United States should do is try to bring people together, not use these types of horrible and tragic individual cases to try to drive a wedge in America,” Santorum said Friday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” a radio program.
“Is the president suggesting if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it wouldn’t look like him? That’s just nonsense,” Gingrich said Friday on conservative host Sean Hannity’s radio show, “The Hannity Show.” “I mean dividing this country up, it is a tragedy this young man was shot.”
But Plouffe, who served as Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, said the Republican reaction is evidence of a circus-like primary.
“I don’t think there’s very many people in America that would share that reaction. You know, this Republican primary at some points has been more of a circus show and a clown show,” Plouffe told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

Earth to CNN: David Plouffe is a Democrat. David Plouffe is a top political strategist. David Plouffe thinks it’s “reprehensible” anytime anybody says a negative word about Obama. Also, in case you didn’t notice, David Plouffe is whiter than a slice of Wonder Bread.

At a time like this, does America really need pious partisan sermons from self-righteous white liberals? I don’t think so.

And that is my opinion on the Trayvon Martin case.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy