By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

FIRST ADD, JULY 23, 2013

THE PLANET has learned through sources and confirmed that school committee chairman Alf Barbalunga will not seek re-election this year. Barbalunga also will not be running for any other municipal office. In a brief interview with us, school committeeman Terry Kinnas told THE PLANET that he was “90 percent sure” that he would be seeking re-election to the committee. Kinnas also said that, if re-elected, he would be a candidate for chairman.

Barbalunga is the third member of the six-member committee (not counting the mayor, who is an ex-officio presence) not to re-up for school committee. Jim Conant and Kathy Amuso have both announced intentions to run for an at-large city council seat. Not counting Kinnas, there are presently five school committee candidates. They are incumbents Dan Elias and Kathy Yon, plus first timers Josh Cutler, Brittany Douglas, and Cynthia Taylor.

THE PLANET will have more on this development tomorrow. Once again, you read it here first! Now back to our regularly scheduled column.

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013) — Must have been a slow news weekend. The Boring Broadsheet, a newspaper formerly known as The Berkshire Eagle ran a page 1 Sunday above-the-fold headline and story that tells us of the many demonstrations across the country demanding “justice” following the George Zimmerman verdict of not guilty in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. We thus see the BB caught in the act of being itself, which means stooging for politically correct America.

Zimmerman shot and killed Martin after a confrontation with the teen, in which Martin ultimately got the jump and began pounding Zimmerman’s head into the asphalt. Zimmerman’s lawyers successfully argued that their client behaved lawfully with respect to Florida’s stand-your-ground law.

A judge legally empaneled the jury. Both sides were represented by counsel. The two sides exchanged evidence and used their jury challenges to their best benefit. All witnesses delivered their testimony under oath. All court procedures ensuring a fair trial were observed. Court stenographers recorded every word. Deliberations were done with the most reasonable assurances of impartiality, with cool-headed distance keeping the flames of political correctness, irrationality, and emotion at bay as much as humanly possible. In the end, the jury delivered a verdict of “not guilty.” This verdict validated an oft-maligned (and rightly so) court system by showing the world that evidence, not emotion, would determine the truth. Reason, not race, would lead to the finding of justice.

In short, justice was served.

That’s the essential point to consider in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict. We The People have already been given justice in this case to the extent that our judicial system can help contention sift out the truth of events. Neither divinity nor the fates  grace this nation of laws and its criminal justice system with the rarified state of perfection, but it’s the best system anyone has devised. As the old Defenders TV show used to intone at its beginning: “Democracy is a very bad form of government, but all the others are so much worse.” If you have a better one, THE PLANET is willing to listen.

Martin’s family has a right to grieve. The state has the right to appeal the verdict. They do not have a right to question the service of justice.

This case has been a lightning rod for the racial tensions that still simmer, barely concealed and often not, underneath the sheath-thin fabric of our troubled society and culture — what’s left of them. This case brought President Barack Obama to the lowest and most discredible moment of his presidency.

Obama didn’t do anything to help America, help the Martin family, or help black people when he spoke a few days ago about the racial overtones of the case. That opened the door for Al Sharpton to come to the rescue. Sharpton never misses a chance to feed his massive ego and make a great living by playing the race card all across America. He and Rush Limbaugh make perfect bookends for this once-great nation as it continues to tear itself to pieces over symbols, emblems, badges, and stamps.

The tragic confrontation of these two men, Zimmerman and Martin, fails to register anymore as a real event or a story. It has long since become an allegory — a symbol mistaken for the real thing. It’s as if the driver ignored the hazardous left curve in the road for the traffic sign. No wonder the car failed to negotiate the turn.

Sharpton, who heads an organization with the vague and dubious name of National Action Network,  has no qualms about preying (not “praying”) on the grieving Martin parents. Sharpton organized protests in New York and Miami outside federal court buildings and police stations, demonstrations he wants to repeat in 100 cities in America. Earlier protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco led to outbreaks of violence and arrests.

“A lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush,” Obama said in remarks that, coming from The President of The United States, were incredible. “If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario … both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.” Yes. If the Zimmerman was black and Martin white, there likely wouldn’t have been a whimper of this much beyond the local news.

Sharpton, Obama, and all those who are pressuring the Justice Department to bring a civil rights case against Martin ignore the fact that justice has been served in this case. When the Zimmerman jury prepared the begin their deliberations, the judge made it clear: Zimmerman had no obligation to retreat. He had a “right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believed it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself.”

When Martin jumped Zimmerman and began to smash his head into the unyielding pavement, it is “reasonable” to believe that, in that split-second moment where once must choose among a range of possible actions, Zimmerman believed his life was in danger. The evidence introduced in the trial supported this contention. The evidence, not the politics of race, demanded a verdict of not guilty.

The evidence strongly suggested beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was guilty of nothing but self-defense. Defense attorneys portrayed Zimmerman as a good citizen, a conscientious man, one who was concerned about the betterment of his community. The defense claimed that Martin “viciously attacked” Zimmerman, “sucker punched” him, and began slamming his head into a concrete sidewalk. The evidence supported that portrayal.

The jury got it right, yet large segments of rabble-rousing America wants to use this case to advance their own agendas.

One PLANET correspondent, DAVE, yesterday quoted a BB report of a speech Ward 6 councilor John Krol made at a local gathering: “The only speaker to mention the controversial court decision was City Councilor John Krol during a short speech.” Krol’s comment- “From the national perspective, we heard the President speak yesterday and say we have work to do {on race relations}, When a young African-American happens to wear a hooded sweatshirt while walking in a gated community and can be approached, stalked, attacked and killed and no justice is done, we have work to do. We have a lot of work to do”

Assuming the quote is accurate, Krol is “guilty” of political pandering at best and violating his constitutional oath of office at worst. In between these extremes of indulgence and treason rest an entire series of possibilities, none of which reflect favorably on my politically correct Right Honorable Good Friend. Krol took an oath to uphold the laws of the United States and honor the Constitution. For him to baldly claim “no justice is done” reveals an remarkably oblivious and unlettered disrespect for a verdict determined by a lawfully empaneled jury. Krol was not present in court to hear the evidence, yet, following lock-step in the political correctness demanded by the Al Sharptons and the loons who have hijacked the once-respectable political left, the Ward 6 pretty boy parrots the company line. Ward 6 and the people of Pittsfield deserve better representation than this.

In arriving at a conclusion to this troubling aftermath, here are excerpts of a speech delivered by comedian Bill Cosby, a black man who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is when discussing black youth:

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“Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.” — W. H. Auden, opening line, “The Wanderer.” (1934)

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.