SANFORD -- You've no doubt heard the catch phrase, "I am Trayvon Martin." Well, try this one on for size: "I am Mark O'Mara."
I am the sharp dressed middle-age (and polished) attorney annointed by the press as a star compared to the bozos who dumped Mr. Zimmerman, villified in the black community as a racist for shooting an unarmed African-American teen and glorified by gun-rights empowered by politicians to "stand their ground."
The latter is a a stand even O'Mara has hinted he may not use to defend against the fire-breathing special prosecutor intent on treating a 12-year-old as an "adult" in a murder case that reinforces her "tough-on-crime" personna.
Let me dare to put this out there: Is Mark O'Mara is a hypocrite for talking a judge into sealing his publicly-demonized client because as he put it, he wants the case tried in front of a jury and not in the media?
I ask this because what did O'Mara do just a few hours later? He appeared "via satellite" on CNN's "360 with Anderson Cooper" and did precisely the opposite of what he told the judge: He talked about the case. He seized the moment to "humanize" his client, to generate sympathy.
Cooper, to his credit, seized the moment with insightful questions, but he never addressed the irony of the day from a journalism point of view. Was O'Mara being hypocritical by asking a judge to seal his client's public file from the press and then going on CNN and talking about the case? And what does that say about the journalism integrity of CNN or MSNBC or the other cable giants that allowed O'Mara to have his cake and eat it, too?
And even asa judge was scheduled to hear a media lawsuit to unseal Zimmerman's file led by the Miami Herald and other Florida media outlets, O'Mara has been a regular on Cable news, even acknowledging Zimmerman's impromptu website generated a couple hundred thousand. The judge is expected to focus on the latter first.