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It’s definitely real. Check out the linked article. Mr. Lowell comes from a long line of civil rights crusaders and is convinced that the Zimmerman-Martin matter is a civil rights issue.

I honestly feel that so many of these guys (Lowell, Sharpton, Ben Jealous, and so on) are bitter that they weren’t around when there were actual civil rights issues to fight for. So, today, they just make up civil rights issues today so that they can fashion themselves as some sort of civil rights leader, pretend that they’re more moral than others, and pat themselves on the back and blow-up their importance in their head.

I’m sure you’ve hit on a very important point but I would add to your point that the idea of “history as myth” is also part of this whole sorry tale. Probably since the days of the cave men, humans have been taking some event that actually happened and then embellished it for purposes of mythmaking to the point where it no longer had any factual resemblance to the original facts.

Just yesterday while going through the checkout line there’s a Time Magazine with one of those Zeus-like photos of MLK and the headline was “Founding Father”. Give me a break.

Human beings need myths - they provide a rallying point and a way of capturing a certain ideology or worldview. And of course the media is only too happy to play the role of the amplifier and the repeater.

Through the lens of the internet and the twittersphere we are literally watching the creation of a myth just like the Nazis did with Horst Wessel.