It's very easy to understand why Beck was fired.

In a separate post here at Mother Jones, my colleague Adam Serwer has flagged two articles
from the Blaze, Glenn Beck's news site, that 1) call Trayvon Martin the
"aggressor," 2) intimate the furor over Martin's death is cooked up by
minority racial activists, and 3) speculate that Martin was suspended
from school for, possibly, maybe, "'armed robbery,' 'arson,'
'kidnapping' or 'sexual battery.'" Adam's piece is a must-read.

The Blaze pieces are written not by a random anonymous commenter but by Mytheos Holt,
a Wesleyan graduate and former speechwriter for Sen. John Barrasso
(R-Wyo.). Holt claims to hail from the mean streets of Big Sur,
California, where 0.3 percent of the population is African-American.

Personal note: I am a product of several mostly-black public schools
in Broward County, the large district adjacent to Miami-Dade. Most of my
friends were products of one of these public school districts. I served
my share of detentions and suspensions. So did my friends—white, black,
Latino, Indian, and "other". I wonder if Holt would assume my friends
and I are armed robbers.

Instead of conjecturing, he could have found the Department of Education report
earlier this month that confirms how black students are punished out of
all proportion to their numbers. He also could have checked state and
county records in Florida for any complaints against Trayvon Martin, as
I've done. Major felonies of the sort Holt alleges would typically be
public records here, even for juvenile offenders. There are no such
records for Martin. You can check for yourself.

Also, it's worth noting that the superintendent of Miami-Dade schools has no problem
with Trayvon Martin's student record...only with "the senseless and
untimely death of one of my students, one of my children, Trayvon
Martin."

Not that this matters: As Adam points out,
even if Martin was a criminal felon—which he apparently wasn't—and even
if George Zimmerman, the shooter, knew his victim's record—which he
obviously didn't—even alleged criminals would have the right not to be
gunned down without cause. For Holt to fantasize otherwise isn't
criminal. But it also isn't reporting, and it's perilously close to
racebaiting.

http://fwd4.me/0wsr