The death of Nelson Mandela has prompted an outpouring of praise from media and global leaders for the life and career of South Africa's first black president.
But an author who spoke with WND said the legacy of the man beloved worldwide as "Madiba" is mixed.
Jack Cashill, whose most recent book, "If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman," deals with the racially charged Trayvon Martin case, believes there's a simple reason why Mandela has received so much adoring coverage.
"It has everything to do with race. We know in Mandela's history that half of it was fairly appalling, but the other half was pretty noble," Cashill told WND.
Cashill believes that the negative part of Mandela's life has been entirely overlooked by establishment media, which tends to filter out anything that conflict with its view of the world. He says the Mandela reporting is similar to how Trayvon Martin was "whitewashed" in the media.
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"The parallel is that the media won't tell an honest story about a black individual who advances a leftist agenda. If you are black and if you advance the progressive agenda anywhere in the world, you can expect a media treatment that borders on the absurd," Cashill declared.
The media, according to Cashill, would use the death of Mandela to further its own interests.
"I knew that when he died, the media would explode in this orgasm of self-righteousness and self-described virtue," he said.
"It was such an easy thing for the left to do to make themselves feel good. It has nothing to do with the future of South Africa, it has little to do with the history of Nelson Mandela, it has everything to do with how they get to feel about themselves for one more weekend," Cashill said.
To Cashill, the current portrayal of Mandela is an extension of the mentality that motivated many white liberals to oppose apartheid in the 1980s.
"It was a way for white people to encase themselves in what the black author Shelby Steele called the 'zone of decency' where they could show they were morally superior to other white people. By being opposed to apartheid, it gave you a chance to flex your civil rights credentials without having to do anything about it except be opposed to it," Cashill explained.
While he believes that the apartheid system that Mandela helped topple was wrong, Cashill pointed out the current state of South Africa is very troubling. It's another issue that the media have refused to cover in the wake of the famed leader's passing, he said.
"Apartheid was unsustainable and in many ways immoral, but at the same time, it was the most functional society in sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of it, the status quo cannot hold, South Africa will not improve as a society. It's sort of like 'you reap what you sow,'" Cashill said.
"I think you're looking at a nation very much like contemporary Detroit – whites flee, corrupt black progressive officials take power and abuse their power, the rule of law breaks down, and the economy begins to erode."
He believes that the country's future should not be destroyed for South Africa's past sins.
"Does a country deserve ruin? Does civil justice deserve to be destroyed? No. You cannot punish innocent people for what someone did in the past," the author said.
In Cashill's opinion, it's probably the last time the Western media will grant extensive coverage to the African nation, because future news likely will contradict the "progressive agenda."
"This is it for South Africa, because whatever happens now in South Africa will not advance the progressive agenda, because it will be bad – you can't talk about a collapsing economy, whites being murdered, incredibly high rates of rape, and the necklacing of black immigrants and political enemies. This is the last bit of celebratory news that South Africa will produce in our lifetimes," Cashill predicted.
In "If I Had A Son," Jack Cashill tells the inside story of how, as the result of a tragic encounter with troubled 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the media turned George Zimmerman into a white racist vigilante, "the most hated man in America."
"If I Had A Son" tells how for the first time in the history of American jurisprudence, a state government, the U.S. Department of Justice, the White House, the major media, the entertainment industry and the vestiges of the civil rights movement conspired to put an innocent man in prison for the rest of his life.
All that stood between Zimmerman and lifetime internment were two folksy local lawyers, their aides and some very dedicated citizen journalists, most notably an unpaid handful of truth seekers at the blogging collective known as the Conservative Treehouse. "If I Had A Son" takes an inside look at this unprecedented battle formation.
It tells the story, too, of the six stalwart female jurors who ignored the enormous pressure mounting around them and preserved America's belief in its judicial system.
In the wake of the verdict, skeptics in the Martin camp claimed that the State of Florida did not play to win. In the course of his research, Cashill came across some startling evidence which suggests the skeptics may indeed be right.
"If I Had A Son" is the one and only comprehensive look at the most politically significant trial in decades.
See Cashill's comments on his investigation of the Martin case:
First video:
Second video: