Ahh, the grandness of being an on-air celebrity. They can say a lot of things! And apparently, they feel they can say it without impunity.

Not today, Chunga. Not today.

You see, Jimmy Chunga’s take on this whole Trayvon Martin case is that “There isn’t any evidence” pointing either way, so he feels that Mr. Zimmerman should be left alone–have the media spotlight taken off of him. After all, this is AMERICA! LAND OF THE FREE! Innocent until proven guilty, right?! Leave him be in peace! You have no evidence against him, so leave him alone.

Please. Are you serious? No one buys that schlock anymore.

Come on …

Thus was Chunga’s stand: there’s no evidence against Zimmerman, so he’s innocent. Ignore the fact that the girl with whom Trayvon was chatting over the phone said the he told her that he was being followed. Ignore the fact that the surveillance cameras show NO blood on Zimmerman ANYwhere after shooting Trayvon (Zimmerman claimed that he was punched in the noes and hit on the back of the head).

Chunga made it perfectly clear how uninformed he actually is about the case to his audience before he opened up the phone lines for the wildly popular, “What’s happening hot stuff?” segment. I had an opinion and wanted to weigh in. After a few attempts to get through that were met with busy signals, indeed–I got through.

I presented my argument. This country does *not* assume innocent until proven guilty: quite the opposite. If such were the case, there would be no need for bail, or bail bondsmen, or the like. The point of bail is to pay into a system that has already fingered you as a guilty party, but if you pay us X amount of dollars, we’ll assume you’re innocent. Really? THAT’S considered “innocent until proven guilty? What a facade. And what about those who don’t make bail, or aren’t offered bail? Where’s the innocent until proven guilty there? Again, I reference Josh Powell. No one assumes he’s innocent, despite the fact that there’s literally no hard evidence–only circumstantial.

I presented my argument. He cut me off and said that “No–it’s better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man sit in jail,” and so on and so forth. “This country was founded on the principle of innocence until proven guilty! We need to get back to that!” I countered with there is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty and I used a very first-hand experience to get to my point. Obviously, I didn’t give minute details, but in a broad sense, I explained that my wife and I were no longer allowed to do certain things for the state because of a case that was brought against me. That civil case never even got to go to trial because we were strong-armed into dropping our civil suit against the state … BY THE STATE. In other words, the state threatened to press criminal charges and drag us through a criminal trial, even though they knew good and well that they didn’t have enough evidence to every actually win … but they also knew that strong-arming me into dropping the civil suit by using the threat of criminal charges should be enough to get us to drop our case. And ya know what? It worked. Know why? Because I do not trust the justice system. I have family that works in law. I was strongly advised to take the deal and let this whole issue go because trials by jury can and do go wrong–very, very wrong. That is coming from within the legal system, people–not some radio DJ with a semi-popular morning show. “Drop the case. You do not want this to go to trial. Juries get it wrong. A lot. If they’re offering to drop any possible criminal charges by you dropping the civil suit, take it.”

So now we go back to the call-in show. Mr. Chunga went on to call my argument “dumb,” and then hung up on me. It gets better. He told his audience after he hung up on me that I was just “grand standing because [I’m] pissed off about my case,” leaving me no chance to refute or explain anything.

Here’s what I think:

1. Jimmy Chunga does not believe, nor does he practice, what he spouts. If he did, he would not have said that I was just “grandstanding.” Presenting an opposing idea based upon personal experience is not “grandstanding”–it’s stating fact. Cold, hard, undisputable fact. Not facts that *Chunga* had, but facts nonetheless. Yet this man, on air, decided within our 30-second call that my idea is “dumb” and that I was grandstanding because I was pissed off. Sounds an awful lot like judging without facts, to me. Jumping to conclusions that aren’t accurate, based on the fact that he has no facts … which is exactly what he’s preaching against.

2. EVERYone wants to point to Josh Powell as having murdered his wife, Susan, despite any hard, cold evidence to support the claim, yet EVERYONE assumes that he did it. The man even killed his own kids and himself to keep his in-laws from having custody of the two boys. But he wasn’t tried in an actual court of law, so he must be innocent, right?! Right …?

3. Chunga couldn’t be bothered to discuss or debate without using name-calling as part of his argument. “Your idea is dumb.” Wow. It doesn’t get any more childish or immature than that. Not to mention he presented no facts for showing how great this American court and justice system is. All he could do is sling mud. Here’s an idea, Chunga: run for office. That’s what the best politicians do, right? Call names and make personal attacks? Go for it! New Mayor of Salt Lake City!! JIMMY CHUNGA!!

What’s really sad is that I really like his show. I like the fact that he has a more conservative slant than do other stations, say, in the 96-97 wavelength. On principle, he and I see more eye to eye than we don’t. But this … calling someone’s idea’s dumb and assuming that someone is just grandstanding for the sake of piss-offed-ness without knowing a single thing about the person … while claiming that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and that we must not judge?! They hypocricy is just too great to ignore. Sorry, Chunga, but you lost a listener today. Not that you care.