America gripped by second night of fury over not guilty verdict for neighbourhood watch man who shot black teenager armed only with a bag of Skittles

A quartet of low level  UK Daily Mail hacks who appear to get paid for cutting and pasting “human interest” stories from the US media could not resist parroting the “skittles” meme so beloved of those who portray Trayvon Martin as just some innocent kid walking along the street with a packet of sweets.

In a rather unbalanced piece which veers dangerously near to sympathising with  the “miscarriage of justice” mantra being orchestrated by both the radical left and the liberal elite there is, unsurprisingly, no reference to the longstanding  pre trial campaign mischaracterising and denigrating George Zimmerman waged by the establishment media.

Initially seized upon by the Democrats as an opportunity to kickstart Obama’s 2012 campaign it has now been hijacked not just by old time race card hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton but also by the tarnished apparatchiks of the Obama administration who see it as a useful tool to divert attention from their own lacklustre performance.

But skittles as a symbol of innocence might not be such the match winning factor that the shallow Mail scribblers obviously hoped for. We know that Martin’s high school career was not particularly trouble free and that he might well have not been unfamiliar with marijuana. It has also been suggested that the possession of skittles and fruit juice are two thirds of the recipe for something a little more streetworthy.

Not that the Mail and others would allow a burgeoning myth to be deflated by a cooler appraisal of events. After all  we all remember how that Tawana Brawley proved such a useful martyr for Al Sharpton…