Well ,this has been an entertaining thread to catch up on. We have the following necessary ingredients for any thread on the Dope.
[ul]
[li]a smell of racism[/li][li]a smattering of ageism[/li][li]generational differences[/li][li]culture clash[/li][li]pacifist thinking[/li][li]eye for eye thinking[/li][li]assumptions[/li][li]nigger versus cracker[/li][li]people getting offended over stuff[/li][li]wallowing in self-righteousness[/li][li]doubt about version of facts[/li][li]questioning of OP motives for even starting this[/li][li]Armchair quarterbacking[/li][/ul]
God, we can wallow in it, can’t we? Did enjoy the Clockwork Orange aside, I must confess. A little of the old ultraviolence is always a pleasant thing.
Ducati, I don’t have any issue with what went down. Were there other ways to handle it? Maybe.
But for those coming in here crying about ruining a childs life, wow, just wow. You need to take a look around at what a 18-20 year old kid who insists on being a punk looks like these days. That’s TJ Lane in the pic, currently serving three life sentences. 17 years old at the time of the crime. Child my ass.
I don’t believe it is a good vs. evil story and I even said the OP was overly aggressive when he first confronted to other table. You could even argue that maybe the punk thought he was defending himself when ducati approached him. However the fact remains:
ducati was walking away when he had a drink thrown on him. I don’t know how telling someone to shut up and then later being non-confrontational justifies being assaulted either by drink or fist. So here’s the situation - both were assholes but the punk escalated it and made it physical. That is the key difference. Honestly, I think ducati handled himself well. Many people would justifiably physically confront the jerk in the heat of the moment thinking they are being attack and need to defend themselves. Kind of like acting before thinking through the situation.
The police charged the punks and not ducati. Given the witnesses for the punks (friends), ducati (his dining party) and the neutral observers, I would believe that if there were any question of who did what that both would have gone downtown.
You’ll notice most of the support for ducati is from people who believe that Americans are not held responsible for their actions. The opposite side does not think the punks should be held responsible for their actions. They are not kids as they were over 18 and therefore legally and according to our social contract morally responsible for their choices. Some said that getting charged ruined their livee. Well guess what buttercup, if you commit a felony like assault or threatening someones life, you life gets ruined. Tough shit.
4a) This discussion reminds me a lot of the thread on whether or not harrassing someone deserves a physical reaction. My position was when someone taunts you to get a physical reaction, they should not be surprised when they get punched in the nose. This was countered by a group that pointed out legally words are non-hurtful and that it is illegal to counter taunts with physicality.
4b) IMHO, bullying is a PHYSICAL attack. Think about when you are humiliated or threatened. Isn’t there a physical change? Don’t you get flushed and breath harder? Don’t we consider assault a crime even if just words? Didn’t SCOTUS recognize that words alone can inflict damage in Chaplinsky v. Hew Hampshire? Admittedly, you could say that this argument actually goes against ducati for starting the fight by how he talked to the other table; but you cannot ignore the fact that the drink “spillage” was not a continuation of that. If ducati said what he did and the guy threw his drink and said “Shut up old man.” then your point would be valid. The jerk restarted the argument and made it physical. Why should ducati have ignored it.
What moral standard is there that we must walk away from such a situation. Are we morally obligated to turn the other cheek when someone throws a drink on us? Do we now believe that there should be no consequences for our actions? Why are the jerks given a pass for their action while ducati is not? Look, if you want to say that as aggressors both ducati and the punk deserve to have spent the night in jail, I may not agree but I’ll respect you opinion because it is at least consistent. My problem is with people condemning ducati’s actions while simultaneously condoning the action of the punk. I just cannot see that logic.
I think you can add a few bullet points to your list of stupid shit common to Dope threads:[ul]• desperate and sad examples of illogical thinking
• way over the top overgeneralizations (e.g. “You know who else looked different and spilled a drink on someone? Hitler and TJ Lane!”)[/ul]For your point to be relevant, there has to be some commonality, right? You have one teenager who is giving the finger in a picture. He also was convicted of a high school shooting resulting in three life sentences.
You have an anecdote of some presumed teenager swearing and pretending to accidentally spill a drink on someone.
Are you saying that all teenagers are high school shooters? Perhaps the fact that you mentioned looks will clarity your logic. So, all teenagers who look … are murderers?
Nope, not following the logic here. Maybe if some guy in a restaurant had made TJ Lane cry, he would have changed his life? Is that it?
Not Hitler, but you missed my point with choosing that pic. TJ Lane looks like any other teenager. Nothing “different” about his looks. There’s your commonality, he’s a typical looking angry teenager. I don’t happen to have a pic of the exact guys Ducati encountered, do you? If so, feel free to post it.
Not saying all angry teenagers are killers, but they are not babyfaced innocent children either.
[QUOTE=leftfield6]
TJ Lane looks like any other teenager. Nothing “different” about his looks.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think Ducati would have approached a TJ Lane looking kid the same way. He had already made of his mind that they were no good piece of shit thugs before they ever began swearing. This is how he described them in the OP.
[QUOTE=Ducati]
Eventually, the punk teen smokers I had noticed outside came inside and sat behind me to my right. I gave them a passing glance, but no more. Tats, piercings, big ass gauges;
[/QUOTE]
Then he goes on to say:
[QUOTE=Ducati]
Maybe you don’t want to judge people by their appearance, and that’s OK. It works for me, and I got exactly what I expected
[/QUOTE]
So it’s pretty obvious to me that he frequently judges others by appearance. That’s fine, but he should be careful because some really very bad people don’t have any obvious telltale signs of their evil intent like “big ass gauges”, which everyone knows means you’re a bad person.
I’ve encountered punkish behavior like this a lot. I’m a small woman, but I find if I approach people as if they are actual humans and not dehumanized stereotypes and let them know that my kids can hear them, they usually tone it down. I was young once, and loud, and rebellious. No bigs, not like I gotta throw down or anything.
This isn’t the stereotype of a hood guy that I’m familiar with. I live is SW Atlanta - what you might call “the hood”.
Tats, yes. Ear piercings, yep.
The kids with nose and other piercings that I meet tend to be dancers or poets or writers. The college students making a point about their independence.
Gauges - I never see them in “the hood”. I take the train every day and have yet to see the type of aggressive to an adult type of behavior you describe taken by a kid with a gauge.
I’ve seen young Black men with gauges working as baristas in The Village and similar neighborhoods in other cities. They run with a mixed crowd. They tend to be politically active and readers of sci-fi.
Black skater guys that I’ve met (not in the hood) have been pretty cool to me. Yeah, skater guys with tats and piercings and gauges have been polite as possible to me. I’ve had to ask them to be cool with language on occasion, and no one has ever challenged me.
Why?
I was polite to them. I didn’t assume that they were anything besides rambunctious young folks, out of the eye of their parents and trying to impress young girls. Yeah the um…regular young girls.
You describe them with contempt and your first words to them were disrespectful.
I think that you’re a bully and that you embarrassed your kid just to prove to yourself that you still have it.
Since you quoted me I’ll assume that was directed at me.
I didn’t wrist-twist anyone. I raised my child to respect others so it wouldn’t happen to her but if it did I would tell her she had it coming.
Also, your version conveniently leaves out the shoving. But don’t let the facts ruin your good pissy fit.
That said now that I’ve gone back and read some of the OP’s other stories and threads (dogs, Home Depot), it appears he might looking to be in the wrong so he can right the situation. I still think the boys got what they deserve.
