“I’m not a crazy person, I’m a very well-educated person.” Hoo boy. Drunk or crazy is my assessment. Maybe both!
I can’t get too worked up about this. A woman acted like a jerk, someone filmed it, everyone will forget by next week. I thought I heard her say, “Do you know how often I ride this train?” which makes me think that she wasn’t being horribly loud, but was a regular commuter and annoyed everyone a little bit everyday until someone finally said something.
Don’t want to hijack, but I’m pretty sure that it’s legal to drink openly on NJ Transit. It’s definitely legal on Metro North and LIRR (they actually have beer carts on the station platforms now). Hell, you can walk around the commuter terminal in Penn Station with an open beer.
My opinion too!
Hmm. Quite possible that it was legal and I just didn’t know. I know things are more lax on commuter trains than subways, but I didn’t know you could get your drink on. Damn. All those missed opportunities to drown my sorrows in a big box of wine. All the drunken grad-school tirades that could have been had!
Thinking about it a bit more, I sure am glad no one has ever filmed ME acting like a jerk (it has happened once or twice in real life). I don’t think I ever got that out of hand, but I have had a few less than shining moments, and to come home and see it posted on Youtube - yikes.
mhendo’s point is exactly how I felt about, say, Rebecca Black. I find it really hard to stay mad at someone when other people are attacking them and doing worse thing to them.
Since I’m not the only one, has this ever been exploited in recent memory? Someone does something and gets a small backlash, so they make up someone else who attacks them with a far worse response?
Actually, I wouldn’t have even commented Hippy Hollow had cut to the chase and said ‘Indian’ as opposed to the generalized ‘Asian’. Russians are Asians as well, but does anyone refer to them as Asian? Very few Americans mistake ‘Indian’ for Native American, these days. It’s usually better to be specific.
That said…
Oh, if you’re talking about the comments, I have nothing to say about that. You pretty much covered it in the passage I bolded. If you didn’t think there was racial subtext in the encounter between the conductor and the passenger, I won’t disagree with you. If you did, I didn’t see it.
I’ve watched it again and she’s an obnoxious piece of shit in this video. I hope she’s embarrassed enough to have learned something from it. I could have been willing to buy that she was trying to defend herself if she hadn’t repeatedly and loudly interrupted the conductor and waited her goddamned turn to tell her side. But she didn’t. Don’t they teach you that in kindergarten? Maybe she should go back to her prestigious school and learn some manners.
Don’t you mean, “She’s Desi, probably of Indian descent?” “Desi” is used by Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankans, in other words, pretty much all South Asians are Desis.
What does this even mean? She doesn’t look like the type of person to be an asshole on the phone in public? What is the “type” of person who would do that? Because in my experience it has absolutely been “educated” and usually snooty women, whose conversations are very much more important than yours. They tend to act just like that women acted, in my opinion.
Offending people with bad language in a public place? Getting irrationally angry and saying some stupid things? Clearly this woman is a vile, wretched, bitch of a bitch of whom such wicked invidiousness has rarely been matched. What shall we do with such a villain?
First, we shall make her life a living hell. Never again shall she ride the subway, nay, show her face in public. She shall forever be ‘that classist train biyatch.’ After she has been suitably shamed and ruined, then burn her! Burn her and her rat-spawn down to the seventh generation. Only then will justice be served.
One of the things that any reasonably-socialized person learns fairly early is that any time that you are sharing a confined space with others there’s an obligation to moderate your behavior in such a way as to be as unobtrusive as possible.
The worst sort of cellphone abusers are the ones that aren’t merely unobservant about this point and careless as a consequence, but who actively treat the people around them as an audience, so that you have the impression that the person is projecting their conversation on purpose under the misapprehension that the people around them are bound to be impressed.
This behaviour is typically found in very young people who are very keen on broadcasting to everyone within earshot that they and (and to some degree their peers) are a) popular b) hard and dangerous c) physically active d) sexually active e) sophisticated enough to use alcohol or drugs f) involved in the creative arts g) some combination of these attributes. They remain blissfully unaware that (further to not being impressed at all by the performance) most of their unwilling audience feels only exasperating irritation coloured with no more personal feeling than pity and contempt, perhaps tinged with embarrassment for those unfortunate enough to have reliable memories of some incident in bygone years when they were fifteen and compelled by hormones and naivete to act like prats in public.
Occasionally, this sort of behavior persists in adults - and in adults it is especially difficult to take, because you can’t even sit there and talk yourself down with “Oh, the poor dear, it has no idea how it’s embarrassing itself. Well, it’ll grow out of it.” You just sit there with your blood boiling because FOR CHRIST’S SAKE YOU’RE AN ADULT WHY CAN’T YOU GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER ENOUGH TO BEHAVE IN PUBLIC GOD DAMN IT AND DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOUR FELLOW TRAIN RIDERS THINK YOU’RE HOT SHIT BECAUSE YOU’RE TRADING PENNY STOCKS? DON’T YOU KNOW THAT’S PATHETIC? <Ahem.>
Anyway, we don’t (yet) know the details of the conversation that brought the heat down on her, but from her demeanor I am 100% confident about sticking her in the pigeon-hole with these worst offenders. I will bet anything that she wasn’t having an oblivious (forgot where I was!) conversation - the vibe I get was that she was laying it on.
Because I get this vibe, I don’t have any hesitation about her public humiliation. Then again, the TransLink company never replies to the letters I send them about how rude behaviour on public transit would taper off sharply if they’d just toughen up a bit and drag a some of the offenders for a few blocks behind the bus now and again, as an example. Just a few blocks.
I’m surprised the “crazy” theory has gotten so little play. This woman’s behavior is now considered assholish but still “normal” by American standards? Yikes.
I am not a mental health professional, but in the 1970s in America I spent a fair bit of time with people who were considered to have significant mental health impairments, through volunteer activities at a state mental hospital and a drop-in social center for clients of a mental health facility. I’ve also helped people in assisted living situations (due to mental health issues) with shopping, etc.
This woman’s behavior strikes me as very similar to some of the acting out I saw in those situations. Speaking informally, I would say she is indeed “crazy.”
She’s not crazy! You’re the one that’s crazy!
All she wanted was down to Poughkeepsie.
No. I mean she is Indian, but not necessarily born or raised there. Desi, as my Indian colleagues use the term, means that she is of Indian extraction but not born there - the child of immigrants or second-generation American.
I used Asian because I didn’t know her national origin until later when it was confirmed (by name and a friend’s reference) that she was Indian. She could have been Sri Lankan, Pakistani, etc. and I didn’t want to get it wrong. As someone who has pretty extensive coursework and experience supervising dissertations on South Asians, I can assure you that the research literature refers to folks from the subcontinent as “Asians.” The master work on Asian immigration, Ron Takaki’s Strangers from Another Shore, includes Indians, Pakistanis, and Nepalese along with Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Hawaiians, to name a few.
We’re probably downplaying it because she said, “I’m not a crazy person! I’m well-educated!” She wouldn’t lie about that, would she? 
Yeah, it has more to do with how this thing went viral. I think some people delight in seeing someone from the “model minority” getting embarrassed and behaving badly. (Incidentally, I have a student working on a dissertation on the model minority myth as it pertains to South Asians - people sometimes think it just refers to East Asians.)
I don’t think race played as big a role as class. People are really tired of the sense of entitlement that some people give off and I think her rant strikes that nerve.
Both would be (and are) incorrect uses of the term “desi”.
Au contraire, I am a graduate of some very well-respected institutions of higher learning.