Mob acts against innocent bystander
June 21, 2007 3:27 PM   Subscribe

Life sadly imitates art in Austin, Texas. Followup. [Sorry, initial link may require free registration.]
posted by ubiquity (38 comments total)
 
Unfortunately, the real story is much sadder and more tragic that some ridiculous television show plot line.

P.S. CSI is not "art".
posted by Brittanie at 3:31 PM on June 21, 2007


My least favorite thing in the world is when something tragic or unusual happens and someone says, "That's just like something I saw on TV!" and then proceeds to tell me all about it. Or, "That was just like in a movie!" as if that's some sort of compliment, instead of evidence that all that person's thoughts are mediated through entertainment.

Life is wild at heart and weird on top. Your "art" reflects this but will never capture it, and I hope none of us ever has to endure anything as tragic as the event described here.
posted by hermitosis at 3:46 PM on June 21, 2007 [1 favorite]


I'd like to make a request... if certain other CSI episodes end up happening, let's not fpp them. Okey doke?
posted by miss lynnster at 3:47 PM on June 21, 2007


The press is always eager to lap up a story involving blacks behaving badly en masse, but if you wait a couple days and check again, the initial story is often not correct (see every single story about Katrina that was published in the first week after the disaster).
posted by Falconetti at 3:52 PM on June 21, 2007


Falconetti, I totally agree; when the same exact thing happened last week in Brentwood but it was just a group of white people beating an innocent citizen to death the photo caption in the newspaper headline read "Whitey Up To His Usual Amusing Hijinks Again."
posted by jonson at 4:08 PM on June 21, 2007


if you wait a couple days and check again, the initial story is often not correct

Doesn't that apply to nearly every story that makes you go "WTF?" these days???
posted by wendell at 4:09 PM on June 21, 2007


Miss Lynnster, c'mon, furries are fun.

A friend's somewhat crotchety, still-not-quite-okay-with-Vatican-II mother was watching CSI when that episode came on. She said, "John, fetch me the shotgun out of the closet. I have officially lived too long." This is the same woman who said, "Ugh, space lesbians. You'd think they'd have a pill for that by now," upon seeing the last scene of "The Host" in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

You just need to get in touch with your inner Foxy Kitty, for some yiffing.
posted by adipocere at 4:17 PM on June 21, 2007 [2 favorites]


The press is always eager to lap up a story involving blacks behaving badly en masse

Oh, please. Pointless drivel. Half the MeFi's think the media guys are WASPy corporate Republican drones with an agenda. The other half thinks the media guys are hippy vegan Commie libruls with an agenda. And both think that there's an overarching editorial requirement for sensationalism, as if "writing salacious, half-truthful headlines" is literally spelled out in your job description.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:21 PM on June 21, 2007 [1 favorite]


"The press is always eager to lap up a story involving blacks behaving badly en masse"

That's funny, because I can't tell you how many versions of this story I've read that left out race, although it is relevant in this case. And this story has been out more than a couple of days now, and I don't think much has changed, except for some earlier reports that made it look like it happened in the context of the Juneteenth celebration down the street.

A guy was stomped to death, but let's not have an honest discussion about the role race played, because everybody knows that the only race problem we have is black and white.
posted by 2sheets at 4:24 PM on June 21, 2007 [2 favorites]


Yeah, my knee jerks as uncontrollably as most, but I'm not sure that the story would have been received less thirstily if the mob was white or brown or whatever. As others have said, I agree that 'mob wrongly kills individual' is the part that excites, beyond that, people are prone to paint their agendas and stereotypes onto any available surface.

Here's another angle: I was driving someone to the airport today and he excitedly told me that hundreds, possibly thousands of rednecks attacked and beat a Mexican to death. You can guess which race he's generally more inclined to blame and which he favors and you'd be right. Which is why I shook my head but didn't engage, I figured the truth wasn't along for the ride.
posted by lazymonster at 4:30 PM on June 21, 2007


Also, living in this town, I can tell you that this kind of thing is fucking crazy unusual. I think the reporting is so breathless because this kind of shit just does not happen in Austin.
posted by mckenney at 4:45 PM on June 21, 2007


I couldn't care less about the race angle (though I know it's important) I'm just appalled by the mob mentality part. It comes up every now and again and I'm always revolted by how quickly humans can devolve from sentient creatures who ostensibly know right from wrong, into mindless embodiements of aggression.

And the story just gets worse and worse, the guy wasn't even the driver, and the kid wasn't actually hurt! They beat this poor guy to death over nothing!

*shudders*

Humans fucking suck sometimes.
posted by quin at 4:51 PM on June 21, 2007 [1 favorite]


The press is always eager to lap up a story involving blacks behaving badly en masse

Exactly, and stories about crowds of whites beating people to death are completely ignored.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 4:55 PM on June 21, 2007


"My least favorite thing in the world is when something tragic or unusual happens and someone says, "That's just like something I saw on TV!" and then proceeds to tell me all about it. Or, "That was just like in a movie!" as if that's some sort of compliment, instead of evidence that all that person's thoughts are mediated through entertainment.

Life is wild at heart and weird on top. Your "art" reflects this but will never capture it, and I hope none of us ever has to endure anything as tragic as the event described here."

I wish I could favorite this a million times. This is, actually, one of the things that pulled me to journalism over creative writing. You get to write about the craziest shit, and people have to believe you because it's true!

And the point about mediated experience is excellent as well. This is the type of thing that I would high-five over.

"And both think that there's an overarching editorial requirement for sensationalism, as if "writing salacious, half-truthful headlines" is literally spelled out in your job description."

I can tell you with all honesty that headline writers do think "ZING!" when they get a good one.
posted by klangklangston at 5:22 PM on June 21, 2007


The first time I heard about this was a brief snippet on an lcd screen mounted in an elevator. It said nothing about race and the times I've heard about it since were the same. This is the first time I heard that it was an indeterminate number of one ethnicity beating on someone of another ethnicity.

That said, I'm sure there are reporters who when called by a source about an event such as this go, "Waitwaitwait. Were they black?" There are people like that in the world and to assume they don't work in journalism is silly. But to say that the media loves to lap up stories about blacks behaving badly implies that journalists are overwhelmingly made up of this type of person, which seems equally silly. No one can speak to the natures of the owners of the papers and networks beyond a certain point, but where the journalists are concerned I think you'll find a yen for sensationalism more than a yen to paint minorities in a bad light.
posted by shmegegge at 5:44 PM on June 21, 2007


I can tell you with all honesty that headline writers do think "ZING!" when they get a good one.

When you get out of school, you'll realize the ZING comes when you have a snappy-yet-accurate headline fitting the available space, on deadline that makes people pick up the paper and read the article. "Headless body in topless bar" and all that.

It's not "ZING-boy-did-I-ever-bend-the-rules-so-as-to-further-my-political-agenda."

But if you really believe that ... if you're so far into the conspiracy dunce corner ... well, nobody can help you.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:47 PM on June 21, 2007


Well, I have been raked over the coals about my comment, but I still stand by it. I don't think the media is some racist cabal, it is just the type of story that fits into a convenient frame and the media is more likely to believe it and promulgate it. The stories that came out of Katrina during the first week were almost all false or highly misleading and I truly think that if the vast majority of the refugees were white, the media wouldn't have been so quick to assume that babies were being raped in the Superdome and that people were firing guns at helicopters trying to save them.

I also don't see how the media leaving out race, when it is otherwise clear that it was a black celebration, really makes any difference. It just makes it even more annoying that the media play coy about race, but at the same time report that hundreds of "people" at a Juneteenth celebration went berserk and killed a guy when that did not happen whatsoever.

I didn't mean to imply that the media does this only about stories concerning black people, that is but a subset of the larger problem, which manifests itself it a myriad of ways. wendell is right that this is the same thing that happens with every "WTF" story in the news.
posted by Falconetti at 7:02 PM on June 21, 2007


Also, to have some factual support for my claims:

1. A mug shot of a Black defendant is 4 times more likely to appear in a local television news report than of a White defendant.

2. The accused is 2 times more likely to be shown physically restrained in a local television news report than when the accused is White.

3. The name of the accused is 2 times more likely to be shown on screen in a local TV news report if the defendant is Black, rather than White.

4. Even though whites make up the majority of the poor in America, the news media portrays more poor people as black. Photo editors at leading news magazines, when polled, had false impressions about the race composition of the poor.

5. Blacks are overrepresented as perpetrators on local news in comparison to actual crime reports.

Claims 1-3: The Black Image in the White Mind by Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki

Claim 4: "Media Put Black Face on Poverty" by Gregory Freeman in the St. Louis Journalism Review (1997)

Claim 5: "The Portrayal of Race and Crime on Television Network News by Travis Dixon in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (2003)
posted by Falconetti at 7:25 PM on June 21, 2007


We need to remove the animals from our community. Those people who don't treat others humanely have to be removed.
posted by ColdChef at 9:07 PM on June 21, 2007


"When you get out of school, you'll realize the ZING comes when you have a snappy-yet-accurate headline fitting the available space, on deadline that makes people pick up the paper and read the article. "Headless body in topless bar" and all that."

When you know what the fuck you're talking about, you'll realize that not only does "snappy-yet-accurate" not preclude sensationalism, but that it furthers it.

And if you can't see that local news is full of them, you've no room to talk about dunces.
posted by klangklangston at 10:42 PM on June 21, 2007


"We need to remove the animals from our community. Those people who don't treat others humanely have to be removed."

Five bucks says the next time someone gets banned, that quote will be posted.
posted by klangklangston at 10:43 PM on June 21, 2007


I can't tell if you're saying that because you're making a bet or because you'll be risking your metafilter account to prove it.
posted by shmegegge at 11:19 PM on June 21, 2007


Shirley Jackson's-The Lottery comes to mind somehow.
posted by doctorschlock at 5:05 AM on June 22, 2007


Thanks for that cite, Falconetti. Very interesting.

I wonder if the victim or the driver had some sort of prior connection to his attackers -- that kind of random attack seems so strange.
posted by footnote at 6:29 AM on June 22, 2007


"I can't tell if you're saying that because you're making a bet or because you'll be risking your metafilter account to prove it."

With my comment history, the only way that my account is worth $5 is on the theory of the forgone alternative.
posted by klangklangston at 8:01 AM on June 22, 2007


The press is always eager to lap up a story involving blacks behaving badly en masse, but if you wait a couple days and check again, the initial story is often not correct (see every single story about Katrina that was published in the first week after the disaster).


Well, perhaps not always.
posted by hatchetjack at 8:20 AM on June 22, 2007


Falconetti - I'm not surprised by your citations, but that link from hatchetjack, my lord. I hadn't heard that one and that fact, well it does seem to support the thesis.

It's all very depressing. My anecdote, I realize it might be unclear, my friend was talking about the same story, but it was distorted by that giant telephone game that is the internet.

I bounce back and forth from giving too much credit to not enough and usually in all the wrong places.
posted by lazymonster at 10:39 AM on June 22, 2007


Falconetti - I'm not surprised by your citations, but that link from hatchetjack, my lord. I hadn't heard that one and that fact, well it does seem to support the thesis.

That story from hatchetjack doesn't support any thesis at all. Falconetti linked to a study showing that statistically, images of black criminals are overrepresented in the media. The fact that one black-on-white crime was generally ignored by the media is totally irrelevant to the question.
posted by footnote at 1:07 PM on June 22, 2007


Well, perhaps not always.

Which is the reason I appended the descriptor "en masse." I was getting at the idea that it fit a certain media or cultural gestalt to uncritically believe reports that large groups of black people together, especially in celebration, would likely or inevitably end in mob violence. One may disagree or refute this particular assertion, it is only my take, I don't have empirical data to back it up. My other factual assertions above were more to refute those that were asserting that it was ridiculous to think that unconscious bias (or however you want to express it) against blacks would result in discernible disparate treatment in the media or affect the manner in which blacks are portrayed or reported on in the news media.
posted by Falconetti at 1:08 PM on June 22, 2007


When you know what the fuck you're talking about

Spoken like the university paper opinion editor.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:10 PM on June 22, 2007


"Spoken like the university paper opinion editor."

Spoken like someone who can't even read a profile page well enough to snark.
posted by klangklangston at 2:30 PM on June 22, 2007


footnote - oops, I clumsily threw that but in there when I was just jumping to the next thought and it changed the entire meaning of the sentence and my seem didn't help. I didn't think that one link countered Falconetti's list and absolutely one story doesn't prove anything, but it gave illusory support to whatever hatchetjack's point was and maybe it wasn't a point, it might of just been a hey lookie here.

Sure there's an unconscious bias in the media - and beyond. The sparse bit of coverage I caught out here (west coast) was pretty vague on race and I'm not sure it even mentioned Juneteenth. Until I read the links here I was ignorant on that matter. That's how my friend ended up with such a totally distorted version. My interest in the whole episode really hinged on that.
posted by lazymonster at 7:50 PM on June 22, 2007


Follow up from the Chron: Residents allege cover-up in Austin beating death
posted by Robert Angelo at 12:10 PM on June 23, 2007


Curiously, the Chronicle article ends by referencing CSI (though a different episode).
posted by ubiquity at 2:02 PM on June 23, 2007


You mean this profile page right here? Congrats on your recent graduation.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:53 PM on June 23, 2007


Thanks. Would you also like to congratulate me on my years of freelancing and work as a staff writer? How many years have you been a copy editor?
posted by klangklangston at 8:53 AM on June 25, 2007


How many years have you been a copy editor?

Coming up on 15 years in the biz, actually. Thanks.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:39 AM on June 25, 2007


MY PENIS IS BIG
posted by Falconetti at 1:22 PM on June 25, 2007


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