In the Birmingham News today, the lead story concerned a terrible mass killing that happened in north Shelby County. Five men were found with their throats slashed. There were few details reported in the dead-tree edition, so I went to al.com to find out more.
Sure enough, like any good news website, they had more information. The men were all Hispanic, and they had no identification on their corpses. The bodies were taken to the state crime lab in Montgomery. FBI, US Marshalls, ABI were all getting involved to help solve the crime. So far, so good. Then I made the mistake of reading the comments following the updated story.
I've got to leave this state.
Reading those comments is like being smacked in the face with a wet Klan robe. The level of racism, bigotry, and sheer stupid hatred expressed therein was dismaying, to say the least. I won't repeat what was said. You can read them for yourself if you choose.
But if that's the level of intellect (among the people who actually bother to read the paper, don't forget), then this state is doomed and we deserve whatever we get.
I'm dismayed, disgusted, and saddened.
I guess I should have expected it. But DAMN, y'all. We can do better.
Shuntaro Tanikawa.
7 hours ago
Posts
6 comments:
and this surprises you because...
How long have you lived in this state?
I know, I know. I should be accustomed to it.
But it made me so sad to see this terrible crime immediately become fodder for the "git them furriners outta here!" crowd. It's like we can't drop our ideological poses long enough to even regard each other as human beings any more.
And that's the road to extremism, which comes in many, many different flavors.
I can't stomach the comments there or at the Montgomery Advertiser. I have a visceral reaction to that kind of mentality. The Tuscaloosa news has some really good forums though. Hell, you'd almost never be able to tell that the commenters were largely from Alabama.
It's not just Alabama, though. I mean, what do I know, I've never even been there but still. It's all local papers. I mean, look, I live in Asheville: the tiny blue paradise in the red sea, home of Earth Religions Week, where you can't swing a banjo player without hitting a massage therapist, and our local papers comments are a horrifying cesspool of terrifying nightmare trolls from the darkest depths of the human psyche. These "people" got computers for the first time EVAR and they finally have a voice even if they have been most righteously chained n a basement for 30 years. And they have, too, and they belong there, and they just need to shorten the chains, is all. Never read the comments.
Yay, mgl found my blog! **smooch* Welcome!
You know, right before I logged in to check for comments, I was reading Doc's Political Parlor, an Alabama-centric news/politics blog (Loretta knows it well). There's one commenter there who is obviously a fiend for local politics, but his loudland rude far-right bloviating make him all but unreadable. He comes off as a total troll (and I'll bet Loretta knows EXACTLY who I'm talking about). I have no problem with him being a hard-core conservative, but everything he writes is so dripping with invective against what he perceives as "left-wing nut jobs" that I don't want to wade through the dross to find a the diamonds.
Plus, he loudly proclaims to be a Christian. Heh.
It's made me rethink the profane and irascible persona I affect in this blog -- how many readers have I lost because I come off as an asshole?
At least I do it here, rather than on other people's sites...
This comment is longer than many of my blog posts. Oh well.
I no longer read doc's political parlor. Have even taken it off of my side bar and blog roll. It was a great site at one time but sadly one anon asshole has ruined it all...for me anyway.
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