The Assault on Chrissy Lee Polis: The Not So Innocent Bystanders

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maya-rupert/the-assault-on-chrissy-le_b_854510.html
4/27/11
Maya Rupert

Three minutes and 2 seconds. That's how long a McDonald's employee in Baltimore stood by on April 18, videotaping as two young customers attacked Chrissy Lee Polis, a 22-year-old transgender woman, punching her in the face, pulling her across the floor by her hair, and kicking her in the face until she appears to have a seizure.

This incident has received widespread attention, and rightly so. In an assault this brutal, there is so much to be disturbed by -- from the youth of Chrissy's teenage attackers to the gratuitous violence of their repeated kicks, slaps, and jeers, which seem never to end. But perhaps most disturbing is the fact that the video exists at all. Instead of intervening, a McDonald's employee stood by and filmed the attack while several others can be heard laughing and cheering in the background. Only one bystander, 55-year-old Vicky Thomas, tried to stop the beating, and was punched in the face in the process.

  This is what was called back in my time as reverting to the lowest common denominator.  The news reports, the TV shows and what I hear on the street since my childhood in the 50's and 60's is different now.  Back then, certain things were not reported on or said on TV and the other media.  It was either censored by the FCC and/or the judgement of the editors.  We now live in a different society that some people want more news and events to titillate their being.  These are the ones that will more likely respond to the ads placed in the media and buy. 
  What I saw in that video was an installment of the Jerry Springer show.  You had most of the bystanders cheering and jeering as you may have seen on that show.  It is the values that some of the people in this country are taught or not taught at all and this is spreading elsewhere in the world as well.  I don't have a TV set since my old one of 30 years croaked and I couldn't find the parts for in 2005.  At that time, I promised myself that if it did go, I would not buy another one.  It was a Heathkit I built myself and I kept it working all of those years.  It still had a good picture tube though.  My decision was mainly caused by this mentality projected before me.  The Discovery Channel, History Channel, Weather Channel and etc. were also dumbing themselves down as well. 
  Most of us here are the ones that wants decency and it is we that need to instill those values of decency to the young.  You don't have to be a Republican or a church goer to do that.  My grandmother really got on me when I noticed a "port wine stain" on a classmate and she really gave me a whack and a nasty reprimand when I mentioned it.  Her generation (born 1900), was all like that.  A person's odd physical attribute was never mentioned in conversation, in the media at that time, rarely in diaries and logs and only as a descriptive in stories and novels.  FDR's wheelchair and leg braces was never mentioned and the images of him in the chair was cropped to exclude it for the final copy.  And he was a four-term president!  We need to get this type of values back. 
  Joelene

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
    Edmund Burke.

Quote from: tekla on April 27, 2011, 10:42:12 PM
All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
    Edmund Burke.

Yessss!
  Joelene