Let me start with a disclaimer: I don't really like Ryan Lochte. He seems like a smug prick. But I don't judge right and wrong based on whether or not I like the person.
So here's what happened. For those who don't know, Lochte is an American swimmer who did well in the Olympics. He's Michael Phelps' friend and rival. While in Brazil, Lochte was driving along with some other swimmers when they stopped at a gas station. Lochte apparently went behind the gas station looking for a bathroom. He didn't find one and pissed on a sign. An armed security guard caught him and held him at gun point demanding that he pay for the damages. He apparently took over $100 from them. Clearly, Olympic piss doesn't just wash off. Lochte and the others then reported this as an armed robbery. It's not clear how the cops got called.
Anyways, the international media got their outrage on and called this an armed robbery until they found out it wasn't. Upset that their outrage had been misplaced, they hefted their outrage at Lochte, who they now decided was worse than Hitler. Brazil seized the opportunity to distract attention from the disaster that was their Olympics. And the media whined that Lochte had ruined the Olympics and that no one would now remember anything but Lochte. Sorry Simone Biles, Micheal Phelps, Usain Bolt, the shameful US women's soccer program, and the Russian drug cheats. All forgotten. Damn you to hell, Ryan Lochte! You stole our innocence!
And lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, I'm really not. That is the problem. The same people who excuse false rape allegations as understandable, who see cold-blooded murders as "allegedly", who spend their time telling us to stay calm in the face of Islamic terrorism, and who only grudgingly cared about the cops shot in Dallas for a day or two, were writing articles for weeks asking how Lochte can do such a horrible thing and why he wasn't drummed out of swimming. There really were articles at Yahoo and some other sports places saying that Lochte had ruined the Olympics and that his villainous behavior was all that people would remember and that he should be banned from competition.
This is the kind of crap the modern media does. They take something minor that annoys their hypersensitive butts and they blow it way out of proportion. The guy peed on a wall. Millions of Brazilians do that every day. So what? Then he overstated what happened as an armed robbery. He was stupid. Again, so what? He didn't falsely accuse anyone of rape. He didn't shoot anyone. Not one single person got hurt by what he did. Yet, the modern media turned him into a villain... a justifiable target of rage.
So Monday night, a handful of people got into Dancing With The Stars where he is a contestant and they raced up on stage and grabbed a camera to protest him. In so doing, they scared the hell out of everyone in the audience as well as Lochte and his partner and they risked people getting killed in whatever ensuing panic there was. Does anyone think this would have happened if the media hadn't elevated what was nothing more than a bit of bad judgment that 99.999% of the time would be overlooked by the cops into a second Holocaust? Hardly.
This is happening a lot. The media picks targets now and rages on them. It's an orgy of self-righteous venting of the worst caliber, and it tells the crazies and the weak-minded and the herd followers that they are justified in attacking these people one way or another. The results are startling if you pay attention. Anyone who gets on the wrong side of the news will tell you that they automatically get death threats at home and at work, and have their property vandalized. People have had bomb threats to their offices and their kids' schools. Vicious memes are made about them online that involve rape, race and violence. A lot of these people get stalkers. Lochte has now been attacked, for lack of a better word, in public.
You can say that crazy people can't be stopped and that is true, but the media is to blame for this stepped up level of danger. They fan these flames and they know they are putting bullseyes on people when they do this. They pick the targets, they stoke the flames, they offer indulgences, and then they hand out glory when it's all over by granting fame to their their dupes under the guise of trying to "understand them."
Don't kid yourselves, media. You are to blame.
27 comments:
The outrage machine in general is one of the things that disturbs me the most about the modern world. I hadn't heard all the details of the Lochte story but there was definitely no need to whip up a hate mob over something like that! Add in how quick the Internet, especially the SJWs, are to join in (and then blame the right for everything) and you've definitely got an eventual disaster in the making, the lessons of which will be lost on the people who need them the most.
- Daniel
Daniel, It reminds me of the witch burning era. A group of little monster seek to settle scores. They point a finger at someone as a witch. Large groups of self-righteous, ignorant a-holes attack. They kill the witch, projecting their own sins upon her. Then they feel super smug afterwards.
Little changes with humanity, just the names of the superstitions.
A rich, famous athlete/celeb attracting outsized coverage and either outsized adoration or outrage is pretty much par for the course. Part of the price they pay for being rich and famous (ask that cop protesting football player Colin Ksomething).
I haven't paid close attention to this (though I did participate some water cooler jokes about Brazil after Lochte initially announced he had been robbed by guys with police badges) but it seems to me his big mistake was elevating this.
For a hot minute he was telling every Western reporter he could find about the 'robbery' and how he initially bravely resisted until they put a gun to his forehead and cocked it (he later admitted he spun that last bit out of whole cloth) and talking about how it shook him up.
Anthony: "A rich, famous athlete/celeb attracting outsized coverage and either outsized adoration or outrage is pretty much par for the course. Part of the price they pay for being rich and famous (ask that cop protesting football player Colin Ksomething).
I think the difference in this case is that Lochte did a stupid thing when he was drunk, did a stupider thing by lying about it, got caught, and is trying to get on with his life. His incident took place at night in the back of a gas station in Brazil. Kaepernick was making a public statement. He refused to stand up for the national anthem (which is his right) at NFL games where he is one of the players. That means that A- everybody is looking at him and what he does or doesn't do is going to be noticed and B- It's obvious what he's doing because all his teammates stood up. Then when asked about it he stated that he did it as a protest. He was looking for a confrontation. Again, that's his right and there's nothing wrong with staking out a position in and of itself. The position he staked out pissed off a lot of people and they've responded to it. He knew, or should have known, that there would be a response to it. Lochte was a drunk guy trying to find a place to piss. If he had drawn some boos on DWTS it would be one thing, but the level of hate shown towards him is out of proportion to what he did and it has been fanned and kept alive by the media.
GypsyTyger
Speaking of Kaepernick, did you guys see South Park? I just went over to The Federalist and watched the clip. You guys should check it out.
GypsyTyger
Anthony,
Your comment actually highlights an aspect of the problem because it shows the excuses that people/the media think justify their hateful behavior.
First, it doesn't really matter that he's a celebrity. The behavior is wrong no matter who it's aimed against. Somewhere this idea came up that celebrities are fair game for our worst behaviors and that's the core problem here -- your behavior is right or wrong no matter who you aim it at, and the fact that someone is a celebrity does not mean the normal rules of right and wrong are set aside.
Secondly...
For a hot minute he was telling every Western reporter he could find about the 'robbery' and how he initially bravely resisted until they put a gun to his forehead and cocked it (he later admitted he spun that last bit out of whole cloth) and talking about how it shook him up.
So what? The fact he repeated the lie many times doesn't make his behavior any more deserving of the hate he's getting. Engaging in nuisance behavior plus lying about it repeatedly does not equate to worthy of loss of human dignity... especially from people who go out of their way to overlook heinous crimes.
What's more, this last point about him bringing it up is something I see all the time as a justification for the hateful behavior: "He just keeps asking for it!"
The thing is, that's not true. People like Lochte aren't typically running around looking for journalists so they can repeat their stories, they get asked about it over and over and over and over and over. The haters overlook this part. It's the media that creates the perception that these people are out there repeating this stuff.
This is a close cousin to the conspiracy theory version of "if there wasn't something to it, why does he keep denying it." This is moronic reasoning, which you see used a lot, as if fails to grasp that the media is the one who creates the appearance of something coming up repeatedly.
GypsyTyger,
He was looking for a confrontation.
Excellent point, and I agree, with a caveat. I have far less sympathy for people who knowingly do something they know will anger people in the hopes of getting publicity. That's like poking a sleeping tiger... you are asking for trouble and it's hard for me to feel bad for you when the tiger eats you.
When you talk about a guy like Lochte who got drunk and peed on a sign and lied about it, or a guy who went hunting and finds himself becoming an international pariah, someone who got photographed spanking their kid in public or changing in a locker room, someone who notifies parents that they expect their kids to know the alphabet before school begins, etc., these people aren't trying to draw attention to themselves and they aren't trying to upset people to "start a conversation." I think it's obscene that the media runs wild on these people.
On the other hand, Kaepernick and anyone who seeks out the media to counter-protest him is looking for publicity and that makes a huge difference to me. I would say that the standard is lowered to a degree when someone does what Kaepernick has done because he has essentially invited these other people into the conversation and opened the door for them to speak their minds. He has essentially insulted them and now they may return the favor.
That said, my caveat is this... none of this justifies the hateful behavior that you see, even if their intent is to anger people. This idea that we need to destroy people we don't like and to hound them is insane.
GypsyTyger, Let me throw this out there...
In the 1980s, Colorado Senator Gary Hart's Presidential campaign crashed and burned because he was caught having an affair (aboard a boat named Monkey Business). Anyways, a lot of people were upset that the media was following him around snooping when they uncovered this. The media justified this by pointing out that he had said he was squeaky clean and he essentially dared them to look into him.
That justification worked because it did seem like he was asking for it -- though we should keep in mind that the media invented the question to which he responded. Anyways, within a few years, this kind of snooping became par for the course.
By the time of Robert Bork, the media was digging through garbage cans, getting video rental lists from Blockbuster, and actively looking for dirt everywhere.
I see the same thing here. There is this justification: "well, he was asking for it!" It gets used as a generic justification now and reasons "he was asking for it" get invented after the fact -- he "kept bringing it up!" (every time we asked him about it), he lied, he's a celebrity!, he's a role model, he represented us!, he's in politics!, he's got an important job running a company!, he did something I personally despise!, everyone else is talking about it too!
None of this justifies the behavior.
>>It reminds me of the witch burning era.<<
Andrew, that is exactly what this is or the stoccks. Social Media is our 21st Century version of the stocks in the public square. Someone is accused of something then all the townspeople can come and spit/throw rocks etc. until this person learns a lesson and doesn't do whatever he/she was accused of doing. Except the real difference is that, instead of a few dozen local townspeople, there are hundreds of millions of virtual, mostly anonymous "townspeople" from all over the world doing the "spitting/rock throwing". Fun times...
Or George Orwell's "Two Minutes of Hate" as described in 1984
Gypsytiger,
I read Colin K. had been sitting down for a few weeks before a local reporter noticed, publicized it and then everybody jumped in to express powerful feelings about something almost nobody had noticed.
Back to the swimmer I'm not defending what happened to him on DWS (I thought two guys had charged him and been tackled by security but I haven't watched any video) I'm saying he is scorned not for pissing in a gas station (lots of drunk jerks consider the world their toilet) but for manufacturing a story (one he initially told to the media, not the cops) where he was the victim which triggered a criminal investigation, implicated the Brazilian police in a robbery and triggered a spate of news stories.
Lying about being a crime victim isn't harmless, it causes cops to waste time that could be spent on real crimes.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/14/sport/us-swimmers-ryan-lochte-robbed-rio-olympics/index.html
Rio de Janeiro civil police told CNN they have opened an investigation, a few hours after first learning about the robbery from the media, and had not been contacted by the USOC.
So the problem with the whole Ryan Lochte held at gunpoint scenario is the fact that the Brazil might be just a little embarrassed because their police most likely DID hold them at gunpoint until they paid the fine. Seriously, the cops do the same thing in Mexico.
Anthony: Reference Kaepernick, he had been doing it for the whole preseason. I think it got noticed during game three. My point is, he knew eventually that somebody would pick up on it. I know that because he had his message all ready to go when somebody asked him about it. He wanted a forum for his views.
GypsyTyger
Andrew,
I was defending the coverage, not the physical assault. Physically attacking a person for lying about being a crime victim is nutty and unacceptable, mocking such a person is fair game.
I mentioned his status because it was key to the whole thing (four Olympians robbed at gunpoint by guys with police badges in Brazil during Olympics!). If he had just been a random guy nobody would have cared before or after the lie was exposed.
Bev: I have a friend who frequently goes to Mexico and Belize, Costarica and places like that to scuba dive. She says that the cops sit on the main roads to the airports and look for Americans. They pull you over and walk up to the car. You hold up $20.00. They take it and drive away. Common practice. We had a guy here in Cincinnati who had been a police officer in Puerto Rico. The administration was all happy because he spoke spanish, it looked good for their diversity program,etc.They had to fire him for soliciting bribes. It was so ingrained in the culture that he'd come from he just assumed that it worked that way everywhere.
GypsyTyger
Gypsytiger,
I agree Colin K. was looking for outrage and controversy, the swimmer was merely looking to conceal a drinking binge and garner sympathy.
Anthony,
On this ==> Lying about being a crime victim isn't harmless, it causes cops to waste time that could be spent on real crimes.
This is a theoretical thing largely. Police are not so swamped that one investigation crowds out another unless it's something massive. And false police reports happen all the time and are routinely ignored with a grumpy face and little else. This is not something that should lead to everlasting hate for Lochte. I see him largely as the victim of media venting.
On defending the coverage, that's my point: the coverage is so insanely hyperbolic and overwhelmingly group-thinked that it leads to the violence because it gives these people the sense that the target is somehow subhuman now and everyone else is doing it too.
Bev, I think Lochte was the "vent-goat" for lack of a better word.
Brazil needed a distraction and the big bad evil arrogant "ugly American" was perfect. Keep in mind that the world always uses Americans as their scapegoats and here was the perfect one made to order, especially as they had been trying to smear America throughout. Indeed, ask yourself why the Brazilian crowds kept chanting "Zika" at the American athletes, but no one else.
The media, on the other hand, got a successful, rich, white male to attack. They go whole hog when they get one of those to make up for the frustrations they feel at not being able to attack others because of their race or gender or religion, see e.g. Tim Tebow.
The feminists saw him as an extension of the college rape culture, see e.g. Standford swimmer, which was going on.
The Democrats saw this as an opportunity to show someone causing a worse foreign policy screw up than Obama had been doing. "How dare you undo all the delicate work Obama has done over the past eight years!"
Russia needed a diversion from the drug issues. US Men's swimming needed a diversion from drug issues. US Women's soccer needed a diversion from Hope Solo's mouth and fist.
NBC needed to explain horrible ratings to their investors.
The elite needed an ugly American since Brazil had just shown that decades of BRIC talk was all a mirage and Brazil is still a third world shithole.
Enter Ryan Lochte.
Andrew,
It happened a few weeks ago. It's a bit early to assume the hate is everlasting.
False police reports happen all the time, but this was a celeb claiming to have been robbed at a big event, so I'm sure it got priority over a lot of cases.
As for agendas, if you do something that fits the narrative that someone wants to construct, they will use you. That is the way of the world.
A lot has been said already. I'll just throw in that an important factor is the base-level of angst the media is constantly laying down. Everything is problematic: sexism, racism, income inequality, crumbling infrastructure, pantophobia, you name it. All that anxiety that's being manufactured just begs to be vented.
Anthony,
"Is" and "Ought" are not arguments against one another.
>>All that anxiety that's being manufactured just begs to be vented.<<
Tryanmax - That is exactly right. If you make people care, they will, and it will not always be pretty. And instead of privately venting to your friends and neighbors, we can vent globally directly at "the source". Thanks, world wide web. But then the flip side is that we can share the love if we try and information just as much. The "sharing information" thing is to the great annoyance of our leaders.
Witch burning is right, Andrew, and I think you just hit upon the whole idea behind the current left/SJW outrage machine, tryanmax: everything is problematic. Some days it seems like you can't even breathe without whipping the witch burners into a frenzy. Sharing the good stuff does seem to help, so you're on to something there, Bev. I'm beyond exhausted from all these people going nuts.
- Daniel
Daniel, The witch burners were the intellectual ancestors of the modern left. The thought processes really are identical. It's only the superstitions that have been redefined.
Beyond that, I really think the left has lost its mind. They have reached a point where mere existence is painful to their delicate little minds and everything upsets them. It's time for them to consider shuffling off this mortal coil.
Bev, Perfect description.
Too delicate to exist, huh? Can't argue with that. It still gets annoying when otherwise-rational people start getting on board with delicate causes but since cutting out a lot of social media I see less and less of that and it's helped. Also, speaking of delicates, I figured you'd appreciate Larry Correia's thoughts on some of the latest delicate stupidity. Few people can put them in their place like he can, huh?
- Daniel
Daniel, That's a great post by Correia. He's got great wit.
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