You used to be able to depend on the Zappaman primitive for an occasional coherent post, especially when he was dogging the bald nadin-dwarf or razzing some tinfoil hatter. Perhaps he thought he was walking on thin ice and needed to gain some street cred.
It just goes to point up a personal axiom of mine - it doesn't matter how amusing you may find an individual DUer, how you may enjoy the way they tweak the other DUmmies, or how much sense you might think they make at a given moment. At the end of the day they are still DUers and there's a reason that they post there. There's something in them that is just nasty. They are not wired like us.
zappaman (10,581 posts)
Guess What? The “Knockout Game†is America’s Latest Phony Panic
It’s not hard to see why media outlets have latched on to this as an ongoing story. The prospect of random assault from rowdy, aggressive teens is scary, especially if they’re uninterested in theft and just want to attack. It’s as if we’re living in A Clockwork Orange, with our cities under siege by violent young men.
But it’s this media panic—as well as the strongly anecdotal nature of the coverage—that should give us pause before we declare this to be a national problem. After all, this wouldn’t be the first media furor over teen behavior. Recall the panics over “wildingâ€â€”where teenagers were attacking innocent bystanders en mass—or “headlight flashing,†where gang members were marking their victims during nighttime drives. In both cases, you could find instances that fit either description, but in a country with tens of millions of teenagers, where you could find examples of almost any behavior, you need more than a few anecdotes to prove a trend.
With the “knockout game,†we have several cases in a handful of cities, as well as five reported deaths. Victims tell similar stories: They were walking down the street when they were suddenly punched from behind. There’s no doubt that it’s a terrifying and traumatic experience for anyone who has experienced it.
But the question isn’t whether these random assaults happen. Of course they do. The question is whether this is a new dimension of urban crime, or a new name for an old phenomena. Most of the evidence points to the latter. For starters, it’s not hard to find reports of senseless attacks on innocent bystanders. In 2011, for instance, Washington D.C. saw nearly 1,700 assaults excluding guns, including a random attack by a group of teenagers in a subway station. Violent crime is a fact of life in American cities—though it’s infrequent and on the decline—and that includes muggings and attacks by strangers.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/25/guess-what-the-knockout-game-is-america-s-latest-phony-panic.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024091918#post6First of all, I haven't noticed anyone "panicking" over the phenomena at all. The word "panic" itself seems to be being used as a loaded term in a shallow attempt to paint anyone concerned these events as irrational.
What holds most peoples' attention regarding it is the stunning level of deflection and hypocrisy from liberals' refusal to address the racial component of it. They had no problem at all hyperventilating for a year over one event, the Zimmerman case, and using it to point up what danger blacks are in from violent whites (even though 95% of black murder victims die at the hand of other blacks), going on to declare how it would be "open season" on black teenagers after Z's acquittal, and just generally stirring the racial hate pot for everything that it was worth. Hell they're still talking about it
now.
Now you have an actual trend, demonstrably happening multiple times over the years and definitely carrying an air of racial animosity with it, resulting at times in death and serious injury, and what is the reaction of the Left and its media tools like the author of this piece? "Nothing to see here folks. Carry on. It's just a media distraction. No worries. Racists are trying to frighten you."
Even if that were true it still illustrates the double standard we have in this country when it comes to having an honest dialogue about race - any complaint leveled against an individual black or group thereof is painted as racist or derided and ridiculed as whining from an oppressor group about the oppressed. Straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.
Cali_Democrat (18,047 posts)
4. The folks that talk about the "knockout game" are pretty much right wingers
Last edited Mon Nov 25, 2013, 04:57 PM - Edit history (1)
Drudge and the other conservative media outlets are flogging this and conservatives are lapping it up like good little puppies.
Nobody can point to any statistics that this is some kind of epidemic sweeping across America. And, like the article mentioned, nobody can point to any numbers showing that this is anything new.
I was walking outside recently and wasn't scared of being knocked out by teenagers.
Conservatives are racist and fearful by nature so it's no surprise a phony epidemic like this gets them talking.
They really do lead sad lives as they cower in fear.
Who said it was either new or an epidemic? How new or common does it have to be before you deem it worthy of discussion?
"I was walking outside recently and wasn't scared of being knocked out by teenagers." Mass shootings are more rare that this phenomena, but you have no problem at all trying to convince people of the epidemic proportions of those, and expressing fear of venturing out in public because of them.
Hoyt (14,508 posts)
26. Exactly. The gun fanciers are delighted -- rationale to buy another one and play Zimmerman.
True words of wisdom:
"Being aware of your surroundings is a healthy attitude -- being afraid of your surroundings isn't."
Pathetic.
Oooooooooo. Invoking the dread name "Zimmerman". Who is it that trying to play on peoples' fears?
PeaceNikki (19,879 posts)
7. well the sharknado thing didn't pan out
Egalitarian Thug (10,361 posts)
11. Who could have guessed? Every time I come here and see these idiotic side-shows
dominating the conversation, I lose a little more hope.
Nye Bevan (13,464 posts)
49. Heh Heh Heh! Jewish people being randomly attacked and knocked out is so hilarious, isn't it!
At DU, it is.
