Seems to me that the pendulum has swung back the other way. People no longer want to be told that they cannot say things about any particular group of people any longer. Being politically correct is a bad thing. Sometimes, when their thoughts are pent up enough, they come out in strange ways.
Take Michael "Kramer" Richards. After being heckled by some black men, he apparently lost his mind. Maybe if he had been allowed to regularly and publicly express his views on, or rather, against black people, this incident may not have taken place the way it did. I don't know. I get the feeling, though, that there are waaaay more Michael Richards' out there than we might like to think.
It's a fairly old argument now. People used to feel free to talk shit about anyone until those people started talking back and demanding changes. Having gone unchallenged before, the bigots and fools suddently found themselves with no leg to stand on. Political correctness arrived, and with it, a lot of good things. There was a certain level of respect for minorities that had never been seen, and those minorities will not soon let that go, even in the light of bad things done by their communities. (The white majority is not judged the same way, but that is another discussion.) But then bigots themselves felt wronged and stifled. They see problems in their communities and in the world and need someone to blame, and believe that their voices are not being heard. (By the way, I love the way that some bigots defend what they say by saying, "but he IS black" or "but he IS a nigger" or "but niggers ARE worthless humans that have freedom solely because we say they do". Way to go, asshole. The Nazi Party wants you.) Michael Richards may be one person that is sick of it, and wants to say what's on his mind. If he were, he wouldn't be the only one.
I am not saying that this trend, if you want to call it that, is a good one. It would be nice if the pendulum alternating between sickening political correctness and racist lynching would just stop swinging, and that we could speak intelligently, but sadly, we as a society are not that bright. Right now it appears that bigots can spew their garbage and fall behind the mask of simply "expressing obvious truths that others don't want to see", or "just being opinionated". Richards apologized for his outburst, but I am sure that people are going to be defending him for doing what he did. In fact, there will be more and more support for this type of thing, especially due to the seemingly never-ending crisis in the Middle East that is spreading its way across the world.
In any case, I hope that this type of thing gets nipped in the bud, but you and I both know that that won't likely occur.
I'd say that the chaos surrounding the release of the PS3 was one that could have and should have been prevented with a little planning. Stanley Crouch says, "From one end of the country to the other, adults sleep in the street
for nights on end as though they are homeless in order to have choice
places in line when PlayStations go on sale. That alone gives us more
than an indication of how great a problem we find ourselves facing." He was talking about why young black men are worthless, but the quote serves here.
Beatings and violence surrounding the release of a new console system or many other highly anticipated consumer items are not new. However, this is the most expensive and most highly anticipated console release in years, if not ever. Is it really a surprise when people get trampled, beaten and shot for these things? This happened 25 years ago for Cabbage Patch Kids, and I daresay that these PS3's are a hell of a lot better than those ugly troll babies.
Sony of America should have seen it coming and, at the very least, given guidelines for retailers for how to actually distribute their software. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony were sued over this, to tell you the truth. IANAL, but I would think that they had enough reason to believe that these incidents would take place and that they should have taken a measure of responsibility. It would not have been hard to hire a guy to come up with some guidelines and have strict control over their distribution; it's SONY. Storeowners, who are at the front lines of consumerism, could easily have come up with a ticketing system or some such thing to make it much harder for people to have such easy marks. Security could have been beefed up in certain mall locations. A staggered distribution system. Anything to make it safer to buy these things.
Don't get me wrong; I don't absolve the purveyors of violence of their guilt by any stretch. Not at all. This is your basic, violent profiteering. These people are worthy of nothing but contempt, and I don't care what kind of socio-economic background they have (although, the overmarketing of materialism as the ultimate destiny of the successful to black men should be considered here, see the article by Stanley Crouch).
I suppose I have the consumers, or rather, out-of-control consumerism, to add to the list of those responsible. A sensible person would wait a few weeks or months before actually buying one; they could rent in the meantime. It's not like there are a ton of games available for it. Furthermore, even though it's seventh generation, it's version 1.0 hardware. Better versions will be released, as well as better games. Is a video game console even worth camping out all night for, ever? Risking one's life? Because what with the things you hear these days, I find it hard to believe that no one anticipated that these things would take place. You know it's pathetic when even I say that these consoles aren't worth that much.
As for me, you won't see me buying up one of these systems until around 2008, or later. It took years to get a PS2; and I skipped the original Playstation. Consoles are simply not worth it to me, especially when I have so many other things to worry about.
At work, I deal with American open-enrollment insurance benefits. Today I received a call from a gay man and another from a lesbian. They were trying to make sure that they get benefits for their same-sex partners. Everyone else can simply go online and sign up their husbands and wives, or they can call me and I can do it for them. But not two people I just mentioned. They have to go to their HR person, get a special form, fax it in to some clandestine internal committee, and then hope (after some period of time that they do no have because open enrollment is only a couple of weeks, three at best) that they get approved. Out of more than 10 or 20 thousand employees, only 25 have been approved for same-sex benefits.
This is a company by company thing. Apparently at other major companies, getting same-sex benefits is simple. You know who else has problems? Unmarried couples. They can't get joint benefits at all unless they get married. So you have the people that want to get married but can't having a hard time getting insured, and you have the people that don't want to get married but can, having a hard time getting insured.
If we can accept single parenthood (a "broken family") as normal, why is it so hard to allow unmarried people (an "incomplete" home, but with two permanent adults instead of one) to have hassle-free benefits? If we can accept gay people has having legitimate relationships, why is it so hard to give gay people hassle-free insurance, ESPECIALLY when there is no real logistical impediment other than software? What's the big deal? If you say one thing, the other seems to follow logically as I see it.
Not the hellish cesspool of filth some would have you believe. The Internet is not just for porn.
Get the fuck over yourselves, really.
EDIT: Perhaps he was giving a show to the public. In which case, I suppose, depending on the house and what he was doing, inappropriate. I should reserve my disgust for the writer of the article, actually. It's not like we were told anything.