To Crypton, Dark Elf wrote:
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. I mean, if I tell you that I will shoot you in the head if you look at me funny, it's totally your fault when the bullets start flying. Yup. Clear as a day.
It seems to me that two assumptions are going unstated:
- That being shot in the head with a firearm is a harsh consequence to looking at somebody funny
- That being struck with a belt is a harsh consequence for downloading music from Kazaa
Even after wading through the unnecessary sarcasm, it is not clear what the contested issue is. It may be the case that corporeal punishment of a child for any offense is inexcusable versus the view that corporeal punishment of a child is at times acceptable. If this is the basis of the disagreement, then the two of you might as well part ways because it becomes a case of "my morals are superior to your morals" and we get into the same situation we get in when people argue religion.
Now you get to digest my view: sometimes people just need to get beat. Men, women, and children. There are occasions where somebody just has it coming. One of the Young Turks says as much when he champions the prison culture as an acceptable consequence to the judge.
If you boil the confrontation down to "downloading music equals getting beat," then obviously this judge is bad news, but that simplifies the situation too much. The misbehavior (probably) isn't the downloading of the music, it is the disobedience of the child who was (presumably) made aware of the expectations and the consequences for not meeting them. To some extent, the child should be expected to bear the responsibility for deliberately defying the parents' guidelines.
"I see you got a leaden ball facelift. You must have looked at Dark Elf funny." The moral becomes "Don't do unnecessary things that make you suffer".
Consider how this scenario might have gone. The father tells his daughter that if she downloads music, she'll get the belt. She downloads music, he finds out, confronts her to administer her punishment, she cooperates and takes a couple of licks from the belt, and life goes on. If the daughter had cooperated as her mother suggested, this video might not have been the spectacle it has become. The daughter's resistance aggravated the situation and contributed to making it the situation to which we've been exposed. If the judge treats his daughter like this on the regular, then that's awful. What we have seen is a shocking situation that multiple people have created.
This video has become a spectacle. The shocking event has been sensationalized with words like "judge," "beats," and "palsy." I don't understand the relevance of the man's profession or his daughter's handicap. While "beats" is an apt description of what he does, a less sensationalized verb could have been used to describe the clip. "Beats" prejudices the viewer even before he sees what he sees.
I feel that the appropriate reaction to this video is "This is fucked up," not "This man is evil." This video was disturbing and I didn't even watch the entire clip included in The Young Turks video because it made me too uncomfortable. I do not like this and I think that the situation warrants serious investigation.
Be responsible and respectful; consider as many of the angles as you can rather than lay into somebody for not seeing things the way you see them, not that I don't appreciate the occasional "assclown."
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