From "How Do You Recover After Millions Have Watched You Overdose?/Amid an opioid crisis, police and strangers with cameras are posting raw images of drug users passed out. For those whose bleakest moments now live online, life is never the same" (NYT).
The NYT embedded the video, so lots more people are seeing it now, including me. I'll refrain from embedding it, but I'll just say that the man and woman have fallen into ludicrous and humiliating positions on the sidewalk, and the passersby are circling around them, taking video and laughing at them. It's a very disturbing display of human despair and cruelty. The NYT doesn't mention it, but the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
IN THE COMMENTS: Rob said:
If Breitbart had embedded that, the Times would’ve accused them of racism. And they might have been right.
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92 comments:
A lot of black people have a lot of common sense, as this shows.
Even the natives have smart phones. You don't see that in Africa movies.
I'm looking for horseback Indians with cell phones attacking cirled wagons.
1905 picture of pedestrian on cell phone
http://www.shorpy.com/node/23302?size=_original#caption
Updated version of Kitty Genovese?
Easy for me to say, but the video is likely more humiliating, or at least as humiliating for those who took it. How cruel. I didn't watch.
For those whose bleakest moments now live online, life is never the same
Well, considering that their life was addiction and a suicide pact, life never being the same is probably a good thing.
Ann, you need a "Black Mirror" tag.
It sounds like this is the new public stockade.
They purposefully set in motion a chain of events, involving self-initiated dangerous behavior, and then wonder how things could turn out so adversely for them. The perfect Democrat voter. Most of us still practice personal responsibility, and even then things happen beyond our control. Those vids simply document when no effort at taking personal responsibility is made.
If Breitbart had embedded that, the Times would’ve accused them of racism. And they might have been right.
Insert role reversal comment here.
How about NYT does an investigative piece on where all the H comes from.
the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
A rather important data point in the "event" that is purposely obscured by the liberal NYT. Can't expose the falseness of the meme.
If it were reversed. Black people ODing on the pavement and white people laughing and taking pictures.....does anyone think THAT fact would not be top of the story mentioned?
I don't need to watch the video. All I have to do is visit relatives in Damned Francisco and see the "fallout" of society littering the streets everywhere. People in SF have better manners though. They act as if it is all invisible and scurry into their safe places.
I can't/won't read the NYT. Did they die?
If not they are still abject failures at life and now at death.
The NYT doesn't mention it, but the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
They might like to, but they're prevented from doing so.
1. It can't be played as black people taking pleasure because they're white, because the NYT believes black people can't be racist.
2. It's can't be, "OMG, even black people know better!" because that would be racism by the NYT.
So there's just nowhere that's meme-affirming for them to go here.
"NYT doesn't mention that they're white, and that those laughing are black"
They don't need to mention that. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the whole point.
"How Do You Recover After Millions Have Watched You Overdose?
How do you recover when others realize the NYT is so out of touch with the problems of middle America it believes having your overdose filmed is the worst thing that can happen to a person committing suicide?
News flash to the NYT: When you've decided to end your life, you're not longer worried about anyone's YouTube or Instagram account.
Noble Savages and such.
Recall that the Kitty Genovese incident in NYC was a sensation. We learned about it in high school. This is where we are now.
NYT Headline: Having People Film and Laugh at You Fate Worse Than Death.
The NYT doesn't mention it, but the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
So then it's okay. The people are punching up, not punching down.
At least nobody stole their shoes and clothes, did they?
Dave Begley, The Kitty Genovese incident was misreported. Some people did call the police and the actual murder took place where no one could see or hear it. If you learned scores of people ignored her screams and let her be murdered, you learned wrong.
Since one of the few things that gets people off drugs is being shamed maybe this will do the couple some good. But I’ll bet if I posted a video of the two drunk black guys throwing stuff and calling whitey racist names it not only wouldn’t go viral, it would get me banned . BTW, what does fishbelly mean?
Sometimes the only useful purpose a person can serve in life is as a warning to others. Laugh at them, don’t be like them.
There was a character in Huckleberry Finn described as “Fishbelly white.”
Dad was not shy about talking about people that had lost their fight with booze. Explained who they were,once, and where they are today because of their addiction. Pointing out the perils. Today, we just do it with video cameras we all carry in our pockets. Same messaging, new technology.
The NYT doesn't mention it, but the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
Of course the NYT didn't mention it. Race is only mentioned when it furthers their agenda.
Couldn't this couple have found a more private location for their 'suicide'?
The NYT doesn't mention it, but the man and woman on the sidewalk are white, and the people laughing at them are black.
In their defense, the Times is always very careful not to racialize stories. In an increasingly diverse society, can you imagine if the most powerful news outlet went out of its way to manufacture racial resentment? Such an outlet would lose all professional credibility and would be seen as nothing more than peddlers of sinister propaganda.
One more mandate from our PC overlords: We must treat drug addicts with dignity no matter how stupidly they treat themselves. Got it.
If the races were reversed, this would be getting non-stop, top of the lungs, outrage coverage by NBC,CBS, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and the entire spectrum of the LameStream Media©.
And it would be held up as another example of just how racist America is.
No doubt that all those African Americans laughing and filming these poor addicts are compassionate, loving, Obama supporters to.
Such an outlet would lose all professional credibility and would be seen as nothing more than peddlers of sinister propaganda.
This comment reminds me of something Bart Simpson once said back in the day when the show was funny: “The ironing is delicious!"
Were they egging them on like they did that little girl who hung herself?
If you are looking for a reason for why white people are committing suicide via drugs, you might consider the destruction of organized religion advocated by Althouse and religion's replacement with her gay worship/Marxist feminist horseshit.
As many people have noted, Althouse's goofball ass backward religion works well for the rich and highly educated elite.
It's a disaster for the middle class and poor.
Try living where there are a lot of junkies. They sense sympathy the way a shark senses blood. They wring every last ounce of it out of you pretty quickly. These people have used up the sympathy of every person in their life who ever loved them.
Here's a typical Minneapolis Star Tribune story --
"A man was shot dead, and another seriously injured, when the convenience store was robbed last night. The police are looking for 2 teenagers. Please call the police station if you have any information."
“They purposefully set in motion a chain of events, involving self-initiated dangerous behavior, and then wonder how things could turn out so adversely for them. The perfect Democrat voter. Most of us still practice personal responsibility, and even then things happen beyond our control. Those vids simply document when no effort at taking personal responsibility is made.”
Exactly right, and that doesn’t mean I don’t feel compassion for them. However, there is not enough money in America to protect people from their willful bad choices. And, Black or White, the NYT does not see these people as real people. Not in any meaningful way. So there’s no real harm done by compounding their pain.
People in SF have better manners though. They act as if it is all invisible and scurry into their safe places.
I had never visited SanFran before 2 months ago. If you stay to the touristy areas that everyone knows about - Fisherman's Wharf, Coit Tower, Lombard St, etc. - you'd never know about the "messier" areas like the Tenderloin district. We just happened to pass through it during our time and noticed how everyone just ignored the hundreds of tents set up along the sidewalks.
In an increasingly diverse society, can you imagine if the most powerful news outlet went out of its way to manufacture racial resentment?
No one actually reads the New York Times, they just talk about what's in the New York Times.
This kind of stuff happens all the time. Don't go on Black Twitter if you still value your cherished illusions about the basic decency of humans.
There isn't anything that happens, no matter how cruel, inhuman, tortured, or violent, that isn't fodder for a laughing video on WorldStar. If the targets are white, so much the better.
Try living where there are a lot of junkies. They sense sympathy the way a shark senses blood. They wring every last ounce of it out of you pretty quickly. These people have used up the sympathy of every person in their life who ever loved them.
Sounds harsh, tim, but you are probably right.
you might consider the destruction of organized religion advocated by Althouse[sic] and religion's replacement with her gay worship/Marxist feminist horseshit.
Maybe those religions are just kinda crappy.
No one actually reads the New York Times, they just talk about what's in the New York Times.
Even if the 2.1 million subscribers are just reading the headlines, that's a lot o'damage being done.
@ CJinPA
I think you forgot your sarcasm tag on your comment at 8:39.
They made their bed, even if it was on a sidewalk.
Sometimes it hard to disagree with the assessment that humans are the worst.
I do understand how people become desensitized and I do understand why some people have to react to a tragic scene with humor (cops cracking jokes around the body of a murder victim for example). But to make a video of another person in some awful state and put it online is exploitive and vile. It should be condemned.
"The story of a poor, black single mother having her child ripped from her arms by armed police ...City Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo ...decried the “clear racism”
Acknowledging that all the police officers involved in the arrest were in fact black, and most were women, ..."
Oh, well, better luck next time.
@ CJinPA
I think you forgot your sarcasm tag on your comment at 8:39.
It wasn't required.
Sounds harsh, tim, but you are probably right.
I am one of the “sensitive” ones. I call 911 when I see somebody passed out and barely breathing on the sidewalk, most people just walk past and pretend not to see. But then I have more time on my hands than most of them. I NEVER give them money though, they just use it to buy drugs.
"Dave Begley, The Kitty Genovese incident was misreported"
It's fake news all the way back.
gspencer at 7:57 has it exactly right.
So there is a juxtaposition of words. The author describes them as both "high" and at their "bleakest moment". Perhaps if the use of mind altering drugs wasn't referenced as "getting high"; then others might not think it a good thing to do.
But I'm seeing addiction as the problem here more so then others shaming people for public displays.
tim in vermont said...I am one of the “sensitive” ones. I call 911 when I see somebody passed out and barely breathing on the sidewalk, most people just walk past and pretend not to see
I'm fortunate enough to live in an area where I don't have to sidestep passed out junkies on a daily basis. But if I did live in such an area, I'd like to believe I wouldn't become so inured to such sites that I wouldn't bother reporting it to anyone.
The Genovese murder happened when people who could witness such things were usually out of reach of a phone, and those who were near a phone couldn't witness them, or witness them as closely and as well.
The Hiers case shows what people with phones can do in emergencies. Help, harm, humiliate -- it's up to them. Character matters. Imagine that.
The Genovese case got a lot of hype, and it was fake news. It probably did more to actually discourage people from calling for help when they should than its supposed intended effect of countering that, since it was a very ugly, depressing story, unfairly scolding society for our inhumanity. Since it was taught to impressionable, and usually powerless, children in schools ever since, I have little doubt that behavioral confirmation came into play in many such cases.
The writer also skillfuly obscured, by sensationalizing a false narrative, the fact that the murder was Black on white.
@dustbunny
They not only live, they get sober.
Laughter is the best medicine.
It is not just the junkies facing this problem. I have much more sympathy for the young adults in college who over drink and will now have that evening follow them for the rest of their lives. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" became popular around 2004, two years before video phones began selling widely.
Nonapod@9:53 Imagine that you see it multiple times throughout the day, every day, often the same characters. Have you ever had to call 911, or the police non-emergency line? Waiting 10 minutes or more to get through to dispatch is usual. After the first day, you would understand the futility.
Is racism really the most important thing to be gleaned from this incident?
Diversity may be incidental, but it would have been highlighted if the colors were reversed.
In SF, the majority of GG Bridge jumpers leap facing the city instead of the empty ocean. Such is the subtext of many suicides. Addiction and loss of self-worth making a final plea for attention. Sad.
Dysfunction is a progressive condition that is difficult to resolve independently, then it converges and catches people off guard with catastrophic results.
The writer also skillfuly obscured, by sensationalizing a false narrative, the fact that the murder was Black on white.
Also Black on lesbian. The world is a complicated place. No matter how much ideologies tell us different.
"Is racism really the most important thing to be gleaned from this incident?"
Nope, blatant hypocrisy by the NYT is a close second.
In brief, a couple of addicts decided to suicide pact in a public space and were filmed. I skimmed the NYT article, in order to see if this was a straight reporting piece or a Hallmark movie piece. Unsurprisingly, this was a tug at the heartstrings schmaltz collage. The race angle I leave to the people who are spoiled Americans.
Now, I worked as an EMT in Chicago during the early Nineties, and as a newb, I got these calls. I felt for the person and the person's family on the first and second call. But, after hosing out the back of the ambulance for the third time after it had been smeared with feces and vomit during the month of February, I lost my bleeding heart and got a new dispassionate one installed. It served me, the patients I served and my fellow associates much better. This people do not need sympathy or compassion for that matter. They need treatment, education and a warning that much more pain is in their future, because they are addicts. Life for them will never be easy or free from the shadow of addiction. End of story.
I choose to take the high road and assume the bystanders would have mocked the addicts regardless of race.
If black people were knocked out on the sidewalk in a drug stupor, white people wouldnt laugh and be cruel too?
“Is racism really the most important thing to be gleaned from this incident?”
No it’s not, but that seems the focus here. Humans can be cruel. People or publications of any political or philosophical leaning have double standards, it’s not surprising.
Inga
"If black people were knocked out on the sidewalk in a drug stupor, white people wouldnt laugh and be cruel too?"
I would say no they would not.
They not only live, they get sober.
That is good news. I hope they can stay that way.
rhhardin: A Shorpy citation at Althouse! I love it!
"those whose bleakest moments now live online, life is never the same"
I don't get it- aren't their lives better now? The people on that street could have just ignored both of them, and no one would have written anything about them afterwards but the obligatory story the next day about two people found dead on the street from overdoses.
Those addicts look goofy. The filmers see it all day, everyday.
The filmers did not see desperate people attempting suicide, they saw filthy addicts who would rather buy drugs than food and who looked stupid that day and would look just as stupid tommorow and the day after tomorrow.
I would imagine oD ing would not be difficult. Seems that picking a nicer spot to kill yourself would make sense, even to a junkie.
Is racism really the most important thing to be gleaned from this incident?
It is when it's being portrayed the way it is...
If you don't understand that the The New York Times would have covered this story differently if the races had been reversed, then you haven't been paying attention to the media.
And, yes, I do believe that white people would be far less likely to put their names and faces to such a video simply because outlets like NYTimes would have excoriated them as racists for doing so. The social penalties are not symmetrical.
Tcrosse
You can’t fool me. James Finlayson.
If race is the critical angle here, let’s discuss how white people couldn’t be bothered to give a flying fuck about strung-out junkies until their skin started turning white and black people started making fun of them.
UMMMM... I'll take "How do you recover..." for $200.00, NYT. ONE DAY AT A TIME. Hey NYT, glad to help you out with the tough ones!
let’s discuss how white people couldn’t be bothered to give a flying fuck about strung-out junkies until their skin started turning white and black people started making fun of them.
Well, when you start with an incorrect premise from the first place, then use that incorrect premise as a straw man, it's kind of hard to discuss. I'd venture to say that the overwhelming bulk of drug counselors in this country are white; even the ones who work in black neighborhoods.
Care to revise your statement yet?
Roger Sweeny said...So then it's okay. The people are punching up, not punching down.
--
Heyy..haven't heard about the "knock out game" for quite a while...
"If black people were knocked out on the sidewalk in a drug stupor, white people wouldnt laugh and be cruel too?"
Nope. You see homeless people (black, white, etc.) knocked out on the street all the time in downtown areas. With the exception of the one person in a hundred with more pity than common sense who tries to help, everybody just walks around them and studiously avoids looking. I've never seen or heard of anybody laughing.
"For those whose bleakest moments now live online, life is never the same"
It would be the same around me because I'm not watching a bunch of boring YouTube videos of people being pathetic.
Life would *really* never be the same if they'd been successful at their suicide attempt!
The video of the toddler trying to revive her mother made me cry.
Care to revise your statement yet?
My point is that if you're going to do race, at least make it introspective. Charging the Times with racial hypocrisy is like hunting cows. There are dozens of similar videos shot by white people, and they should shock and shame us.
Is racism really the most important thing to be gleaned from this incident?
No. The most important thing to be gleaned is that certain commenters manage to transform the NYT' racism into racism by anyone who thinks differently than they. The second most important thing is recognizing every comment he's ever made is the same which amounts to playing Magic 8 Ball when all sides say "Racist!".
@rhhardin (7:46), there were cell phone towers in 1905?
Dust Bunny Queen said "I can't/won't read the NYT. Did they die?"
Yes. They "ENDED UP passed out by a bus stop. No good writer, certainly not the NYT would allow "ended up" as deadwood in an article. Had they not died, a word such as "subsequently" would have been used in the sentence.
How awful for everyone involved.
Unless the NYT changed the names of the addicts involved, they're doing the same thing they're claiming is so awful when others do it.
Other than that, sometimes it takes a public shaming to get an addict to wake up and realize "Is this my life now?". When they finally get clean, they can change their name. And in the short term - you don't NEED a facebook or instagram account.
Try living offline for a while. It's very healthy. And don't do drugs.
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...
Dust Bunny Queen said "I can't/won't read the NYT. Did they die?"
Yes. They "ENDED UP passed out by a bus stop.
Wait, what? No! Don't lie to DBQ. No, Queenie, these were ones who made it. More exploitable that way.
No good writer
Assuming facts not in evidence.
Idle reflection: there's gonna be such a huge retraction and apology for this story. Because Donald Trump started to draw national attention to this "American carnage" back in 2015 when he announced. And as we all know, PDJT is never right about anything. It's not allowed. I think there's an aura or penumbra issued by the Ninth Circuit to that effect.
The Kitty Genovese neighborhood story is completely untrue. Abe Rosenthal at the Times made it up to blame Genovese's neighbors rather than blame the rapist/murderer because he was black, and the Times was deeply, institutionally invested in justifying or denying black crime. Rosenthal, the editor of the Times, admitted this was his motive years later in a book he wrote justifying his own lies about the crime, and he said the story he invented was more important than the truth. Rosenthal also lobbied for decades to get Genovese's killer, Winston Moseley, released and even gave the killer a full page editorial to describe his purported rehabilitation to aid in that effort. Rosenthal did this after Moseley had escaped from prison once and raped even more women.
Moseley liked to kill women and keep raping their corpses after they died. And the New York Times spent 50 years trying to get him released while accusing completely innocent people for her death. The Times is a modern day lynch mob. Abe Rosenthal a Klansman. May he rot in hell alongside Moseley.
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