"The professor was just offering up some red meat so the racists and phony hero's would crawl out of their caves and show their disgusting underbellies."

"This blog is one big troll and the commentariat are the unwitting subjects of a psychopathology experiment."

Said Howard in the post about the 5 teenagers who taunted and laughed and recorded video as a man drowned before their eyes.

I'll just say... The phony hero's what?

And let me give you an example of a commenter who used that thread as an occasion to tell a story of his own (phony?) heroism. Gahrie wrote:

I was a longterm substitute teacher at a middle school that took the entire 7th grade to the museums and beach in San Diego. The kids were allowed to go in the water, and at least half did. I was the only teacher in the water. Six kids, all of whom were chronic trouble makers I later discovered, got caught in a rip current and were trapped where the waves were breaking also. No one noticed but me, and I immediately swam out to them without thinking. All six grabbed on to me, and thank god I am a large man (buoyant), or I would not have been able to keep the seven of us up. The lifeguards eventually saw us and rescued all of us. They said I probably saved the life of at least a couple of the kids who were exhausted.

When I finally got the shakes and reacted, the scariest thing to me was that I didn't think about what I was doing, and instead just reacted.

And let's also see what the race-conscious analysis was like. (The drowning man was black, and people are assuming that the 5 teenagers are black.) First, here's Chuck:

I am going to give the [NY] Times a pass on their having not posted video. Although I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that if a black man had been drowning and the monstrous do-nothing onlookers had been white, that the Times would have posted all of it along with three [new] columns on the state of race relations.

And here's Clyde:

[T]o play devil's advocate: In Florida, any sizable body of water such as a pond has a very good chance of having an alligator in it. There's a very good chance that the black teens don't know how to swim. It's apparent from listening to the video that the victim drowned quickly and would have been dead long before help could arrive even if they had called 911. And since they were at the park smoking marijuana, calling 911 would just have gotten them involved with the police, which they obviously didn't want to happen, and you can't call 911 anonymously.

And, responding to Clyde, YoungHegelian:

Yes, all this is true.

I'd like to add, in my experience with teen-age boys, & especially the black teen-age boys in the DC area, that sort of goofy bravado is default behavior when caught in an unfamiliar situation. It's like you never, ever show fear or concern, for such would be seen as a sign of weakness.

You have no idea how many times I've been out driving & some young black man will just step out boldly to cross against traffic. And you know what? He'll never look up the entire time! It's almost as if when he makes eye contact with a driver, the jig will be up. Hell, I'd look up & around when jaywalking just to make sure I don't get splattered by some clown who's looking at his cell phone & not the road. Not these guys.

And, yes, it gets them killed. In my county in suburban DC (Montgomery County, MD), each year more pedestrians are struck & killed by cars then there are victims of murder.

And here's Big Mike:

I want to add that I'm very distressed to see the comments that raise a racial issue (or potential racial issue). I grew up in [a] small Midwestern quarry town, and the white teenagers among whom I grew up would have acted no differently. Well, except fifty-five years ago they wouldn't have had cellphones, they'd have been smoking cigarettes and not weed, and there was no 911, no Internet, no social media.

Who called Meg Whitman a "whore"? And who cares?

"The person who said that word is someone who can't be fired... Jerry's wife can't be fired" — according to an anonymous source.

By the way, who cares if the word "whore" is used in private conversations to refer to politicians who sell themselves in one way or another? Virtually all politicians take money and much of that money is given by people that are hoping/expecting to get something. In that sense, they are all whores. It's unremarkable that rough language is used. So what's the problem with calling Meg Whitman a whore? Jerry's a whore too, isn't he?

This fuss is phony. The only way it has any substance is if you think there's something especially wrong with using the standard rough language against a woman. If you think that, you don't believe in the full equality of the sexes. And it would mean that women don't belong in politics or wielding great power in the public sphere. If we can't criticize women the same way we criticize men, then we shouldn't trust them with power.

When I wrote "Jerry's a whore too, isn't he?" maybe you started thinking about the substance of the charge. Who has Jerry taken money (or other support) from and how has he, in the past, served the interests of the people who helped him? Well, the same thing goes for Meg Whitman! What was the substantive criticism? Why aren't we talking about that? Let's treat male and female politicians the same.

IN THE COMMENTS: YoungHegelian said:

If Prof Althouse thinks that politicians are "whores" because they take others' money, shouldn't Ms Whitman get a pass because her campaign is self-funded?

I mean, she may be a political masturbatrix, but she's not a whore!

I think apologies are owed here, Professor!

I said, the discussion should shift to the substance of it, and I agree that, with so much of her own money, Whitman has more chance of winning on the substance than most politicians.

Dave points me to PJ O'Rourke's "Parliament of Whores." O'Rourke wrote:  "Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."