Left Side of the Aisle #68 - Part 4

Clarabell Award: commenters on story about racial slur

This week's Clarabell Award, given as needed for acts of meritorious stupidity, is a group award. But first I have to give you the necessary background.

Joseph Ross is a black man who lives in Dayton, Ohio. The first weekend in August he stopped in Sharonville, Ohio, on his way to Cincinnati, where he planned to attend the Macy's jazz festival.

He checked into a Motel 6, went to his room, and turned on the TV. It showed an in-house screen - you know, the kind of screen that comes up when you first turn on a motel or hotel TV; it shows something about services, the TV channels available, that sort of thing.

This time, however, it also included a greeting of "Hello Nigger!"

Ross complained to Motel 6's corporate office and the Dayton chapter of the NAACP and - note this well - WCPO, a TV station in Cincinnati, got video of the screen, showing the offensive message.

The police are also investigating the incident, saying they take it "very seriously." The corporation released a statement deploring the incident - while carefully noting it was an "isolated" case - and the motel gave him a better room.

Okay, so who are the clowns? They are a significant portion of people who commented on article online. When I saw it there were like 15 pages of comments; I just went through the first five. (Oh, and in what's below I corrected all the misspellings and such in the cited comments.)

In that space there were a number of people who attacked the Huffington Post for running the story. Apparently it had been up a couple of days and one person answered that question "Why are you still this? by saying

They will run it as long as they feel it will bring the country closer to a race war. Of course that is the NAACP's agenda also.

The NAACP was another frequent target, with one calling it "nothing more than a black version of the KKK."

You'd be surprised - or perhaps you wouldn't be - at how many comments were along the lines of "They call each other this all the time. What's the problem?" One insisted "I actually think it was pretty friendly of them to greet him." Several others said it was "funny" or even "hilarious." Ross "got totallly upset over nothing, why so dramatic," wondered another. Apparently the concept of "context" is beyond these people's mental faculties.

Another commenter said this was just "the liberal press still trying to stir up some shit!" Still another said "I'm telling you. Racism has been rampant, since the President took office." (That one actually got a good comeback: "Yeah - President Washington.)

Many commenters said they just did not believe it. For example:

"He is just very unappreciating [sic]. Look at him we can see he came from a shelter; damn they just don't know how to act when greeted." [The photo, as I'm sure you realize, is of Joseph Ross.] ...

"This guy is on a set up from day one as he just happens to know an employee there." [When asked from where that knowledge comes, there was no response.] ...

"He is in it for the money grab."

But this was the one, the one that could have secured the award all by itself:

Yes, I think it was one of his buddies who put it there, I cannot see a white person doing it, what would be the purpose for a white to do it?

It's hard to imagine how someone could have sufficient brains to operate a keyboard and still be so out of touch with the world around them. But what is clear is that whoever this person is, they are the King Clown of a whole group of racist clowns.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/31/motel-6-racial-slur_n_1720762.html