Comments on: I don’t know ’bout you …

By: Todd Pearson

Todd Pearson — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

As a hawk with libertarian leanings, I find a post like this unsettling. Hate “incidents” happen. They just do. The question is how, if at all, to punish them differently than other “incidents.” But the fact that one was faked is not particularly probative to how we address the underlying issue.

By: Todd Pearson

Todd Pearson — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

FYI- Accidently hit “post” instead of “preview” on prior comment. Please excuse all typos.

By: antimedia

antimedia — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

First you’ll have to convince me that “hate” incidents should be punished differently. Is a “hate” murder somehow more heinous than just your plain old ordinary everyday murder? Should we punish “normal” murderers less than we punish “hate” murderers?

The entire idea seems Orwellian to me.

By: Veeshir

Veeshir — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I agree with Dave, that is hilarious. The nitwit spelled “fag” backwards because he was looking in the mirror. That’s pretty darn funny.

By: Ladainian

Ladainian — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Most murders are committed by loved ones. If hate crimes deserve extra punishment, perhaps there should be some extra bonus, a reduced penalty, you get when you murder a family member.

Some anti-hate-credit or something when you kill a 7-11 clerk to rob his cash register.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Antimedia, there’s nothing “Orwellian,” or even necessarily wrong, about punishing some crimes more severely than others. If I slug my neighbor and scream “take that, you son of a bitch,” he’s hurt but no one else is. From the standpoint of the community at large, it’s just one more crime in the neighborhood, not an implicit threat to anyone else in particular. OTOH, if I hit him just as hard but scream “take that, you Lutheran son of a bitch,” I’ve committed exactly the same crime against him, and merit exactly the punishment for that, but I’ve also issued a thinly veiled threat against every other Lutheran in my area. The question is whether that additional part is the kind of threat society should merely condemn verbally, or whether criminal consequences should be attached to it as well, at least in the context of punishing otherwise criminal behavior. [I'm talking about the American concept of a hate crime, not the Canadian model, where the hate itself may constitute a crime.]

Reasonable minds can differ as to whether or not hate crimes should be punished more severely than their generic, non-hate counterparts. But if they are, then I think that faking a hate crime should also be punished more severely than faking an ordinary crime, for three reasons. First, by faking the more serious crime, the perp diverts more police resources, and puts an innocent citizen at an increased risk of being wrongly convicted of a more serious crime and sent to prison for a longer period of time. Second, whatever generalized threat a genuine hate crime sends to the community at large, the same exact threat is communicated by a false allegation of the same hate crime, e.g., my Lutheran neighbor can cause just as much fear and loathing in the Lutheran community by falsely accusing me of hitting him for being Lutheran as I could cause by actually doing it. Third, life isn’t like the parable about the little boy who cried wolf, where only the guilty part is not believed. In real life, every little boy who cries wolf increases the chances that a different, innocent little boy will not be believed if/when he truthfully identifies a real wolf.

By: Rod Stanton

Rod Stanton — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Moron would have been better; and it almost works either way (pun intended).

By: Curtis

Curtis — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

“He said he falsely reported the attack to increase the police presence in his neighborhood.”

It might work. He’s one reason why.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

So he wanted to divert police forces away from where the real hate crimes were happening, and into his neighborhood, where they weren’t. Make that four reasons to treat false allegations of hate crimes more seriously than false allegations of regular crimes (neither of which, I suspect, are taken seriously enough).