Aaaaaaaaand we’re back. In pretty much every way possible.
Sorry about the lack of update. I mean that – to have a running streak that long, only to have a laptop fuck it all up, was disappointing to me. You may note that the archive link for yesterday is blank for now – I will likely backfill it with a comic, at some point this week. But for now, I’m just dusting off my jeans and hurling right back into the storyline.
Comic Con was, as always, fucking hardcore. My whole goddamn body hurts, like I’ve just gotten back from a 5 day mountaintop tour.
I would like to address a rumor I heard while I was there. It involves the Zombie Walk, and the “Driver who Ran People Over.” We first learned of this because the corner you’ll see in these videos is LITERALLY just outside our hotel. We were done with the con for the day, walking back, and the whole intersection was thick with cops, cordoned off with crime scene tape. The initial news stories said that a driver just plowed into the members of the walk, like some kind of drunken douchebag.
Videos surfaced yesterday, and they tell a very different story.
This guy was trying to get through the intersection. When he honked, the crowd got unruly, jumped onto his car, and one member started beating on his windshield. At this point, he floored it and got the fuck out.
If you watch that slowed down, the situation was getting really ugly, really fast. A couple guys jump onto the car. One tries to open the passenger side door. I don’t blame the driver one instant for gunning it, and guess what? The cops don’t either.
If you were one of the rowdy douchebags who caused this, fuck you.
They’re lucky they didn’t try that shit in TX. You never try to open someone else’s car unless you’re ready to die.
Especially if one of your number has just been shouting “Attack him! Flip that car!”
If a mob that size is attacking you, you GTFO, and if that means damaging their bones and organs and your car, so be it.
“Agent”…”illegal arms smuggling”…
Ruh roh.
If you put someone in fear for their safety, be prepared to pay the consequences(ie; “Don’t be an asshole.”). I’ve got no problem with zombie walks, naked bike rides or any other sort of peaceful protest/action/party/whatev. Have fun. Get weird. Shake things up. But use some fucking common sense in the process, or get your ass run over.
Fuck me sideways, when the hell did this become something we actually had to explain to people??
The crowd didn’t get unruly until he attempted vehicular assault. He was pushed way up beyond the stop line, where you can see the SUV stopped. You don’t see that SUV next to his car trying to push his way through the crowd. It’s obviously not clear for him to go, yet he tries anyway. Damn strait I’m going to get upset when you try to run me over. He instigated this. Granted, the crowd shouldn’t have banged on his car, that was over the line too, but that doesn’t negate that the guy tried to push through a crowd of people. Whom, if you look closely, are not in zombie makeup. So this whole “pinning it on the zombie walk people” is BS. This was just the normal SDCC crowd.
This Samoan loved the hover text. =)
It’s nice to finally hear the *REAL* story. I want to take a fucking belt to the majority of these damn journalists’ asses, though. If we cannot rely on the media to ACCURATELY and OBJECTIVELY report a story, I fear we are in a bucket of deep doodoo, and they’re the ones stirring it. Just to cite a couple examples of bad journalism, we had the website which listed all the supposed school shootings which have occurred since Newtown, CT. The majority of those were not as they were described. Then that idiot at Rolling Stone, and now this. We need to take our media to account for its willingness to bend the truth.
By the standards of that “school shooting” list, DEA Agent Lee Paige’s ND counts as a school shooting.
Accurate and objective reporting of real facts went by the wayside in 2003 when Fox News’ lawyers stood up in in the Florida Second District Court of Appeals and argued they had the right to broadcast distortions, half-truths, and outright lies as news stories…and won.
I think it went out waaaay before that. Either when NBC Dateline planted explosives in a truck gas tank so they could get pictures…and fear- of a dangerous vehicle for their story. Or when yellow journalism turned the explosion of the Battleship Maine into the cause belli which started the Spanish American war.
They have the right, under the first amendment. They also have a responsibility, as journalists, to report the story correctly.
I find it a bit interesting that the Fox news slogan is “We report, you decide” and they’re the ones that battled for the right to make crap up and distort stuff.
More bullshit on its way. Saturday’s Sun over here (proprietor: same as Fox) had a big piece about a show …
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/25/kids-guns-and-the-american-way
That’s the Guardian, a much more left-wing and much more sensible paper than the Sun. Still, “a huge divide in American society between parents who oppose even buying their children toy guns, and others who are teaching their kids to use the real thing” misses the group who won’t buy their kids toy guns because there are real guns around so every gun should be treated as real, doesn’t it?
“Do you find that the Plaintiff Jane Akre has proven, by the greater weight of the evidence, that the Defendant, through its employees or agents, terminated her employment or took other retaliatory personnel action against her, because she threatened to disclose to the Federal Communications Commission under oath, in writing, the broadcast of a false, distorted, or slanted news report which she reasonably believed would violate the prohibition against intentional falsification or distortion of the news on television, if it were aired?”
The Jury found in favor of the plaintiff that the fox affiliate had in fact retaliated against Akre. FCC has the distortion of news policy which Akre believed WTVT violated.
Come on, as gun people, we should always look beyond the headlines to the real story.
Ironically the report that Fox sued to be able to lie, is in fact a lie.
http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2009/11/03/fox-lies-videotape-debunking-an-internet-myth/
It’s a myth. Just like the myth that Fox isn’t available in Canada because it lies, or because it’s hate speech. In fact it’s not banned, it’s just not popular, because it focuses more on US news(which strangely enough is not popular in Canada*sarcasm*).
The story isn’t that Fox sued to be able to lie, the story is that Fox defended themselves against a wrongful termination suit because they canned a pair of reporters from a Florida affiliate for refusing to lie and threatening to report them to the FCC for lying. Although the initial trial court threw out all of the wrongful termination claims, they did uphold the whistleblower claim, which was overturned by the appellate court, who agreed with the Fox lawyers’ claim that FCC policy against broadcasting untruths as legitimate news stories didn’t fall under the definition of a law, rule, or regulation. Fox’s lawyers openly admitted to falsifying news items, and successfully defended the right to do so.
Fox did later sue the two reporters who initiated the original wrongful termination claim, seeking to recover legal costs associated with the original case. But they never proactively sued on their own behalf to continue the practice of deceiving their viewers for the purposes of advancing their own agenda.
Actually, it wasn’t Fox, but the Fox affiliate WTVT. Your claim that they sued for the right to lie is in fact a distortion in itself.
Um, you’re the one saying they sued for the right to lie. If you read my comments, you’ll note I specifically said they did not sue to lie. They defended their right to do so when taken to court by another party. Neither Fox themselves, nor the affiliate, initiated the legal action. Legal action was brought against them by two reporters who were fired for refusing to broadcast a blatantly false report regarding rBGH hormones manufactured by Monsanto, and Fox sent their legal team to defend the affiliate in court. Defending yourself in court ≠ suing.
“Ironically the report that Fox sued to be able to lie, is in fact a lie.” – me
Sorry, but they never argued they had the right to lie.
” While WTVT has raised a number of challenges to the judgment obtained by Akre, we need not address each challenge because we find as a threshold matter that Akre failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower’s statute. The portion of the whistle-blower’s statute pertinent to this appeal prohibits retaliation against employees who have “[d]isclosed, or threatened to disclose,” employer conduct that “is in violation of” a law, rule, or regulation. § 448.102(1)(3). The statute defines a “law, rule or regulation” as “includ[ing] any statute or . . . any rule or regulation adopted pursuant to any federal, state, or local statute or ordinance applicable to the employer and pertaining to the business.” § 448.101(4), Fla. Stat. (1997). We agree with WTVT that the FCC’s policy against the intentional falsification of the news – which the FCC has called its “news distortion policy” – does not qualify as the required “law, rule, or regulation” under section 448.102.
The FCC has never published its news distortion policy as a regulation with definitive elements and defenses. Instead, the FCC has developed the policy through the adjudicatory process in decisions resolving challenges to broadcasters’ licenses…”
Maybe you don’t like Fox, I can relate. I’m not a huge fan either. But they did not argue that they had the right to lie, just that the whistleblower Florida law did not relate to a non-law policy that had no stated regulation on that, but the falsification of reports IS used in the license renewal process. That’s why they won the appeal, not because they had some right to lie.
“The FCC has never published its news distortion policy as a regulation with definitive elements and defenses. Instead, the FCC has developed the policy through the adjudicatory process in decisions resolving challenges to broadcasters’ licenses…”
In other words, the FCC could pull the license for intentional distortion, but it was not protected under the Florida whistleblower law
Hmmm, do omissions count? I am positive, that our local news rag, never reported on such activities. But, it should come as no surprise that our newspaper is Liberal as hell. Bad court in Florida. Did that decision ever make it up the ladder for review?
In all fairness the school shooting “list” came from Moms Demand Action and was quickly debunked even by many mainstream news sources.
The Rolling Stone articles are inexcusable, but it’s Rolling Stone FFS. They haven’t been relevant since Napster was around.
As has been said, they are lucky the driver was not in a state that allows people to carry firearms. It would have been perfectly justifiable for him to open fire.
I still remember some years back where a mob pulled a driver out of his car and beat him to death because he accidentally hit a little girl. This is the main reason I avoid crowds. That can get chaotic, primal, and violent way to quickly.
> This is the main reason I avoid crowds. That can get chaotic, primal, and violent way to quickly.
Having witnessed mob justice firsthand, I don’t think enough people judging the driver understand the weight of your statement.
Remember that mob intelligence defaults to that of the lowest member(s). Nothing good comes out of mob rule, mob decisions, or mob violence.
The effective IQ of a group is the lowest IQ of a member of that group divided by the number of people in the group. 😉
Fuck those guys. Who tries to fuck with 2tonnes of steel being pushed along by an engine?
Bike-monkeys?
(Remember this story?)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=319_1380522846
Oh yes. Also known as “idiots”
Automobiles are so common that people forget what they actually are. The fact that even a tiny one has a 10:1 weight advantage and a 10:1 power advantage against a human doesn’t cross people’s minds. Similarly, look at the number of people in passenger cars (or motorcycles!) who cut off semis on the highway. Or driving an SUV on the highway – with kinetic energy (not to mention momentum) that dwarfs .30-06 – with one hand on the phone, another on a coffee cup, and steering with their knee.
A modern automobile is terrifyingly powerful when you stop and think about it, but they’re so commonplace that nobody thinks about the dangers. No wonder annual fatalities from automobile accidents are two orders of magnitude higher than fatalities from firearms accidents.
Actually, the video is much more damning to the driver than previous reports I’ve seen. He rolls up the back windows, nudges into the crowd, and leans on the horn, while the Jeep next to him stays back and waits at a safe distance without any aggression.
My night job is as a professional driver for a paratransit company. We would say this was a preventable incident. He incited the crowd by not waiting at a safe distance (like the driver in the Jeep), pulling into the crowd, and blasting the horn. I have to also conclude he put his wife and kids in danger to the reactions of the crowd, and committed hit and run by plunging through and trying to get away.
I’ve seen repeatedly how just having patience for a few minutes or even seconds can prevent auto accidents and even fatalities. By professional driving standards, it doesn’t matter if the crowd got physical or not, he instigated it. Notice the jeep and the pedicabs are left alone. Dude screwed up big time.
Thank you kindly for posting the video, and I hope you recover from comic con adventures soon.
If you watch the video again, he rolls up the windows because a bicycle taxi rider rolls up and damned near sticks his head in the car.
Contrary to popular belief, you generally CANNOT ‘incite” someone to commit violence against you. Edging forward and leaning on his horn does not create a self-defense argument for attacking him. No matter what you think of his actions up to that point, jumping on his car and trying to break windows is not his fault, and DOES justify him attempting to escape. The blame for any injuries lies upon those that attacked HIM.
The crowd shouldn’t have been obstructing traffic anyway, they have no way to know WHY he needs to get through, nudging forward and horns are car for ‘please move’ not a rude and inciting gesture. By your own logic the crowd created a preventable scenario when they willfully obstructed traffic and turned violent, and since both those things are actually rude and inciting I’m going to have to side with the driver. Could the driver have been more laid back and waited, maybe, but he damn well shouldn’t have had to; nothing he did was unreasonable.
I am very disappointed. As someone who is no stranger to media biases and the way they negatively effect you, as well as a fellow nerd, a person might think you would wait and weigh the news before judging a situation based on a few chaotic videos.
I was there. I was lucky to be on the sidewalk approaching the intersection. I was lucky I had noticed another potential threat and happened to be watching the whole thing, able to stop and distract my group from moving forward. Not everyone in that crowd was so lucky. As you were at Comic-Con you know how loud and distracting those crowds can be, especially when as zombies walking we had people lined up on all sides of us, taking pictures and blocking our view. We were unfortunate enough to be some of the last zombies directed out, and as such the POLICE ESCORT that had been clearing traffic had already passed and a few cars were slipping into our path. There were small kids, and families with strollers still walking, and most folks were not aware of the drama occurring in front of us, blocked as the view was and as loud as the crowd around us was. People were blaring music, flashes were going off every few seconds, etc.
Which meant people were accidentally walking in to the path of the car, even as he was trying to plow through. More should be said about the exact mechanics of the accident. How he could have turned around, could have done many things but first nudged in to the crowd, tapping people with his car THEN honked aggressively for just a few short moments THEN started inching THEN plowed through. It is easy to judge this incident from the peace of your home, your mind able to better separate the chaos, able to watch the video over and over and not under immediate threat. We didn’t have that luxury. It happened a lot faster when you were there processing it all at once. People in the main crowd did not start interacting with him until he was already pulled up in to the crowd (an unnecessary act) and threatening the safety of people who had not had a chance to note the danger.
In gun terms, he put himself in a dangerous situation, brandished a weapon that provoked others, and then shot. But unlike a gun that you can use to target the direct threats, he sprayed and prayed on a crowd full of (mostly innocent) people.
Personally I see the point of the guys who jumped on the car. I don’t agree, in retrospect, as it obviously provoked him. But at the time, we didn’t know he had a family and after pulling up was scared. We knew an angry yelling/aggressively honking potentially road rage infused person was driving in to a crowd and was threatening to harm people who were unaware he was angry. We didn’t know if he was trying to hurt people or what, it certainly looked like he didn’t care about anyone but himself as he’d moved from a safe spot to the middle of a crowd.
But don’t take my word for it. It turns out that the SDPD/News agencies initially seized on an easy story with the least amount of work for them. Angry mob of Zombies swarms innocent Deaf Families car. Check the articles again, after those of us already shaken by the senselessness of the moment have had to live that moment over and over again and tell our side of the incident on various news and social media sites to try and raise awareness that this wasn’t so easy of a story. The articles now say “Driver plows through crowd during ‘Zombie-Walk,’ “‘Zombie-Walk’ canceled after Hit-and-Run at Comic-Con. And experts are examining the videos and saying what we walkers said all along. The guy was in a hurry and annoyed that he had to wait. He was a comic-con goer, so had been one of those people blocking the roads down at the convention center, so should have been aware that driving would be difficult. He recklessly provoked a crowd and was lucky he didn’t cause more damage. And believe me, the reason people were chasing him is he ran. Not just out of the path of the crowd, not just to the next police officer, but down several blocks and around a corner before he apparently came to his senses.
that includes a video news report on the subject. It is the most objective I’ve seen so far, pointing out both the neglegence of the driver and the actions of some of the people that antagonized the driver.
Why do I care to address this to you? Because my husband can be seen in all the clips, tending to the woman’s wounds. We were a safe distance away in a group of our friends that included kids, teens, an LVN, and my husband. As soon as we realized there was someone wounded, he and our LVN friend immediately started to help. This meant my husband was forced to witness a fairly gruesome injury up close and personal, as they were with her until the paramedics took over. He is also a huge fan of your comic, he had even enticed me to read it all before Comic-Con. We both really enjoy your work, him as an experienced shooter, me as a newer shooter and were looking forward to going to your booth at Comic-Con. I’m an uber nerd and had a full pass. He had gotten tickets for Sunday. Turns out watching someone very nearly kill someone else (and believe me, if the crowd hadn’t reacted quickly she would have been dead from blood loss) kills the mood for wandering through the Comic-Con crowds. I don’t know if he’ll ever be back and honestly, after this one-sided post, I don’t know if he’ll be reading your work. (or purchasing your merch…which as a huge webcomic nerd I have poured quite a bit of money in to various webcomics over the years) I want to believe though. I know that with the one sided view that has been presented, it is easy to view this from the perspective of the driver. And believe me I am furious at the douchebag who was safely far back from the crowd yelling out “flip that car” because it presents us in an angry light. But please, consider those of us who were in the thick of it, not thinking in anger but in fear.
> Personally I see the point of the guys who jumped on the car.
If you agree with that action, you are arguing from a position of such deeply entrenched self-importance that I have no idea how to respond. The appropriate action is not to jump on a driver’s hood, using your oh-so-important ass to, uh, weigh it down, I guess? The appropriate action is to get the fuck out of the way.
This is what happens when I’ve responded in so many places. The part you don’t see from this perspective is that he’s already hit people at the point that people are sitting on his hood. I sincerely believe from what I remember that the woman who was injured was already hit when people started reacting. Not to the point of injury, but I remember focusing on her and thinking “how is she going to get out of there, why doesn’t she move.” She had been facing away from the car taking pictures (because this was a well known procession and police had been clearing the street, remember?) and I think was hit in the back of the knees. In another place I was commenting, people mentioned the fight or flight reflex. I mentioned that this is what the crowd was experiencing. Some people made the wrong choice, such as the fighters. She may have froze. I don’t know. I do know that if you read what I said, I said I understand but I specifically said that I don’t agree with the choice. I obviously didn’t jump on the hood, even though we were in the same part of the crowd from the looks of the video. But I understand why he may have thought it was rational at the time.
That doesn’t change the fact that he drove up to a crowd, then into a crowd, then through a crowd. He brought the weapon into the mix because of his hurry, people responded the way people do when they feel threatened and tragedy happened. People did not have a chance to stop before he started pushing into the crowd. He did not honk prior to already entering the crowd. He had a chance before this happened to turn around or go off to the side. He chose the aggressive path.
So which is it: did he edge into the crowd, honking loudly, trying to get people to move, or did he mow them down without warning?
Again, if a car is moving toward you slowly, honking, your place is NOT TO JUMP ON THE HOOD AND BANG ON THE WINDSHIELD. I’m flabbergasted that this even has to be said. Your place is not to try to open the car door to stop the driver. Your place, and your ONLY place, is to get the fuck out of the way. I’ve watched multiple videos of the incident, from multiple angles. This was a case of a crowd of people trying to act self-righteous in the face of a slowly oncoming car, and behaving like an angry mob. The driver made a split second decision, and it’s the decision I, too, would have made.
He edged into the crowd from a perfectly safe distance, lightly hit the woman who was eventually injured (the one who looked frozen/trapped) as well as a few others. Only after he had hit people did he honk. Then he went a little faster. Then he gunned it. This happened so quickly when you were watching that it was hard to process that what you were seeing was real and not some sort of weird stunt. Still, I agree that it was a bad idea to jump on the car. But I think it was a worse idea to drive into the crowd. That is where we differ.
(As to the door opening, I confess I don’t see it. The video that ‘enhanced and highlighted’ has been taken down. I’ve tried watching it on slow speed, frame by frame, and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be looking. I can’t see it on the driver’s side passenger door and can’t get a clear look at the other side. But I 100% agree anyone doing that would should be in legal trouble as well as the driver, if it happened)
I can also see why people agree with the driver. It is easier to empathize with a driver than the crowd, as most of us have been annoyed by crowds blocking our way and in this world, we’re all drivers more than we’re the crowd. And I don’t disagree that the folks who chose to fight when faced with the danger made the wrong choice. But the fact remains that he went from a safe spot, away from the crowd, able to drive anywhere but there INTO a crowd with a heavy weapon. A crowd that was part of an annual heavily advertised event and dwarfed by the amount of people come to watch, a crowd that had worked with the police prior to the event and expected the streets to be clear (that was the first major intersection we’d encountered, there hadn’t been traffic along the street we were walking aside from a lone truck that is what drew my attention to this mess), a crowd that was full of movement and constantly full of new people unaware of the danger, a crowd with no idea of the mindset of the driver. A crowd full of diverse people with different reactions to the same event. But he was in a hurry. Totally justifies his actions? Sigh. I have a feeling you are entrenched in a view that the crowd was a unified angry mob. That since the crowd was obviously a unified mob, it is okay to be so annoyed that they were slowing you down during an event known for slow traffic that the obvious choice was to drive in to them and of course all portions of the crowd would be aware and move. Instead I’m arguing that it was a diverse assembly of different people that happened to be at that intersection for various reasons with different thoughts and as a driver you should know better than to risk driving in to a random assembly, especially when you just came from an area crowded with the same kind of people and know how distracted everyone is. Annoyance is especially not a reason to threaten people with a weapon. Which a car most certainly is…
Funny that all the news crews seem to agree that the victim was innocent. She was a part of that crowd. One of the first people hit by his initial push into the crowd, prior to honking. One of the people in front of the car. Again, I argue that it looked like she was hurt/stunned already. That he kept coming when she was having trouble moving away. A more rational action would have been to come get her out of the way. But people were trying to move out of the way, trying to fight or frozen. All of which would not have been necessary if he hadn’t come hit her and a few others in the crowd in the first place, all before honking.
Know what I do when a vehicle is pushing towards me and honking? I get the fuck out of its way. Why? Because it’s 2tonnes of steel being pushed along by a bloody big engine, and I’m pretty sure I’m squishier than it. Remember that one, most simple rule: “If it’s bigger than you, it has right of way”
Otherwise known as the “Law of Superior Tonnage”.
Your story does not match what the video shows. The video shows a man in a black shirt with a white angel print on the back walking very close to the black car on the driver’s side, looking at the driver, moving in front of the car, looking at it and then standing with his hands on his hips and his back to the car, then the car driver sounding his horn, then people surrounding the car and hitting its windows with their fists. I might have put on full right lock and reversed hard, if there hadn’t been anything where that grey 4×4-type thing is shown, rather than driving through the crowd, but I’d have felt no guilt at all about going over their feet or launching one trebuchet-style off the front of my car in the process of getting away from a mob attacking me. If he’d sat there any longer, the mob behaviour would have escalated to the point where he could justifiably, in my opinion, have emptied a magazine through his own windows to create a space through which to escape.
“the POLICE ESCORT that had been clearing traffic had already passed and a few cars were slipping into our path”
Isn’t that a bit like saying the lights had already changed?
Yeah, good point. Especially as the Zombie Walk event organizers have repeatedly said that the people involved in teh incident have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ZOMBIE WALK, but are tag-alongs who followed the actual event, and were not part of teh traffic control plan at any point.
Not syaing whether or not that’s true — just going by what the event organizers have said.
The bystanders who were just standing on the road should have rallied to clear the path for the car, NOT box it in and threaten it. When you’re worried about peoples safety you advise them and remove them from the danger, you don’t antagonize a danger especially one that you can’t physically restrain.
I suppose I understand trying to stop the car to protect the “parade” and keep it flowing, but it’s so ridiculously self centered when you have no idea why the car is so desperate to get through. You could be nice to your fellow man and accommodate them for a few seconds, you’d be back to your parade before you know it. I just don’t get why these idiots had to be so stubborn and arrogant.
Blech. I tried to fix the html. It’s been a minute. That last uber hyperlink began “here is the best article I’ve seen so far” and was supposed to only be a link for that phrase. I forgot to close the brackets. Hopefully the point is clear though.
I tell you it was not fare when I was competing against all the other little girl scouts. My parents were self-employed. So I had to go door to door for my cookie pimping. All the other little girls had parents that could strong-arm coworkers into buying cookies.
Okay, my comments are still awaiting moderation and I see other stuff has been posted, so I’m going to just assume that I’m writing to a mod and not worry that this is my second edit. I see that I’ve gotten used to people jumping on the “boo Zombie” train immediately. I do see that you heard the other side “Maniac driver” first and then made assumptions based on this newer video/the early police reports. I still stand by my statements. The driver engaged first and the reaction of the main crowd was one of fear and confusion not malice. People were trying to stop a driver who could only be presumed to be insane based on our limited information.
I also forgot to note that the police reports have been tentative so far. The newest articles mention that the PD is going over all the videos and that the case is still under examination as to whether he will be charged.
> The driver engaged first and the reaction of the main crowd was one of fear and confusion not malice.
Bullshit. Watch that video again. That dude who got on his hood and the dude who smashed his windshield? They were not responding out of fear. They WERE responding maliciously.
And all they had to do was get the fuck out of the way, instead.
Also, the guy who opens the car door? Not reacting out of fear or panic.
> “He sort of started taking off and actually started peeling out and he was, like, going toward the crowd,” said Kissinger, who is seen in one of the videos punching the car’s windshield.
Jesus fucking christ.
> A couple of people sat on the hood to stop the driver from inching forward.
See above, re: Christ, Jesus Fucking.
So … according to this Kissinger person (I thought Kissinger was long dead but, hey, zombie walk, right?) … the car started peeling out towards the crowd? This guy is seen in the video punching the car’s windshield … and he was part of the crowd … and the car peeled out twoards the crowd? Er … he saw the car coming at him at high speed and swung a punch as it went by, did he? No? Jumped on as it went into the crowd and tried to break the glass so he could reach through and take it out of Drive so he’d be able to get back off safely? No? Hrmmm. Somehow, his story just doesn’t quite add up.
I commend you for your first hand account of all of this Grant. Knowing how the driver was scared for his children and not just in a rush to get home. And that the horrible angry mob that was there long before he pulled up, was going to act so violently as speedbumps.
You have lost a long time reader. Fuck you you piece of shit hypocrite. I hope you live an interesting life.
Oh go fuck yourself.
you first cum breath. 🙂
:HINT: Once you’ve announced you’re flouncing off in a snit, coming back to hiss and spit only makes you into comedy gold.
“Attack him” “Attack that car” people start to shout (10 seconds in). People start hitting the car. Yeah, no wonder the guy panicked.
Odd I wanted to reply to the whole comic not this specific part of the discussion. A well…
And sorry, my “attack him” thing isn’t really an argument. Seeing as the driver was deaf. (as in legit deaf).
It’s still an argument since apparently others LISTENED and DID. He could certainly tell when someone attacked, to the point of breaking the windshield.
The punching guy has a moment where he looks regretful in the video. He states he was not trying to provoke the driver, only trying to slow him down. From an outside perspective, a car came out of no where. We did not know why the driver was suddenly in our midst and angry. (Punching guy came from my portion of the crowd. He likely had the same view of what happened as I did, which is why I feel comfortable guessing) Most of us had not been there minutes before. We didn’t know how long he’d been there. We didn’t know he was in a hurry or whatever. We didn’t know he was ‘just trying to get through the crowd.’ We knew a maniac had at least one woman trapped, that families and children were liable to be in his path and that he kept driving disregarding her or anyone else in the crowd and their attempts to get out of the way. What was to say he hadn’t gone crazy and was lining up to gun through as many people as possible? If you saw a crazed person with a gun step in to a crowd and start threatening people, you would try to stop them. Why is a seemingly crazed driver any different?
You know how he could have prevented this? BY NOT DRIVING IN TO A CROWD OF PEOPLE. If he’d been there for 10/20+ minutes he must have seen the police escort and known something was going on. The rational choice most of us would make when trapped by a crowd (for instance people swarming the streets to go home after gathering to watch 4th of July fireworks) would be to try a different route or wait it out. Hell, this last 4th I didn’t even have that choice. I was stuck in the same damn crowded lot with no other exit for over 40 minutes, because of foot traffic. It never once occurred to me to shove my car through people, because that would be dangerous.
If he’d been there for less time, why was it such a big deal to wait? Because people were near him on the road? Where the heck does he drive usually that he doesn’t have to deal with other people on the road? Again, to clarify even before driving in to the crowd he was being aggressive and telling people trying to explain the situation that he was in a hurry. (Which, as I’ve said, wasn’t loud enough to warn the crowd but I second-hand know the person in the SUV that was close enough to hear.)
But I guess I’m entitled like that. I don’t think that you should put yourself in a position where you risk hurting people if there is any other option. Huh. Sounds like some of the things the Conceal Carry permit espouses.
Look. We can keep sniping at each other. I doubt we’re going to get very far. I’m never going to believe that him driving in to the crowd was an acceptable move. You are going to espouse that none of it would have happened if the crowd had responded rationally when faced with the situation. I’m going to say he was irrational to drive into the crowd. You are going to say that people were assholes and he was justified. I don’t know how to show that he caused an irrational situation by his initial irrational action. And I’m tired of trying. I wasn’t an attacker. I was a frozen person on the side, helplessly watching, scared of what might happen and not convinced that what I was seeing was real. I’ve felt that after all the help my friends gave and how helpless we’ve all felt knowing that the driver was seen as an innocent party, the least I could do was try and give the other side. I was thrown off to see that a safe space, a comic that makes me laugh and usually shares similar beliefs to me was stating the same one sided opinion on the event that has haunted me for the last few days. I bow out now. I’m being way too serious for the internet and am too emotionally invested to argue with strangers.
If you want to swing the “you lost a reader” carrot in front of me, you have a loooooooooong row to hoe before I give a fuck.
Nah. You lost my husband from all this, no carrots, just fact. He is stubborn like that. It’s funny because I honestly am amused on a regular basis at how similar ya’ll are. I probably won’t read out of respect for him, but I would still read otherwise. I know that as an internet artist you have to have thick skin from people threatening this and that and taking offense by your position. I’ve not read you for long, but I started going to Comic-Con back in the early 2000s because of webcomics, so I know the drill. In this case, I’m the asshole arguing on the internet. I usually laugh at those people. I just made the mistake of trying to engage after having been on the defense for the last few days. Until we started contacting news sources and posting in comment sections and such the news was all “Bad Zombies.” At least now they are recognizing that it was bad random pedestrians and entertaining that the driver wasn’t blameless. I forgot to turn that defensiveness off when I saw you posting here on the topic. And to be honest I had a half-assed fairy’s fart of a hope that you hadn’t examined the position of the uninvolved members of the crowd and I could show my husband and we could go back to happily reading your comic. He isn’t a webcomic nerd so it was nice to have one to share. This was a dumb fantasy. I’ve stepped back and thought about it and realize that posting here was a bad decision and arguing was an even worse one. I’m sorry for being the idiot arguing on your page. We are each entitled to our opinions, and especially if yours is one I disagree with on a very personal level it is not a reason to make you feel like I’m attacking you. Good luck, I really do like your comic and hope you do well. It’s a nice balanced perspective on a lot of topics I care about and we need more of that kind of balance in the world.
I agree with JLGrant. The guys punching the driver’s windscreen wereassholes.Of course not everyone in the crowd was guilty or deserved to be ploghed into. however when in a situation like that you will as a driver wantto get out of there so head for the quickest exit, unfortunately it happened to be into a crowd of people.
Myopinion is that the ones who instigated to flip the car and attack the car should be charged with the woman’s injuries since the driver ran her over due to THEIR aggressive actions.
In today’s world nobody wants to take responsibility unfortunately.
“What was to say he hadn’t gone crazy and was lining up to gun through as many people as possible? If you saw a crazed person with a gun step in to a crowd and start threatening people, you would try to stop them. Why is a seemingly crazed driver any different?”
If I saw a guy setting up a machine-gun on a rigid base with no means of swivelling it at all, pointing down a line left of centre in the main corridor of a shopping mall, I might well assume he was setting up to do something with a significant chance of a high casualty count. What I wouldn’t do is stand in front of the gun.
Whee! 😀
1) You know what they say about the IQ of a crowd being half that of the IQ of its least intelligent member? That. It’s why crowds become mobs at the drop of a hat. Even crowds composed individually of good, nice, law-abiding people like Amanda. It’s why examining the worth or thoughts or motives of the individuals is pointless. Because a crowd is a collective organism. And not a reasonable, thoughtful, wise one.
2) JL…JoeWasThere was throwing the “I am outraged you’ve lost a reader” card and being a dick. But Amanda seems to have been nothing but civil. Wrong, IMO, but civil. No need to be so truculent with her, man. 🙂
You, sir are an optimist. Take the lowest IQ in the group and divide by the number of legs.
I can’t see all of the details in this video. It’s a bad angle.
I can say, however, that I’ve been the driver in a car that was assailed by a crowd of unruly bastards. I can say with certainty that I attempted to run my attackers over with my car. I’ve also never seen a bunch of fat, drunk hillbillies dive out of the way so fast in my life. Except for the one who tried to reach into the car and grab me by the throat (which was the breaking point that made me stomp the gas pedal) – he almost lost his hand.
All because a girl asked for directions while I was putting gas in the car. I have no idea what was going on, but I was suddenly in the middle of it, and I was not happy about this. I was less happy when the crowd of bumpkins surrounded my car. I crossed the line from ‘distinctly unhappy’ to ‘ready to kill’ when the lead hillbilly reached into the window and tried to grab me by the throat.
Lucky for them, I wasn’t willing to pursue them into a drainage ditch to make sure they were no longer a threat.
If the crowd was unwilling to make a hole briefly for traffic and started attacking the guy’s car, then he had every right to start running his assailants down. It’s just unhappy that innocents were also in the path. Insurance can sort it out. If he was running into people and wasn’t willing to wait for them to make a hole, that would change the flavor of the incident. But having seen crowds like that before, I strongly suspect the former rather than the latter.
Also, for the dick who sat on the car hood: Be happy I wasn’t driving. I’d have reversed for two feet, dumped you in the road, then rocked into low gear quickly and run your stupid ass over – flatmeat city. For the whiners and nay-sayers, I wouldn’t have been driving aggressively until after assaulted by the idiots in this video clip. But when I do drive aggressively, I drive AGGRESSIVELY. I was trained in aggressive and offensive driving by the US Army, and I’m damn good at it.
And I don’t draw any cartoons, so fuck off with your ‘I’ll never read your comments again’ bullshit.
Wow.
You usually mix your own opinion in while reporting on a situation, but …
The story you linked to with the words “I don’t blame the driver one instant for gunning it, and guess what? The cops don’t either.” says nothing of the sort. It says the cops didn’t arrest the driver or anyone else, but were still investigating, and were hoping to see video of the incident (which means they hadn’t seen any yet). They didn’t say they think he was justified, they said they’re still checking his story.
And that video is FAR from a smoking gun. It shows a car that is already way past the stop line slowily trying to bull its way through a crowd of pedestrians, and then a lady tapping on his window and trying to talk to the driver, and then a guy doing the same but we can’t see what he’s doing nearly as well. And then some stuff happens that we can’t see because people and a pedal-cab are in the way, and then the driver guns it into the crowd.
The news article has a couple of others that show the immediate aftermath, and one that got taken down that reportedly showed people “clustered around the windows” and somebody jumping on the hood of the car. But all of that apparently happened AFTER he hit the gas.
The fair thing to say is that the evidence isn’t in yet, and we shouldn’t rush to judge anyone involved.
But saying that video shows the driver was justified, and the article says the police agree? Neither of those things is true.
One time, I was driving my wife to the hospital after her water broke. I was stressed to the max, and driving aggressively trying to get there as quickly as possible.
I’m certain that there were people who thought “Wow, that guy’s a total asshole douche who thinks he is bette than anyone else and is in a big hurry to get home 5 seconds faster than the rest of us.”
Turns out, I was a stressed out potential new father who probably shouldn’t have been trying to drive a car.
I say this because we all do a little too much assuming in this life. The people who assaulted this guybecause he was trying to get through the crowd, honking his horn, and so forth, had NO IDEA whether this guy was in a hurry because of a medical emergency, or if he was in a hurry because he was an entitled douche.
But they made an assumption. Maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but seriously…
…how much of an asshole do you look like if it turns out that the guy who’s windshield you smashed was just trying to get his wife to the hospital, and wasn’t handling the fact that your crowd of people was holding him up very well?
The end of the story is that this guy was in a hurry. The people in the crowd had no idea why he was in a hurry. THey just decided that they didn’t liek the fact that he was in a hurry, and physically assaulted him for it, which drove him to defend himself.
I don’t write a webcomic, either, so you’re welcome to never read my comic again if you’d like, also.
From looking at the video It looked like some woman in orange tried to talk to him. The crowd could have very easily let the cars through and then continue the walk. Like it has been said already on this. After he lays on his horn to see if the crowd will let him trough, you get people yelling out to tag the car, flip it and other stuff to incite the people already in a mob mentality. IMHO It is the fault of both. He could have just waited till they walked past, but if a car seems like it is in a hurry. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY. It is made of metal and can kill you , because you are squishy and made of meat and bone. MASS X VELOCITY= PAIN.
It’s interesting how many people become the lost longtime readers when their walls of text fail to win the day.
Re the sitting-on-the-hood-of-the-car thing. Possible that was self-defense.
I was crossing a street once, with the ‘walk’ light, stepped off the curb into the crosswalk, car making a right turn apparently didn’t see me because he just went. I ended up sitting on his hood. He stopped. I looked at him, he looked at me. I got off and back onto the sidewalk. Think I was too astonished to be pissed off. ( That came later. ) He went his way, I went mine.
I had no intention of sitting on his hood. The shape of his front end and his momentum just sort of scooped me up and deposited me there.
That’s not even SLIGHTLY what shows up in that video.
I can’t actually see much of anything like anything in the video.