Of course there not racists, they’re just being honest about how awful black people are!</sarcasm>

Ugh, people like this remind of half my family and most of the people I work with.  I really need to move out of the South…

I am getting so sick of this crap.

One of my favorite trend online is from non-US people who claim that if someone in their country does blackface, it can’t be racist because they didn’t have slavery, y’see!? Like, blackface is some incredibly idiosyncratic tradition steeped in abstract metaphor that makes Kabuki look like an episode of The Berenstain Bears.

By this logic, I cannot see the problem with depictions of negative Jewish stereotypes like Shylock and Fagin, because the US never gassed 4 million Jews.

That comment isn’t racist at all. That guy just really cares about violence, misogyny, rudeness and entitlement issues. I’m sure he is just as passionate about addressing those issues when they arise in white culture. I could totally see him and all of the other non-racists lecturing all white people if a white person was found doing something rude.

This shit makes me punchy.  She’s acted like an asshole.  Why isn’t THAT good enough?  Why do they fucking HAVE to trot out the stale brainless bigotry as well?  Is that truly the only way for them to feel good about themselves?

Fucking disgusting.

The amount of projection in the overtly racist comments is what always gets me. Entitlement issues? Really? Just makes you wonder if the writer was on the National Mall last year with a sign that said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”.

So she was an overweight black woman—how is that relevant to this incident? Her behaviour was obnoxious, not (I repeat, not) sassy. There’s a difference, people.

Racists are so stupid, they can’t even match the stereotype to the behaviour.

Another interesting aspect of the story besides that amazing phone battery—it took 16 bloody hours to go from Oakland, CA to Salem, OR. That’s about a 11-hour trip by car or bus, including streets with traffic lights, spots of traffic, some rest stops, etc. While I understand how the extra 5 hours get tacked onto the train trip, it doesn’t change the fact that American passenger rail is a joke.

The story sounds pretty bullshitty also.  16 hours?  That is an entire day minus 8 hours for sleep.  Who talks that long?  And who listens for that long also?  Was it multiple calls?  And again, amazing battery.  My bullshit alarm is going off.

You know who’s _really_ obnoxious on cellphones in public?

Fucking everybody!

I had this argument years ago and I’m still not sure what I think about it, but I have been saying for some time that maybe it is better if we allow people who are bigots to be openly bigoted.  That is, instead of driving words like “nigger” and “kike” and “spic” underground, we let people use them publicly, on television, in films, and so on, because you can’t engage bigots if you can’t identify them.  Yes, the commenters who thought the cellphone woman’s color was relevant identified themselves well enough, but generally, people hide their bigotry.  Hidden bigotry doesn’t mean the bigotry is gone.  Does it disappear gradually if we make it less visible?  I mean, does it disappear over time because there are fewer public or obvious examples of it so less of it is passed on?  Or does it go away more rapidly if we let people be bigots publicly so that we can engage them (confrontation doesn’t change behavior or attitudes, but engagement can…or so I believe)?  This story makes me wonder about that old argument of mine.

She’s acted like an asshole.

Seconded. Get the fuck out of the quiet car if you can’t be, you know, quiet. It makes me wonder if the quiet car was one of the ones with outlets at the seats, though. That would explain her amazing phone battery.

I bet her phone company is pissed off if she’s on an unlimited minutes plan. That’s crazy usage.

Some days, I think the best part about the Klan is that they were honest about being racists.

They were certainly a little easier to spot in my youth and certainly did not try to weasel out of it like they do now.

As someone who uses an elevator to get to work, I can attest that white people can be just as ridiculous about cell phone usage. “I’m on an elevator. You’re breaking up. What? What? What? What? You’re breaking up. I’m on an elevator. I’ll see you in ten seconds. What? What? I know. Huh? What? I’m on an elevator.” etc.

Jim Hoft has linked to white supremacist sites in the past, so that he’d cultivate this sort of following isn’t surprising. He’s a racist and a moron, and attracts racist morons. Ta da!

Yep, as soon as I saw a picture of the woman I knew the racists would come out of the woodwork.

I don’t understand why it took so long to say something to her. Or maybe people asked her to quiet down all along, but it wasn’t until hour 16 that things got heated enough for the police.

Makes me feel better about speaking the hell up, before the train left the station, to the loud group that boarded my quiet car the last time I was on Amtrak.  They were young, blond, and British, and you know how THOSE people can be.  I was as nonconfrontational as possible, yet they still weren’t thrilled to hear from me, but they did move to another car. If I’d let it slide for an hour or two, I would have felt foolish saying something after that.  Before I knew it, sixteen hours later, I might have been forced to commit homicide. 

The lesson here is: speak up early and often.  That, and racists can go pound sand.

“Of course there not racists, they’re just being honest about how awful black people are!</sarcasm>”

Conservatives just like to helpfully point out to black people that if black people weren’t so stupid and lazy, they’d realize that liberals are the real racists.

“They were certainly a little easier to spot in my youth and certainly did not try to weasel out of it like they do now.”

True, although sometimes you get an opportunity like the birth certificate/OBL twofer, where the racists just have nothing to hide behind.

I can attest that white people can be just as ridiculous about cell phone usage

Oh, yeah.  Come here to western Montana (one of the whitest places in America) and witness the abundance of clueless, self-absorbed idiots wandering about and endangering all around them in the process.

While I would kill for a cell phone that could be ACTIVELY used for 16 hours straight, this dude…

“See, when you point out the obvious fact that violence, misogyny, rudeness and entitlement are rampant in the black ‘culture’ you’re a racist and need to just shut up. I guess that charge keeps them from having to take a good look at themselves in the mirror. Too bad because black peoples lives will never improve until they do. When will they learn that playing the race card endlessly is only hurting them?”

...is an ASS. HOLE.

In addition to the battery issues, you really have to hand it to amtrak for maintaining cell coverage over the entire route, which passes through some pretty desolate stretches.

And if I were really snarking: do you think you’re going to be able to hear the other side of your cell conversation if you’re sitting in the loud car?

Hey, it’s just an obvious fact. 

Reality has that well-known racist bias, ya know.  And don’t go playing the race card by pointing out the previous comments were racist.  That’s what’s wrong with minorities, ya know—they keep whining about racism/homophobia/sexism/etc and they never *do* anything about it!

DBK, if we “allowed” racists to say spic/nigger/kike/etc. then they’d get mad that we’d “identified” them as racist.  It would be playing the race card again.

*I think it’s cute that my iPad doesn’t want me to write those words.  Surely I meant “jigger” or “bigger”?!  Of course, it’s actually just PC run amok and liberal fascists imposing their views on real Merkins.  Playing the race card with technology!!!

Fuck.

Why did I go there and look at the comments?

Turns out she suffers from that well-known malady “black lady syndrome”.

I’m done.  I cant snark it anymore.  The weather isn’t horrible, so I’m taking the small human to the park.  We’ll pick dandelions and swing with our multicultural neighbors and pretend those fuckers don’t exist.

@19

“Allow” probably isn’t the right word.  I hope people understand what I was getting at.  Not sure what the right word would be.

Two things: Why was this reported in the first place? It’s hardly a newsworthy story except, even by tabloid standards. Also mentioning her race was hardly germane to it.

Ugh. except doesn’t belong in that sentence above.

mndean, I think it would fall under the “cellphone-douche” angle.  Everyone hates the obnoxious cellphone assholes of the world, including other obnoxious cellphone assholes who are not currently on their cellphones.

Also, minor correction, her race never came up in the text of the story, but there was a picture of her being escorted off the train.

Bex—on the flip side of that, here was my quiet car experience recently:

The train was TOTALLY booked solid, so a lot of people were being herded into the quiet car because that was where the only seats were. Not a huge deal except that the roof was leaking, making the quiet car also the splash zone.

Now, the quiet car has a sign on it that says “keep your conversations quiet and have your cell phones on vibrate.”  The conductor in question decided this meant ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING, even a quiet conversation between two people sharing a row. And if he so much as saw a cell phone, he got to yell at you and threaten to kick you off the train.

“violence, misogyny, rudeness and entitlement”

This is beautiful. EVEN RACISTS have to use liberal values to argue for their beliefs. That’s how much progress we’ve made: once upon a time racists could be completely open and bigotry was its own argument; now they have to try to couch it in liberal values.

Believe it or not, I see this asshole as proof of how far we’ve come. There’s a long way to go yet… but we’re moving down the road.

Yuck.  Hey racists, using the term “culture” instead of flatly referring to people’s race doesn’t fool the rest of us.  Your bigotry is still obvious.

Since most serial killers whose identities have been uncovered in the U.S. are white males, can we assume that the culture of white males leads to sexual, homicidal psychopathy?

Explanation for battery: you can plug in your phone on the trains on that line. I’ve taken it a lot of times and always use the outlets for my computer. Just FYI.

While I appreciate the criminalization of obliviousness, talking on the cell phone is not a crime in itself.

But today’s paper reminds us, when athletic young white women get on the cell phone,

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/MNQN1JI4TU.DTL&object=/c/pictures/2011/05/19/ba-rohnert20_0503492061.jpg

cute toddlers must die.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/MNQN1JI4TU.DTL

<i>Hey racists, using the term “culture” instead of flatly referring to people’s race doesn’t fool the rest of us.<i>

As far as racial stereotyping goes, I watched the evolution of non-stop cell phone culture, and it began with Asians. In 1993 I was in Singapore, where I noted a large number of middle-aged ethnic Chinese women strolling along Orchard Road, talking into their cell phone. Back in the states, this habit had yet to percolate. A couple of years later, on Clement Street in SF, I was struck by the numbers of (you guessed it) middle-aged ethnic Chinese women strolling along, talking into their cell phone. By 2000 the habit had spread to young women students at the college near my house. Pairs of what were once known as co-eds strolled along, each talking into their cell phone, but presumably not to each other. The habit has since spread to both (or all) genders, and all ages, races, colors, and (presumably) creeds.

The habit has since spread to both (or all) genders, and all ages, races, colors, and (presumably) creeds.

Kind of, but I bet that this isn’t constant in time: around the time that white American college students were constantly talking on their phones, I suspect that Singaporeans and middle aged Asian Americans started to find that habit impolite and horribly gauche, and so on down the class/awareness ladder.

@#28 Blondie:  That’s probably a safe assumption.  In fact, anytime you see a white male on the street you should probably call the cops.  Although there’s a slight chance he is innocent, he is probably a serial rapist and murderer, just like most white men.

misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge case

I’m fucking sick of this shit. How many times has it been communicated that using a cell phone, especially texting on it, is significantly dangerous, and how many times will people have to suffer or die, and then their families suffer as a consequence of people driving while using the cell phone?

Misdemeanor? This is an area where my mercy has almost completely run out. These people should be facing charges that could land them in prison for a significant portion of their lives, 10-15 years or so. I doubt they didn’t know the dangers or the laws, especially in California which very clear on them, instead these people likely chose to simply disregard the lives of others for something so trivial.

I think the best part about the Klan is that they were honest about being racists.

Nah - best part was the barbecue.  That and the homoerotic longing.

Run that up the flag pole, R.T. I’d salute it.  The sentence should be double when the offender is a goddamn first responder/police/firemen/etc., like I see around my city all the damn time.  I watched a whole group of pedestrians nearly get plowed into by a cop who ran a redlight because his texting is way more important than lowly citizens attempting to go to work.

I saw a bumpersticker once that said “You’re not that important.  Hang up and Drive”.  Tattoo it on their foreheads.

I’m honestly confused about something:  If it’s OK to have a conversation with the person next to you on the train/bus, why isn’t it OK to speak to have a conversation with someone over a phone, as long as it’s at the same conversational tone?*

Or is that implied when talking about cell phone doucherry, and the Two Minutes Hate does not extend to all people using cell phones on transportation?

*Yes, I know that in this case the woman was in a quiet car, but that seemed irrelevant to Jesse and others.

NY, there were apparently a number of complaints about her behavior, and she apparently got into a “verbal altercation” with other passengers.  She was charged with disorderly conduct.  This seems to go beyond simple inconsiderate behavior.  If someone having a simple conversation acted in a similar manner, I imagine there would similar results.

Since most serial killers whose identities have been uncovered in the U.S. are white males, can we assume that the culture of white males leads to sexual, homicidal psychopathy?

Yes.  That and NASCAR.

Ta-Nehisi Coates said this a while back and I saved it in the awesome quote file on my desktop.

An unfortunate portion of the black experience consists of being told that you are collectively hidebound to folly, by people presently frolicking in their own. To be black in America is to take lectures on dignity from naked emperors.

I’ve never been black in America, but this seems 150 percent true.

CB, I’m asking about cell phone usage on public transportation in general.  It seems that it’s becoming quickly codified that *any* cell phone usage is rude, despite the equivalency with having a conversation.

CB, I’m asking in general about cell phone usage on public transportation.  It seems to have become quickly codified that *any* cell phone usage on train/bus is rude, despite the equivalency with conversation.

NY Expat, if it really was at the same conversational tone, it wouldn’t bother me. But practically everyone—and I include myself—talks a good bit louder into a cell phone than they do face-to-face. It’s because voices aren’t transmitted particularly clearly, and because the other person can’t see your face, so they can’t lipread words they didn’t quite hear. So you unconsciously make up for it by RAISING THE VOLUME. I doubt most people even know they’re doing it; I certainly don’t. I’ve had my husband come into the living room a number of times after I’ve been on the phone with my mom, and say “You know, you’re talking really loud on the phone. Like really loud.”

A really loud conversation where you repeat everything five times is always super annoying to others. It’s just that people on cell phones are much more likely to do that than people chatting in person.

NY Expat: There’s been some research into what makes overhearing one person on the phone more disruptive than overhearing two people talking.  I think the going theory is that we can’t help unconsciously trying to fill in the other half of the conversation, which keeps us from being able to tune the noise out, but in any case, just about everyone is more bothered by cellphones than chatters.

If it’s OK to have a conversation with the person next to you on the train/bus, why isn’t it OK to speak to have a conversation with someone over a phone, as long as it’s at the same conversational tone?*

The last clause is the crux of the issue. Unlike your seat neighbor (“I’m not deaf”), and unlike even a landline (Sidetone, i.e. feedback into the earpiece), the cell phone provides no indication of how loudly you should speak into it. Consequently many users speak loudly enough to be heard over a substantial radius.

A couple of experiments that found cellphone conversations are consistently more distracting to listeners (volume is controlled for in both of these, so it’s not just a function of being louder on the phone):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100921101344.htm

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=993187

It takes up to 19 hours by bus, actually.  The train is faster (although there are some 13 hour busses) and not much more expensive for a floating seat.  An airplane is fastest (four hours) but might cost twice as much.

What annoys me is the ignorance of why the train takes so long… Well, let’s think about this!  The train line was laid down a hundred years ago, the freeway laid fifty and finished thirty years ago.  The train runs on a line that it isn’t allowed to go over 70 on, most of the way is below 50.  The freeway only has a few corners that are rated 50 anymore, and that’s only for trucks.

Lastly, and most importantly, Amtrak doesn’t own, maintain, or control the track.  On that run it goes through multiple ownerships, multiple schedules, and while Amtrak leaves at the same time every single day, the UP (the major freight line through there) never seems to manage to leave enough time for the train not to be stuck waiting for traffic an hour (or many) somewhere stupid.

If we really wanted passenger rail, we’d regulate passenger cars to have priority over freight, we’d pay to have these right of ways properly managed and maintained.

Think about it:  India has concrete ties with fused rails over most of their rail lines.  We barely have these full-speed lines in out heavy metro areas.  Let alone sloped and isolated rail like they have in Western Europe, Japan, or China.  India has better track than we do.  Think about that.

I’m not sure why someone would bring up their experience on the bus with some belligerent black woman who played reverse-racism as you rode the mid-town bus.  That’s as topical as the time some blond turned you down when you tried to pick her up at the bar - which is to say, not at all.

Admittedly, that’s how memory works.  If it were a drunk and belligerent white businessman, memory would bring up the time that some entitled guy stepped on you to get to a taxi.  But that still doesn’t make it relevant!

The last time I gave a fake # to a guy, it was after a one-night stand where I was so fucking wasted that I had barely a recollection of having a good time. I gave him a morning sympathy fuck which, in retrospect, probably only encouraged him. As I was driving him home (or back from where I picked him up), he asked for my #. I really didn’t want to give it to him so I gave him my house line, which we’d recently disconnected. Sure enough, he calls it, with me driving, and it’s disconnected. “Oh, my roommate fucking forgot to pay the phone bill I guess.” (I was honestly terrified to say “No, you can’t have my #,” b/c he knew where I lived and was in the car with me. As I drop him off, he tells me he has a GF and threatens me if I tell her, but offers to keep me as a piece of ass on the side. (shudder) I do my best to forget about him when sure enough he calls me about a week later, saying “Who’s my dirty slut? Are you my dirty slut?” From the safety of being alone, in my apartment, I told him “Never fucking call me again.” and hung up. I also locked the deadbolt. And told my roommate to watch out for a tall creepy dude with a big dick.

The Klan honest? Yeah, except for those hoods and robes, I guess.

But that’s why the internet is a new Klan-like opportunity to hide your identity while being racist.

Judybrowni @ 50.

You just blew my mind.  Never thought of it that way.

Well, the reason for the list is actually simple if you hit your head with a claw hammer and think like one of these fucks.

Ok, bang.

First we start with the projection. They have a violent, misogynist, rude, and extremely entitled culture in white male wingnutiness and as anyone with an imagination deficit knows, one’s enemy is exactly like oneself only worse because why else would they be the bad guys, so those accusations need to go to an enemy group.

Blacks are convenient for that, because it means you can look serious and concerned and most importantly it lets you get back at all the liberals who have committed the worst sin of calling you things you don’t like by calling their bestest friends the blacks all those things. This is especially where accusations of “race-baiting”, “racism”, and of course “entitlement” come into play. Liberals said those things to you, so it’s time to get them back here. Same with the misogynist complaint. It’s something liberals are pointing out in conservatives, so might as well throw it back, not because one has any real problem with sexism, but because it’s a great code word for “might feel up my white woman”.

Now, one more dig about how they need to change, that’s another angle that those uppity blacks and those race traitor black lovers often sigh and use and it’s important to throw that back in their face, because the more you get back at the hideous slight of being called names, the better you will feel about that, the worst of all possible sins.

And finally, it’s time at the end to throw some denialism. Sure, you just wrapped up projection and ah ha liberals for a handful of lines, but now is the time to reiterate that no matter their mean words, racism doesn’t exist nor has ever existed and it’s time to throw some of that their way in the hopes that this plus the projection will get the black person or liberal (these are never one and the same as that would require viewing black people as humans deserving of political representation) to back off and shut up about things letting you pretend that things are always as they have been and so you can live your entitled life.

And now to undo the damage from the claw hammer.

Ok, yeah, it’s about like that. I don’t know if wingnut responses are even really about the hate anymore, but have more morphed into a sort of amorphous blob of free-floating resentments, passive-aggressive “nuh uh, it’s you” 6-year old tantrums, all wrapped around a projection drive fueled entirely by comfort in the inequalities of the status quo.

That’s not to say they don’t hate, but that the hate seems to have been channeled through so many dog whistles that it’s now about civil rights workers taking away their childhood while ACORN steals elections like liberals accused Bush of doing.

@Mighty Ponygirl

I’m enough of a train-commuting misanthrope that I totally would have stood up and done a victory dance at that point. Silently, obviously. My book and maybe some scenery and the ability to pretend that none of the people around me existed sounds like the best vacation.

The Coast Starlight doesn’t have a quiet car.  AFAIK, none of the long-distance routes do.

The Coast Starlight doesn’t have a quiet car.

The stories seem to have become embellished. The first stories said she was verbally aggressive to the passengers who told her to shut up. While there may not be quiet cars, the run between Oakland and Portland is overnight. If she had been talking loudly while other coach passengers were trying to sleep, they may well have decided enough was enough.

Thanks, Sycorax, et al, for the explanations.  The first study reminded me of another study I just heard about, where two groups were given a task on a computer, but one was near another group watching a funny video and laughing about it.  That group had a harder time concentrating; perhaps an explanation is that something unusual was happening, and their brains were devoting time wondering what was going on.

Oh, and we have quite the recent train story:  Second to last week of April, New Orleans to Chicago, overnight as the first wave of huge storms battered the South.  Tracks flooded in Fulton, KY, so we turn back to Memphis and are provided buses to Carbondale, IL.  Total trip time: 33 hours.

Total trip time: 33 hours.

Ha!  I laugh at so short a journey. My last trip on American Airlines took 60 hours to cross the country, because it was raining in Dallas (why that affected our Chicago routing was never satisfactorily explained.) The first night we paid for a hotel room—weather, “not their fault,” but the second night the airline thoughtfully provided us Coleman cots to sleep on at the gate at DFW. After 24 hours on standby—passengers who had chosen dry days to fly could not be inconvenienced by our petty problems—we finally got on a flight the rest of the way home.

There’s nothing “Black” about being disrespectful of the rights and peace of others; how many African-Americans in the quiet car (no caps) were putting up with her foolishness on an overnight train is unclear and really not relevant.  My bet is that the focus on the ethnicity of the passenger is a topic because a) racists thrive on the ‘net and b) between Oakland and Seattle there aren’t many African-American residents, so there’s a chance that the passenger’s mere existence, rather than her apparently outrageous conduct, bothered some of the passengers.

Whether there’s a “Quiet Car” designation or not, if the conductor asks you to take your cell to another passenger compartment or the snack car and you just won’t do it, you deserve - indeed you have chosen - to be put out in the middle of nowhere. Amtrak trains require reservations but do not assign specific seats and you can walk around in a train to another car; all the rolling stock is “articulated” to allow free movement.