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An Anonymous Coward writes:
Velonews has this story, http://www.velonews.com/2017/05/news/legally-speaking-brought-justice_437651 which describes an incident of road rage against a bicyclist. Turns out, this was the wrong cyclist to buzz, he was a lawyer and eventually settled with the cager's insurance company for USD $4500 -- setting a price for cyclist harassment in Louisiana.
The road-raging driver had just endangered the life of the cyclist and his toddler, and now he was spoiling for a fight. It began on a calm Sunday morning in New Orleans. Charlie Thomas had gone for a ride with his young daughter Colette, towing her in a Burley trailer, enjoying the ride and time together. But on the edge of the iconic French Quarter, their peaceful Sunday morning was violently interrupted when a speeding car buzzed them, passing within a foot of Charlie and Colette.
[...] "I'm not trying to start anything," Charlie said, "but you passed way too close to my daughter and me."
And that's when the driver, motioning that he was about to get out of his car, responded with his tough-guy threat: "How about I get out and f—k you up in front of your kid?" Charlie's emotions surged, but he knew that any further engagement would be unproductive, and with his daughter there, unsafe. So he broke off the encounter, and the driver sped away.
[...] Although the incident didn't involve a physical impact, Louisiana has both a three-foot passing law and a non-harassment law on the books. Charlie filed suit seeking damages for the driver's harassment. There had never been a case setting the value of damages for a harassed bicyclist under Louisiana's law, so Charlie and the driver's insurance company were in uncharted negotiating territory.
Eventually, Charlie negotiated a settlement that established a value of $4,500 damages in a civil case for cyclist harassment in Louisiana; the proceeds were donated to Bike Easy, the New Orleans-area bike advocacy group. The official case on the books is Thomas v. Arbona, Case No. 16-03127; First City Court for the City of New Orleans. Now, any other cyclist who sues a driver for harassment in Louisiana can use the value for damages established in this case.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:08PM (30 children)
The driver in this article sounds like a typical male Southerner. They're all exactly like that; I've seen it myself countless times. That fabled "Southern hospitality" is a complete myth: Southerners are the meanest, nastiest people in the nation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:17PM (12 children)
Root cause??
* weaned too soon (or never breast fed at all)
* slapped around as a kid
* bullied until they were big enough to become a bully
* ...
* ...
* sorry, I don't see any source of profit here.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:29PM (11 children)
You forgot micropenis syndrome. I won't mention tiny hands. Or "it's not easy being orange".
Some things just drive people to become hateful and never smile.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:58PM (5 children)
They're afraid the southern belle will finally get tired of their little white dicks, fake masculinity, and shitty personalities and hop on the mandingo train straight to mulatto childville. In the meantime, they can only hope to stem the tide of white pussy-flight by wearing backwards baseball caps, sports shades, goatees, sleeveless tee shirts and massive diesel pickups with $20k in mods which is repo'd after a year or two. Bonus points if they fly a rebel flag and/or needlessly buy AR-15's modded with picatinny rails, bipods, scopes,front grips, and painted in military colors.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:45PM (4 children)
Sounds good, but as someone who's spend plenty of time in the South unfortunately, I can say the women in the South aren't any better. I know there's frequently a base psychological urge among many men to view most women as innocent, "better half" humans as compared to men, but it's really not true. They're not as physically violent, but they're frequently just as mean and nasty, if not more so, just in a more back-stabbing or passive-aggressive manner. They're also much less likely to instigate really horrible (and violent) acts, however they're perfectly happy to aid and abet such acts done by the men they get involved with. Those "Southern belles" these days are a bunch of hyper-religious, obese, cowboy-boot wearing, "redneck-rock"-listening, pickup-truck-driving, AR-15 fans not much different from the men you describe here. Sure, a small portion of them do hook up with African-Americans, but that's not the majority.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:01PM (1 child)
Seems some women have less inhibitions once they get on the path of bad inclinations. While men is more violence with a purpose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:49PM
> While men is more violence with a purpose.
lolwut?
really?
maybe if that purpose is raging at every perceived insult
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:41PM (1 child)
I know there's frequently a base psychological urge among many men to view most women as innocent, "better half" humans as compared to men,
No, there is no such base urge. It is social conditioning. Its called benevolent sexism [bustle.com] and it is the reward that a sexist society gives to women who outwardly conform to the "good girl" stereotype. Sexist men tend to lose their shit about women who transgress that stereotype and quickly flip from thinking "the best" of such women to condemning them as despicable subhumans. You can see that in Trump who has, "tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society" [washingtonpost.com] but is quick to insult any woman who violates that stereotype be it Kristen Stewart, Rosie O'Donnell, Alicia Machado or the Nasty Woman herself, Hillary Clinton.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:20AM
Evolution created differences between the sexes both physical and behavioral. Mens' instinctive feelings about women for instance (which are regularly called upon in emotional appeals to "save the women and children!" such that even the compassion-challenged among us might be swayed) might be explained by phenomena like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotony [wikipedia.org]
But then again, maybe feelings for the opposite sex are just another cultural meme, like the current practice of blaming everything on sexism which is itself a cultural meme. Maybe it's cultural memes all the way down.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:38PM (4 children)
Hey, I dislike Trump as much as the next reasonable voter, but Trump is not a product of the South, he's from New York. However, he sure got a lot of support in the South, so they are to blame for that. But New York needs to acknowledge its ultimate culpability in the harm done to our nation by him.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:13PM (3 children)
If you want to blame someone for Trump, blame the DNC for fucking up Bernie vs Hillary.
Maybe someone will learn by 2020.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:47PM (2 children)
So tired of that shit.
The people who voted for trump had the option of not voting.
They actively chose him.
And frankly, it wouldn't have mattered if it were Sanders instead of Clinton.
Trump campaigned on racism. Survey after survey have now shown that non-racist working-class white voters preferred Clinton. [vox.com] It would have been the same with Sanders, except his poor outreach to minorities would have meant even less non-white support for him.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:30AM (1 child)
butthurt clinton supporter says "yer all RACIST!!!!!!!!1!11"
film at eleven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:41PM
Voter sick of being accused of racism decides to prove he's not racist by voting for the only candidate to ever embrace neo-nazis.
file at eleven, and every other hour of the trump show
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:45PM (10 children)
Considering the ancestery [wikipedia.org] of people in USA. The people in the "south" is mostly of British origin and their relatives in Britain ain't uncivil so it must either been a new culture that has come to existence or only people with a specific mindset left for America and settled there. Another bias can be found in Australia where a slight tendency to be more relaxed and impulsive can be noted compared to homeland Britain.
Just like there is a high proportion of nerds in say Berkeley. It has very little to do with the place itself and much more with who selected themselves to go there.
So if the ancestors is not a explanation for the manners. It leaves environmental circumstances over decades or who choose to go there hundreds of years ago.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:07PM (9 children)
I think you're overthinking it. People are largely a product of the environment they grow up in, not their ancestors they don't even remember. Take a bunch of small children of upper-middle-class families, and stick them on an island together without any adults and you get Lord of the Flies before long. The people of the South may be mostly British, but that was centuries ago, and none of them remember much about their ancestry before coming to the New World. Also, Southerners are very mixed-blood: I'd say most of them have a little bit of African and/or Native in them. But it's not the genetics that makes them how they are, it's the history of the South, its economic problems, its history of slavery, how it lost a civil war badly, etc. It created its own culture of anti-intellectualism and backwardness and racism, completely independent of any British roots from over 200 years ago. And the people didn't select themselves to go there; their ancestors did generations ago, but the people living in the South now largely did not; they grew up there.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:58PM (8 children)
Europe seems however making all kinds of subtle hints that ancestry (genetics + phenotype) has impact. And yeah that lord of the flies is something to recon with. I think some primitive people on New Guinea illustrated it by thinking that pregnant women had to whipped to please the gods or something. Cultures need enlightenment regularly.
People don't get a say in who their ancestors where or their decision to bring them to this world. It still impacts them. But your point about the history is probably the explanation that fit the data. But is there any fundamental reason for their economic hardship?
Still don't see why people should develop anti-intellectualism and backwardness just like that. If one want to change knowing, exploring and thinking is essential. Be open to change that improves is also important.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:52PM (1 child)
But is there any fundamental reason for their economic hardship?
Yes. LBJ nailed it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." The entire country is racist. But the kind of racism LBJ was talking about rules the south, even today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:24AM
If some groups have a higher rate of bad behavior. Eventually others will notice and change their behavior accordingly. Higher likelihood of lawsuits, robbery, violence and serial killing won't go unnoticed given enough time. The brain is a splendid pattern identifier.
When people can't feel that they belong to the same group that exhibit these behaviors. They will not want to carry the burden of their presence and rejection follows.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:32AM (4 children)
It's a product of their economy. The South developed as a slavery-based agrarian economy, not an industrial one. It's why they lost the Civil War so badly: a bunch of farmers and plantation owners with little industry have little chance against a force with a large industrial base. (This is also why the US did so well in WWII: its enormous industrial capacity at the time (mostly in the northeast, again) converted to making enormous amounts of military hardware--tanks, planes, bombs. It didn't need to make the best tanks and planes, it just had to make lots and lots of them; German tanks were technically superior in performance but they couldn't make them nearly as fast.
Anyway, back to the South: they relied entirely on slavery to run their agrarian economy, which was dependent on growing and trading food. The North didn't have land that was so favorable to agriculture, so it turned more to industry instead. The cities in the North became much bigger and denser, and the site of industry, and the target of immigration from Europe. Agricultural places just aren't going to foster intellectualism the way advanced cities are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @01:08AM (2 children)
California had no economy when the civil war was fought.
California is a huge agricultural producer too.
And yet California would be the 6th largest economy in the world [cbslocal.com] if it were its own country.
The south's problems are more than just its agrarian roots.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:16AM (1 child)
And the advantage California got were that the military spent insane amounts of Cold War research money there to get all the gadgets they needed to fight that (cold) war.
Dunno if Houston counts as "the south" but it seem to have a tech industry that can compete. Maybe some places in the south can be made to new research valleys provided there's a blue sky investment for decades. But the problem with cultural incompatibilities will remain. Performance thinkers will want freedom to express the result of their thinking and have a lifestyle that stimulates their active mind. This often collide with people having a static thought process. The thinker then realizes that it's more efficient strategy to move and spend the resources elsewhere than fighting the locals. And the region looses. Mathematically it can be suspected that once the sum of certain threshold factors collude, it's a runaway process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:56PM
Dallas (telecom corridor) and Atlanta also have strong tech industries.
And there has been lots of military spending in the south too. Consider Hunstsville Alabama which is defense/aerospace contractor central.
Martin Marietta, now Lockhead Martin, was founded in Marietta just outside of Atlanta.
And of course NASA on Florida's "space coast."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:16PM
While industry was important during WWII, it did not have nearly as much influence on the civil war. The things you mention that are made by industry: tanks, planes, bombs, were not around during the civil war. People already had rifles.
And industry is not the only way to do things. During WWII the west was hard pressed to beat Russia to Berlin. Russia also won their war, and suffered an order of magnitude more casualties. How did the USA lose the Vietnam war? Lack of industry?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:26PM
The saying "a woman, a dog [or ass], and a walnut tree - the more you beat them, the better they be" did not originate in the Pacific.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:10PM
Having lived in multiple southern states and multiple northern states, I absolutely disagree. I'm a northerner by birth and still see myself as such, but I can't agree with such blanket stereotyping.
Sure, there are jerks EVERYWHERE -- in the North and the South. Cultural norms are different (and aren't just a North/South thing, but also vary significantly by region going east to west and everyone in-between). In many Southern states (particularly Southeast), there is often a stronger "veneer" of hospitality and courtesy, e.g., people will more frequently make small-talk with strangers and express interest in them. People in the Northeast (particularly in most cities) will think you odd or even annoying if you try to do so.
Underneath this casual interaction between strangers or acquaintances, I'm not sure I've perceived much difference, and I don't think there is. There are jerks and nice people everywhere. In many Southern communities, I think there's still a bit more tendency to "be in everyone's business" than in the North (where, excepting certain neighborhoods or close communities, people are often more isolated than in the past) -- and that has both positive and negative effects. When coupled with the "veneer" of courtesy, it can seem odd or almost "passive aggressive" to a Northerner when it turns out that people who act nice to each other in public sometimes hate each other. But the percentage of jerks overall is about the same most places.
Anyhow, one thing I will agree with is that Southern behavior and attitudes toward people on the road is often very different from the North. Once on a trip to the South before I was familiar with the culture there, I made the stupid mistake of stopping at a crosswalk on a four-lane road. I mean, it was marked as a crosswalk with signs and even flashing yellow lights. And there was a guy literally standing in the middle of the road on the yellow line trying to cross the remaining two lanes of traffic. In the North, there's no question you stop and let this person cross. Not where I was. I was almost struck in the rear by a pickup towing something that veering off to my right to speed around me, while the pedestrian stared with confusion at the fact I was stopped for him. Eventually I realized I just needed to drive, because he didn't know what to do.
Since then, I realized that pedestrians and cyclists don't have the same "standing" on streets in many places in the South as they do in other places. It wouldn't surprise me at all if many Southern drivers wouldn't take kindly to being corrected on their driving by a pedestrian or a cyclist. Obviously that does not at all excuse the behavior in TFA, but I also doesn't think it justifies claiming that all Southerners are complete jerks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:11PM
Sounds like you are experiencing selection bias. Assholes in poorly educated areas tend to be more open about it, where as better educated assholes will harass you with unreasonable litigations and gaslighting instead.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:40PM (3 children)
Well, besides the assholes in all the other parts of the country. The south certainly has it's share of assholes, and like assholes everywhere, they tend to stand out in the crowd.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:06PM (2 children)
I wonder if certain parts of a country has more assholes than others in percent that is. And if it's possible to use demographic data or similar to get a heat map of such differences?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:51AM (1 child)
It might be a bit hard to develop a fully objective definition of asshole defined in terms of existing demographic data. Interesting thought though.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:55AM
Obviously Facebook stumbled on some statistical truths where liking a certain rapper made the person more likely to vote for Obama etc. So there is a goldmine to be had ;)