Officer tries in vain to catch people fleeing from van

Watch this officer try to catch several men jumping out of a van. (via Arbroath)

• [Antinous]

  If you don’t come from an area where the cockroach reference is offensive, good for you. However, if you said it in some areas of LA or NYC, you would be far too dead to post a comment here. #1 may have been completely innocent, but it’s still an unfortunate metaphor.

  Most people have positive associations with clowns and their antics.

  What planet are you from?

• [MichaelWDean]

  Cockroaches….I like the “in which the light has just been turned on”, but I think describing humans as cockroaches is giving humans too much credit. Cockroaches are too hard to obliterate from the planet.

  Lately I’ve been describing humans as ants. Got the idea from a Bill Bryson travel book where he mentioned two countries where the local nickname for foreign tourists who arrive every summer is “ants” in the native tongue.

  But I’ve been thinking a lot and expanded it to “Humans and their agendas and silly goals and plans and mechanizations are not as important as they like to pretend. Humans are just ants in the grand scheme of the universe, even in the grand scheme of the all-time existence of this planet.”

  Though sometimes I watch the TV show “COPS” and see really stupid and/or really selfish violent people and just think “Grind them into cat food.”

  Michael W. Dean

• [noen]

  ♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂
  ♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂
  ♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂
  ♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂
  ♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂♂

  ņơèn

  ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀
  ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀
  ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀
  ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀
  ♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀♀

• [Sister Y]

  Antinous don’t be so coulrophobic.

• [Antinous]

  I have the whole list for special character keystrokes. I could post it if T gives me permission. ☺ Obnoxious, isn’t it?

• [MichaelWDean]

  Watch (or re-watch) the John Carpenter film “They Live”.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live

  It’s sci-fi, but it’s the most truthful thing ever committed to celluloid.

  Michael W. Dean

• [Church]

  Pssst! ntns! Y wr th n wh brght p clwns n th frst plc. Try t kp yr trg cnsstnt.

• [Antinous]

  Here are the most basic ones:

  9675 alt+ 9 â—‹ (265) . . . . WHITE CIRCLE
  9688 alt+ 8 â—˜ (264) . . . . INVERSE BULLET
  9689 alt+ 10 â—™ (266) . . . . INVERSE WHITE CIRCLE
  9786 alt+ 1 ☺ (257) . . . . WHITE SMILING FACE
  9787 alt+ 2 ☻ (258) . . . . BLACK SMILING FACE
  9788 alt+ 15 ☼ . . . . WHITE SUN WITH RAYS
  9792 alt+ 12 ♀ . . . . FEMALE SIGN
  9794 alt+ 11 ♂ . . . . MALE SIGN
  9824 alt+ 6 â™  (262) . . . . BLACK SPADE SUIT
  9827 alt+ 5 ♣ (261) . . . . BLACK CLUB SUIT
  9829 alt+ 3 ♥ (259) . . . . BLACK HEART SUIT
  9830 alt+ 4 ♦ (260) . . . . BLACK DIAMOND SUIT
  9834 alt+ 13 ♪ . . . . EIGHTH NOTE
  9835 alt+ 14 ♫ . . . . BEAMED EIGHTH NOTES

• [Church]

  “Dehumanize people of color much, Church?”

  No, Antinous, you’re right. They’re clowns.

• [Antinous]

  Recent studies indicate that the majority of people find clowns frightening. No, really.

• [Cefeida]

  So here I am reading the comments before watching the video (aka I don’t know who it is the cop is chasing yet) , and saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?

• [Sister Y]

  I like #118. It’s like she’s directing a battle between two armies.

  §is†e® ý ♀ ☼

• [arkizzle]

  I had a remotely similar experience in Ireland some years ago.

  Before there was a visible asian population in Ireland (only 6 or 7 years ago), some friends had used the word ‘Paki’ in the same contraction convention as Aussie or Brit or Dub (if you’re from Dublin), there was no offence intended.

  A friend from London got immediately very uncomfortable, and eventually came to say how offensive the word ‘Paki’ is in the UK. No doubt, it came as a shock that they had been interpreted in a racist way.

  Like the present situation, there was an innocent non-racist intention, compounded by the very nasty experience of the word in different mouths.

  So, no the word itself isn’t racist, but the gangs of hoodlums threatening to burn the Pakistani residents out of the UK, were. It’s sad but true, that even unintentionally, you can say the exact wrong thing, and end up offending.

  The best thing usually, once the true nature of the communication has been established, is for each side to acknowledge the differences in language, and try benefit from the notion that not everywhere shares the same cultural biases.

• [Antinous]

  This thread has really morphed. Yay.

• [remf3]

  Sorry…with all of the calls of “racism” I just couldn’t resist:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbwNSNLPIfw&feature=related

  If you haven’t seen this show, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

• [seanfish]

  OK, Chris — If you weren’t making a racist comment, then I’m sorry. I should not have said that.

  @Mark – thank you. Your contribution to this site is one of the things I enjoy the most. I’m heartened to see you could admit mistake.

  @Antonius – now that Mark’s had the generosity to apologise for his error, can’t you see that actually the discussion following might just have been valid?

• [seanfish]

  Sorry, Antinous! Got your name wrong (not intentionally).

• [Agent 86]

  l
  e
  a
  s
  t
  â–“
  w
  e
  â–“
  f
  o
  r
  g
  e
  t
  â–“
  ☺

• [Cefeida]

  Heh, I’ve watched it now, and I had to look very hard to notice that maaaybe one of the dudes was kind of brownskinned. Maybe it’s because I’m not American but my radar just doesn’t seem to be well-tuned to detect possible racial profiling.

• [arkizzle]

  That’s cool, I was just a bit thrown by the expression.

  Regarding the white space, I just got into the habit of typing my comments in a text editor since the comment-submitter was being moody.

  So sometimes the ramblings that I think better of and edit away leave a couple of extra line returns floating around at the bottom, and being invisible, I forget to delete them. So when I copy out the text, the returns come too.

  New space-thriftness noted! :)

• [whoknew]

  13 people in the van would justify a traffic stop even if they weren’t illegal.

  I can’t laugh at those cops. They’re stuck enforcing ridiculous laws. Meanwhile, they have to deal with the fact that the laws they are bound to enforce lead people to flee into a desert where they may very well die.

  It is very reminiscient of clown cars and cockroaches, but to me it is a very sad video. The worst part is the obvious family at the end, man, woman, and young boy. You can see the man hold onto the boy before they all go for it. Every illegal knows they face that kind of danger when they come, but they come anyway because their home country SUCKS and they have little power to fix their situation.

  Thank God you were born in or have legally established yourself in a country where you can work and be free, and stop mocking the desperation of those who are still struggling. (and to me, it is the music that really makes it mocking)

• [whoknew]

  Oh, and Mark, the Chinese may create positive incentives not to have a second kid, but they also force abortions, sometimes during the third trimester. And don’t start telling me abortion isn’t wrong–these abortions violate the rights of the pregnant woman in addition to any the unborn child has.

• [noen]

  Theresa
  Ingebretsen’s? I passed one just today down Lake Street but there’s all kinds of construction going on. It’s summer doan cha know. You need me to get you something?

  This worked out rather well. Next time we have a flame war I might try it again. Only with really, really bad jokes.

• [Antinous]

  It’s a really common metaphor and I kind of doubt that Chris really believes those people to be cockroaches.

  Describing Hispanic people as cockroaches is a well-known racist metaphor. If you don’t know that, then congratulations on growing up in Pleasantville.

• [whoknew]

  (sorry, that last one was meant to me addressed to Michael W. Dean, not Mark)

• [JSG]

  F’in Benny Hill music. I love it.

  Unfortunately, those clowns in the car are breaking the law. It is obvious that they are illegals.

  We can’t ship all 12 to 15 million of them back to their home countries, and we can’t arrest them all, so what do we do?

• [seanfish]

  @antinous – fair enough, I understand you have to make the call in a live situation. It was just my first disemvowelling (albeit not for making racist remarks) so having a bit more explanation of your position is appreciated.

• [billydeville]

  Man, if we only had something to keep these “cockroaches” from getting into our perfect country. Something like a giant wall, like in China, or Berlin. Those seemed to work pretty well.

  I’m a white, corn-fed kid from the middle of Iowa. Both my pops and my Grandpa served in World War II and Viet-Nam. I was in the boy scouts, marched in ever 4th of July parade, and raised the flag with my Dad in the front lawn.

  My wife’s familia comes from El Salvador. Her cousin, who I love dearly, remembers coming over the border in the trunk of a car when she was a child. The rest of her family was snuck in for about $2000 a piece. Some of the men were allowed into the country due to their civil war. They are now all citizens, property owners, and contributing tax payers in this great country. Most have gone to college and in my opinion are better a better class of citizens then most of the trailer-trash meth-heads I come across here in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  For the love of everything good, let these people in, let them get jobs, and let them pay taxes legally.

• [simplehuman]

  @Antinous

  So if I don’t knee-jerk react to a common metaphor for people scrambling as racist, I’m a rube?

  Nonsense.

• [Antinous]

  If you don’t watch it I’ll start telling Sven and Ole jokes and you don’t want that.

  I was sitting once in the Scandinavian Deli in SF when the waitress went up to a table of guys and said, “Are you finished?” They all screamed, “No! We’re Swedish!” and laughed for about twenty minutes. It’s good that there are people who think that absolutely everything is funny.

• [scottfree]

  ‘We can’t ship all 12 to 15 million of them back to their home countries, and we can’t arrest them all, so what do we do?’

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyzyx/164699499/

• [billydeville]

  The cockroach comment didn’t really anger me. My El Salvadorian wife probably would have said the same thing. Here’s some irony. El Salvadorians make comments about Mexicans all the time. Just like the English make fun of the French and vice versa.

  Racism is learned, and most of us speak before thinking. When I was a kid, we would all pile up on some kid in the playground and it was common for it to be called a “nigg*r pile”. Most of us had never even seen a black person other than on Sesame Street, so we had no reason to hate black people. It made no sense, it was just learned. Now we call the same act a dog pile, which really is more fitting.

• [racer x]

  Wow, I went too deep – my first thought was Kafka.

• [arkizzle]

  Frankly I find the subjugation of white space highly offensive.

  Is the black space so superior in your eyes?

  Racists.

  If we are not careful, all that will be left is:

  ████████████████████████████████
  ████████████████████████████████
  ████████████████████████████████
  ████████████████████████████████
  ████████████████████████████████
  ████████████████████████████████
  __

  Takuan @103 I see you are a jazz fan: the notes you leave out are as important as the ones you play.

  Tenn@112 that was hilarious

• [Cpt. Tim]

  Mark taking offense to the cockroach thing is both troubling and hilarious.

  Douglas adams referring to humans as monkeys could be seen as racist f y’r prn t nthnkng knjrk ssssmnts.

  “Scattering like cockroaches when the light turns on” is such a basic and overused metaphor. Mark asks: “Does it please or disturb you to have a mind that equates human beings with cockroaches?” (note he did not say Hispanics)

  I ask: does it disturb you to read so little that you’ve not come across this saying yet?

• [The Dark Roux]

  We can’t ship all 12 to 15 million of them back to their home countries, and we can’t arrest them all, so what do we do?

  JSG,

  Well, for starters, how about making legalization easy and painless with:
  -Proof of residency, 5 years
  -Clean criminal record in the States
  -Proof of employment
  -Proof of language adaptation (proof of enrollment in a class, for instance).

  Sure, you could probably go farther, but, gee- doesn’t that sound like a reasonable place to start?

• [Dan]

  “Yakety Sax” makes anything funny. ANYTHING.

• [Antinous]

  So if I don’t knee-jerk react to a common metaphor for people scrambling as racist, I’m a rube?

  You’re extrapolating wildly.

• [Abelard Lindsay]

  Noen,

  I’ll see your Ole/Sven jokes and raise you an Eino & Toivo:

  Eino, seeing Toivo across the river: “Hey Toivo, what are you doing over there?”
  Toivo: “I’m tryin’ to get to the other side”
  Eino: “But you are on the other side!”

  Don’t mess with da UP…

• [Chris]

  “Cockroach comment” guy here. Mark, it really neither pleased nor disturbed me. I guess it is slightly racist though. Oops. Uh, blame Tony Montana?!

• [Project2501]

  Personally, I like Agent Smith’s human analogy in the first Matrix in regards to the cockroach comment.

  “I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.”

  The first thing I thought of before reading the comments was it’s a clown car. Does that make me racist against clowns?

• [Cpt. Tim]

  “It’s Mark’s blog. You’re way out of line.”

  i love that attitude here. nowhere else do you find posters as concerned with open and free speech that are so afraid of criticism that most times it gets censored out by the whims of their lackey and the rest of the posters follow up by asserting that this is the right thing to do.

  if you go into a post with fightin words, then read and digest the opinions of others. Yes its his blog, and I doubt Marks the kind of guy who can’t take what is some pretty valid criticism.

  everyone who’s spent time on the internet knows what flaming is. this ain’t it.

• [MichaelWDean]

  #17 posted by Cefeida , May 12, 2008 3:30 PM

  ..I .. saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?
  ===============
  It proves that the world has become so PC that the only people you CAN make fun of are white people. (Especially poor southern white people.) Make a tasteless redneck joke, you get a laugh from everyone. Make a similarly tasteless joke about blacks, browns, Asians, Jews, Arabs, gays or anyone else, get the riot act read at ya.

  Read “The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats” by Jim Goad:
  http://www.amazon.com/Redneck-Manifesto-Hillbillies-Americas-Scapegoats/dp/0684838648

  It’s dead on.

  I didn’t even think of “la cucaracha” with the cockroach comment. I just thought of scurrying idiots making a cop’s day harder, because they have some agenda, cop seems to think they’re doing something illegal, and the cop is ostensibly there just to uphold the constitution. I don’t always feel comfy with the actions of all police, but I I’m glad the cops exist. I can think of specific instances where I’d be dead a few times over if they weren’t.

  I don’t know the whole story behind this video, but nothing about it says the cop doesn’t have a good reason to chase them. Even if they’re innocent, if it’s a routine traffic stop, it’s illegal to flee the cops. And if you’re abandoning your vehicle to flee the cops, chances are you’re doing something illegal. Would you give up a $15,000 car that you owned and run just because you’re nervous, but haven’t broken any laws?

  I pretty much dislike most humans, especially the loud ones who step on my toes, mean ones who think their will is law, and the stupid ones who care more about bling than life. Most humans fit into one or more of these groups, and all these types come in all colors.

  Most humans are either ants or cat food.

  Michael W. Dean

• [Enochrewt]

  Lv t t Bngrs t tk n hlrs vd ( lv th cp’s stttrng bdy lngg) nd vrxmn t fr scl njstc ntl th clp sn’t fnny nymr, jst n mr frnt n whch t fght th gd fght. Wy t sck th fn t f t, y ppl tk thngs lk ths wy t srsly.

• [arkizzle]

  hmm.. well the philistines at wordpress obviously don’t appreciate ascii (unicode) art. ..no fixed width.. friggin..

  ▛▜ ▛▜ ▙▞ ■▝▜▝▜ ▖ ▛▖
  ▛▜ ▛▙ ▛▚ ■ ▙▖▙▖▙▖▙▖

• [Antinous]

  nowhere else do you find posters as concerned with open and free speech that are so afraid of criticism that most times it gets censored out by the whims of their lackey and the rest of the posters follow up by asserting that this is the right thing to do.

  Tim,

  You’ve been down this road before. Do you really want to go there again? We listened to you screaming bloody murder, albeit vowellessly, for weeks last time. It’s a private blog with moderated comments. You know the deal. Take it or leave it.

• [simplehuman]

  You’re extrapolating wildly.

  You said if I don’t know that cockroaches is a common slur for Hispanics I must have come up in Pleasantville, an Idyllic paradise filled with naive denizens one could easily call rubes.

  I don’t think you know what extrapolating means.

• [Takuan]

  I’m not seeing anyone here at their best.

  Unlike Meat-World, we can have do-overs here.

  I found the video funny, especially with the sound track. Kinda miss Benny Hill.

• [Svenski]

  How now, brown clowns.

• [Antinous]

  I meant that you must have grown up in a place where people don’t toss racial epithets around. The jump from ‘idyllic paradise’ to ‘rubes’ is extrapolation on your part.

• [arkizzle]

  ⇑⇑███⇑██⇑⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑███⇑███⇑█⇑⇑⇑███⇑⇑
  ⇑⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑██⇑⇑█⇑⇑⇑█⇑⇑⇑█⇑█⇑⇑⇑██⇑⇑⇑
  ⇑⇑███⇑██⇑⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑⇑⇑█⇑⇑⇑█⇑⇑⇑█⇑⇑⇑⇑
  ⇑⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑█⇑███⇑███⇑███⇑███⇑⇑

  HAH!

• [absimiliard]

  Hi Noen (I’m from White Bear Lake, good to see another Minnesotan),

  Sven: Ole, I think ve’re lost in the forest, now vat?
  Ole: ‘vell Sven, now ve shoot tree times in de air and den someone comes and rescues us.
  Sven: tree times? But I only haf two arrows Ole!
  Ole: Uh oh…..

  I love Sven, Ole, and Lena. Never lost my love of them, probably never will. (Lutefisk on the other hand is an entirely different subject, and should probably be forbidden under the Geneva Convention if you ask me.)

• [arkizzle]

  WordPress pwnzrd me again!!!!

  I give up :(

• [Cefeida]

  Well…I think it mostly proves that not being Western, I have no automatic white guilt. Phew. Maybe it’s also the fact that entry to the US isn’t cake for me, either.

  “Scattering like cockroaches when the light turns on” is such a basic and overused metaphor.

  This. Cockroaches scurry- it’s what they do when the lights come on, and they’re super fast. That’s all there was to it, I thought.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Cefeida @17-18, 29:
  

  So here I am reading the comments before watching the video (aka I don’t know who it is the cop is chasing yet) , and saw nothing racist or dehumanising about the cockroach comment. Didn’t even cross my mind. I wonder what that proves?

  In your case, Cefeida? God knows.
  

  Heh, I’ve watched it now, and I had to look very hard to notice that maaaybe one of the dudes was kind of brownskinned.

  They all were.
  

  Maybe it’s because I’m not American but my radar just doesn’t seem to be well-tuned to detect possible racial profiling.

  Possible racial profiling? Dude, that’s la Migra. Why do you think they’re all running, not just the driver?
  

  Well…I think it mostly proves that not being Western, I have no automatic white guilt. Phew.

  Lest your statement confuse the other participants, I will discreetly state that you’re east of Vienna but west of Athens. Whether that means you’re “not Western” tends to vary with the century and the speaker’s opinions.

  Michael W. Dean @27, 35: Wow, just what this conversation needed: white people feeling sorry for themselves. Also? Most of that rant had SFA to do with the discussion thus far.
  

  Most humans are ants. And there’s too damn many of them, everywhere.

  Okay.

  You go first.

  Also: Would you please stop putting .sig lines at the bottom of your comments? It’s tedious to have to remove them.

  Thank you.

  (And Arkizzle? A good do-bee doesn’t leave a bunch of superfluous line returns at the end of their comment.)

  ScottFree @32, I favor encouraging unionization in Mexico.

  Cpt. Tim @55:
  

  everyone who’s spent time on the internet knows what flaming is. this ain’t it.

  Who says the highest standard a forum can aspire to is to avoid outright flaming? Conversation can be so much better than that.

  To me, what “No direct personal attacks, foul or obscene language, or active flaming” means is “We don’t expect you to display any intelligence, judgement, or manners, and you shouldn’t expect us to protect you from thugs and vandals. Just refrain from killing each other, and otherwise don’t bother us.” It’s a counsel of despair, and I absolutely refuse to accept it as the default standard for conversation.

  Abelard, Absimiliard, Noen: I was the Nielsen half of Nielsen Hayden. I consider four kinds of pickled herring to be nature’s most perfect breakfast, and I sure wouldn’t mind if Ingebretsen’s opened a branch in New York. But I draw the line at lutefisk. That stuff is evil.

  Antinous @89: Do you have any idea how hard you’re making me bite my tongue?

• [MichaelWDean]

  #24 posted by The Dark Roux , May 12, 2008 3:58 PM
  .Well, for starters, how about making legalization easy and painless with:
  -Proof of residency, 5 years
  -Clean criminal record in the States
  -Proof of employment
  -Proof of language adaptation (proof of enrollment in a class, for instance).
  ====-
  This is brilliant in its simplicity, and it would work. Unfortunately, it will never be implemented bcs pst-hpp rsnng n th S mks vryn wrrd tht vrs thc grps wll gt pst. Yet ignoring the need for requirements like this is going to make the US a very scary, cramped place in 20 years. The infrastructure already cannot support the people here.

  I’d love to implement this tomorrow, and apply to EVERYONE…..from Mexicans to Canadians to Arabs to my own British anglo relatives who come from the same poor white protestant tree as me.

  America is full, end of story. And it’s not racist to say so. ny fl wh thnk t s wll b sd n 20 yrs whn thy’r bng hsjckd rthr thn crjckd.

  By that same thought, the WORLD is full. 50 years ago, India gave free transistor radios to anyone willing to get fixed. Let’s start that up here, with free iPods or iPhones.

  –Michael W. Dean (who had a vasectomy in 1999.)

• [simplehuman]

  LOL. Really? Come on, you made a snide remark, just own it man. Taking the literal line on that’s just silly. :)

  I grew up hearing racial slurs for Hispanics far worse than euphemisms and metaphors.

• [noen]

  Lutefisk is the most vile substance on the face of the earth. I think the military considers it a munition. It’s basically fish jello with the color and consistency of lukewarm snot.

• [Suzie Cuzie]

  This entire thread of comments is way funnier than that video.

• [scottfree]

  Michael Dean,

  you must take super care of your car to expect the value of a used mini van to be that high.

  I really don’t understand why people are so up in arms about immigration in the US. Apart from jobs–which is fair enough really; if someone wants to work for a living, who are you to stop them?–what benefits are there to living in the US? It isn’t illegal immigrants taking jobs, it’s companies exporting manufacturing jobs that used to be relatively high paying and unionised to, among other places, northern Mexico. A Mexican chap takes a job at McDonald’s, everyone gets upset; a corporation closes a factory, fires everyone, and reopens it in Mexico, paying everybody much less, and it’s the economy working the way it should. Strikes me as a bit odd, is all.

  I doubt the cop put much effort into chasing them after the video.

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  OK, Chris — If you weren’t making a racist comment, then I’m sorry. I should not have said that.

• [TwoShort]

  Describing somewhere as Pleasantville is a well-known code for calling the residents rubes. If you don’t know that, then congratulations on growing up in self-righteous land.

• [teuthis]

  Multiball!!!

• [Takuan]

  could I make the extrapolation that no one here believes the people characterized as “Hispanic” are in any way, manner or wise “inferior” to any other peoples?

• [absimiliard]

  Ooooh, you forgot to mention that it tarnishes spoons, and when eaten by cats makes them throw up.

  It is truly, spectacularly, vile. And that we eat it proves that Minnesotans are all seriously nuts in ways most of humanity will NEVER understand.

• [Antinous]

  You go first.

  I was waiting for that.

• [Antinous]

  Not with a probability of 100% accuracy.

• [Takuan]

  all have their opportunity to aver or deny stemming from my question. Declare or be labelled coward and liar.

• [DelicateFlower]

  I’m just worried that the Dept of Homeland Security is going to use this video as an excuse to ban mini-vans with double doors.

• [Antinous]

  You’re the Sir Cadogan of BoingBoing.

• [BrotherPower]

  See, here’s the cop’s mistake:

  According to what one of the elders said, taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird other than the one that it has first marked.

• [Takuan]

  “Sir Cadogan has a huge sword”

• [Church]

  n rtrspct, Mrk’s cmmnt s vn mr rdcls.

  Mrk bwldrzd th rgnl, by mttng th nfrmtn tht t ws n llgl ln stp (y hv t clck thrgh t lrn tht, whch rrly d wth mbddd vds.)

  Chrs pstd cmmnt (“Cckrchs n ktchn n whch th lght hs jst bn trnd n”) tht cld *nly* b cnsdrd ffnsv f y knw th nfrmtn tht Mrk lft t.

  Mrk tks ffns nywy, bt xprsss t n wy tht *stll* dsn’t cnvy *why* t mght b ffnsv (nlss w’r t ndrstnd tht Chrs s cmplt msnthrp, whch dbt.)

  nd thght th *vd* ws fnny…

• [berserker73]

  Every calculus class I’ve taken has taught me to analyze by taking things to their limits (bad English, but didn’t want to use “extrapolate”). When I do that with this name-calling thing, I can think of two eventual outcomes. Either everyone in the future will be deeply offended by any word that’s used to refer to them other than their proper name, or no one will be offended by anyone’s words.

  I was thinking the video was purely funny until WHOKNEW said they might just be running into the desert. Hopefully, if they don’t have somewhere to go, they’ll realize they can just find a border patrol, get deported, and try again later.

• [klobouk]

  Having not previously bothered to read this thread, I’m curious: did Mark Frauenfelder (@#3) disemvowel his own comment ex post facto? At the time of his apology? Did Teresa N-H?
  Somewhat amusing either way.

• [Antinous]

  But he can’t wield it.

• [jso]

  #69 BERSERKER73

  “Either everyone in the future will be deeply offended by any word that’s used to refer to them other than their proper name…”

  That’s Mr. Proper Name to you!

• [noen]

  And here I thought that Pleasantville was smack in the middle of self-righteous land. But what do I know, I’m from Minnesota. If you don’t watch it I’ll start telling Sven and Ole jokes and you don’t want that.

• [noen]

  Either everyone in the future will be deeply offended by any word that’s used to refer to them other than their proper name, or no one will be

  Hegel, say hello to berserker73.

• [Takuan]

  I don’t know

• [Takuan]

  Taia

• [noen]

  “Hey Sven, how many Swedes does it take to grease a combine?”
  “I don’t know, Ole.”
  “Only two, if you run them through real slow.”

• [Antinous]

  now that Mark’s had the generosity to apologise for his error, can’t you see that actually the discussion following might just have been valid?

  Actually, I find Mark’s apology to be essentially irrelevant (sorry Mark). I already acknowledged that the original comment might not have been meant in a racist way. But it’s still going to be mortally offensive and hurtful to some people. If you use hate speech because that’s how your friends all talk down the pub, you’re still going to get disemvowelled for it. The fact that you didn’t mean it to be racist has to take second place to the level of offense that it causes.

  The comment in question was immediately offensive to both Mark and me. That strongly suggests that there will have been a lot of other people out there who don’t comment who also will have perceived it that way. Threads can go toxic very quickly. It was my decision as an assistant moderator to point out that racist comments would be disemvowelled just to make sure that the line was clear.

• [Gainclone]

  I’m really surprised that this cockroaches thing was such a hot button issue for Boing Boing readers! Srsly, gys… hvn’t wrrd bt nm-cllng snc th schlyrd. nd vn thn, knw th dffrnc btwn n nslt nd cmprtv mtphr.

  Y GYS R NMLS, MN! NMLS!

• [MichaelWDean]

  #32 posted by scottfree , May 12, 2008 4:56 PM

  you must take super care of your car to expect the value of a used mini van to be that high.
  ——————–
  I KNEW someone would go there. Lol….

  A Mexican chap takes a job at McDonald’s, everyone gets upset;…
  ====
  I don’t. I don’t want that job. And I am not worried about losing work to people coming into this country. I do tech writing, which can be outsourced over the Internet to India for less than I charge. And there are a lot of well-educated, tech-savvy Indian tech writers who speak English as a second language better than most Americans speak it as their first.

  I’m worried about overpopulation, and unlimited immigration. I’m worried about people squishing themselves into limited space like rats, and doing what rats do in that situation: chew each other’s faces off. Literally.

  Most humans are ants. And there’s too damn many of them, everywhere.

• [Tenn]

  We’ve had commenters here who’ve absentmindedly thrown half a screen’s worth of superfluous white space into their comments.

  -Looks around, whistling- Wonder who that might be.

• [noen]

  Ole came back to work 15 minutes late. The boss noticed and asked where he had been.
  Ole: “Getting a haircut.”
  Boss: “On company time?”
  Ole: “It grew on company time.”
  Boss: “Not all of it.”
  Ole: “I didn’t get it all cut off.”

• [Takuan]

  Dear Teresa

  The empty spaces in my posts are the most important parts.

  PS: did your recent server meltdown affect your email? I fear you may presume discourtesy on my part, rest assured I have replied.

  Regarding Mark’s apology: Thank you Mark. I am always grateful for demonstrations of strength and honor. I admit I myself did not immediately comprehend the racist overtones possible in the “cockroaches” post. I am still not entirely sure there was intent, but a profile titled: “exquisitely bored in Nacodoches” is suspicious.

  I have a request for any who are indeed convinced that some “races” (a nonsense term in my lexicon)are “superior” or “inferior”: Please be open, clear and direct. Then we can discuss and all know what we are discussing.

• [noen]

  Ole and Lena got married. On their honeymoon trip they were nearing Minneapolis when Ole put his hand on Lena’s knee.

  Giggling, Lena said, “Ole, you can go a little farder now if ya vant to”… so Ole drove to Duluth.

• [Jake0748]

  Please just chalk me up as one who didn’t “get” the racist reference in comment #1. I mean
  I’ve been around the block a few times, I thought anyway. But when Chris said cockroaches, I thought of cockroaches (You know, the nasty insects who scatter when you turn on the light). I didn’t even know it was a racial slur. I was really surprised when this thread blew up like this.

• [Jake0748]

  Why did my comment turn out so weird? I swear I wasn’t trying to use any excessive vertical white space!

• [Chris]

  Cockroaches in a kitchen in which the light has just been turned on comes to mind.

• [Anselm]

  Brilliant! Whoever added the music deserves an award.

• [arkizzle]

  “(And Arkizzle? A good do-bee doesn’t leave a bunch of superfluous line returns at the end of their comment.)”

  Teresa,

  I can’t read your tone here.. am I being scolded?

  And what’s a “do-bee”?

  (both asked genuinely)

• [Antinous]

  Despite your protestations of innocence, your insubordination has been noted. Don’t be surprised if some vital ‘white space’ disappears when you least expect it.

• [seanfish]

  ‘m wndrng hw t fls t hv th sprpwr t b bl t tll wht knd f mnd smn hs bsd n sngl cmmnt t pst.

  Mrk, tht knd f grndstndng s wht n xpcts frm ppl cmng hr t flm. Y’r fxtr nd ftr hr – cld y hv thght bfr y cmmntd?

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  “Cckrchs n ktchn n whch th lght hs jst bn trnd n cms t mnd.”

  Ds t pls r dstrb y t hv mnd tht qts hmn bngs wth cckrchs?

• [alisong76]

  I meant that you must have grown up in a place where people don’t toss racial epithets around. The jump from ‘idyllic paradise’ to ‘rubes’ is extrapolation on your part.

  All I associated the comment with was the “scattering” of the folks in the video, not as any sort of racial epithet. You know why I did that? Not because I’m some rube who grew up in Pleasantville, but because there just ain’t that many Hispanics in Southeastern Australia. Sometimes this stuff really is the result of a cultural gulf, not naivete.

• [Takuan]

  come….come….walk towards the white space……join usss,join ussss.. the Void awaits..

• [noen]

  I’m breaking Moveable Type

• [Antinous]

  No Romper Room in Ireland, eh. A good do-bee is a child who cleans up after him or herself and exhibits other (adult-defined) virtuous traits. Teresa’s on a campaign to clean up vertical length in threads.

• [Antinous]

  I would be happy if people would just not put whole paragraphs in boldface type. It gives me a headache.

• [Crunchbird]

  Amen, Mark. I can never read a reference to humans as ‘cockroaches’ without thinking of the anti-Tutsi radio broadcasts in Rwanda just before the genocide. That kind of dehumanization, whether done on behalf of “evil” or on behalf of “humor,” just isn’t cool.

  That said, this post strikes as me as particularly “trollbaitish” compared to the usual BB fare. Maybe it’s intended to be a challenge to see how well we can behave . . .

• [TharkLord]

  Animal metaphors as applied to humans can be troubling.

  I can certainly see where the cockroach equivalency would be insulting to those of toasty complexion. Even more attractive animals may still elicit an antagonistic response. I have a fondness for raccoons, however applying any “coon” based metaphors could result in significant fist caused facial trauma to myself when used amongst certain self-identified racial demographics.

  In the interest of good manners, I choose to use more flattering metaphors. Such as “cute as a kitten” or “busy as a bee” when commenting on the actions of my fellow primates.

  I think the Clown Car example is a pleasant one. Most people have positive associations with clowns and their antics.

  Oh, and to divert to a peripheral subject. I can never be quite clear on who it is who is overpopulating. From the perspective of resource consuming and carbon-dioxide generation, we seem to have an overpopulation of wealthy people. Are there any programs for providing condoms and birth control information to our most privileged citizens? A restriction in the number of Hilton, Bush or Trump progeny might be quite beneficial.

• [Tenn]

  MOOOOOOOOM!

  NOEN WON’T PICK UP HIS ROOM AGAIN! MOOOOOOM!

• [Church]

  Metaphor much, Mark?

• [macegr]

  Maybe this video can spark a debate on immigration, the mistreatment awaiting these new immigrants due to the rights they don’t have as non-citizens, or the fact that border control is nearly impossible with current methods.

  Or, since everyone already knows that millions of illegal immigrants pack 14 people into a minivan and head for the underbrush when the cops find them, we can just enjoy a humorous video of a man realizing his job just got too big to handle.

• [Elysianartist]

  Awesome in so many ways it boggles the mind. Props for the music. Only one thing would have made this better and that is for the last people out of the van to speed off in the pig car.

• [arkizzle]

  Oh. It didn’t come across very friendly, a note on the policy would have been fine.

• [Takuan]

  her room, Tenn

• [Dan]

  I have a feeling the police will use this video to stress the importance of waiting for backup.

  I almost feel sorry for that poor cop, but you’ve go to admit, that’s a damn funny video.

• [Antinous]

  If you grew up watching Romper Room, you’d have a different impression. It’s a deliberately non-threatening meme.

• [Tenn]

  It’s the internet, where the women are men and the chillun are actually undercover officers.

  Sorry, Noen! I think I knew that too!

• [Antinous]

  Dehumanize people of color much, Church?

  Consider this a warning shot over the bow. Racist comments will go to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no vowel returns. On the other hand…

  Clown Car!

• [Rich]

  Mirror?!

• [hikeebahikeeba]

  maybe it’s just a regional thing.i,unfortunately,had the same initial response to comment #1 as mr. frauenfelder did.where i live (florida) the cockroaches remark would,in fact,be intended to imply something unpleasant about the speaker’s attitude towards hispanic people.wouldn’t be surprising if that were also the case in california,which is where i think mark is from.

• [noen]

  What? There’s no white space is there?

• [Takuan]

  and some of us are just decapods

• [arkizzle]

  #37

  Amen

  (colloquially)

• [Antinous]

  Maybe we should just put ♂ or ♀ after our names.

• [scottfree]

  I knew the Benny Hill music was coming before I played the video. They should station people in nurse costumes at the border to prepare for these sort of eventualities.

• [MichaelWDean]

  #37 pstd by ThrkLrd , My 12, 2008 6:19 PM

  h, nd t dvrt t prphrl sbjct. cn nvr b qt clr n wh t s wh s vrppltng…….

  ==
  Cthlcs. Wht, brwn, blck nd yllw, Cthlcs.

  sd t b th Cthlcs nd Chns. Thn Chn gt smrt nd nw tx y hvly f y hv mr thn n kd. f y lv n Chn nd hv ght kds, lk lt f Cthlcs d, thy tk y t nd sht y.

• [noen]

  I may have to think of other ways to experiment with white space. Too bad the code tag doesn’t work. ASCII art is fun.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Sorry, Arkizzle; I thought I sounded more cheerful than that. I also forgot that you didn’t grow up hearing about the Do Bee and the Don’t Bee.

  I am indeed on a campaign to compress vertical space. Does that sound loony? But the more comments you can see at one time, the more easily you can see the interconnectedness of the conversation, which has all kinds of good effects. Extra line returns stacking up at the bottoms of comments turn into empty vertical space that creates a visual gap in the conversation and our understanding of it.

  Am I a crank on this subject? Yes! And yet, like all cranks, I believe I’m right.

  You’re far from being the worst offender, by the bye. We’ve had commenters here who’ve absentmindedly thrown half a screen’s worth of superfluous white space into their comments.

• [simplehuman]

  Everything is Racist! Everyone is Racist! You’re Racist for thinking that you’re not a racsit! Jeremiah Wright! Ahhh! Ahhh!

  Come on. It’s a really common metaphor and I kind of doubt that Chris really believes those people to be cockroaches.

  One could just as easily question why Mark finds cops trying to arrest suspects funny enough to post here.

  (Answer: Cause it is damn funny)

• [David Carroll]

  Can we do a retake? I’m thinking pink VW bus and clown wigs…

  Of course we will keep the “Yakity Sax” music!

• [Agent 86]

  Just got word, he did it to himself. Extra brownie points to Mark!

• [Hellblazer]

  There is nothing on God’s great and verdant earth that is more pleasantly satisfying than laughing at a fat, stupid cop.

  Whosoever is responsible for providing us with this video: I thank you.

• [Takuan]

  Antinous, you forgot the obligatory keystroke instructions.

• [Antinous]

  Mark, that kind of grandstanding is what one expects from people coming here to flame.

  It’s Mark’s blog. You’re way out of line.

• [Metlin]

  I’ll be honest. I think of all humans as cockroaches. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing (that’s not necessarily a good thing, either, but I digress).