Loved bfnydkbbeb
this comment on yesterday’s post about the mom who let her son wait in the car for a few minutes, and ended up arrested. It’s from a reader named Lex:
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he surreptitiously videotaped him from a distance, and sent the recording to the Roman police, who arrested the man for indecent exposure.
That’s how the parable of the Good Samaritan went, right?
I’d like to help you…get arrested.
This new, Orwellian version of the Good Samaritan parable (albeit somewhat humourous) pretty much sums up the way many people act/react these days. It’s such a be-a-busybody-but-don’t-actually-be-helpful reaction to an observed situation. I feel that those people, for whom this is their automatic reaction, have way too much time on their hands, and really need to find another “hobby.” Also, the ubiquitous availability and use of all manners of video recording devices doesn’t help, either.
I just read the article and am so fired up I can’t stand it! How have things gotten like this? I think the worst part is how fearful the whole situation has made her son. Understandably, of course, but geez. If KIDS can’t even think the police are there to help (not hurt) something is definitely wrong. And now I will probably give my/ kids less freedom, not because they aren’t capable, intelligent human beings, but because I don’t want to get arrested. The whole thing makes me sad on so many levels…
“and sent the recording to the Roman police, who arrested the man for indecent exposure.”
And then crucified him, I presume?
Your essay came to my wife’s attention just a day after I was riding my bike with my two kids (4 and 1) in a bike trailer behind me. I was not wearing a helmet and listening to headphones, however someone in a car took it upon themselves to alert a police man in a car nearby about what they saw as my own lack of judgement. The cop, thankfully, just had me appear to be getting a lecture from him for as long as it took the cars at the stoplight to pass by and then let me go on my way. After reading your story, I am thankful. I think you hit the nail on the head. Parenting has become a sport but without a prize at the end. And where is the compassion that people who ‘care enough to call the cops’ should have to talk to the person they feel isn’t doing what they should. Our society is so litigious that we’d rather have someone else enforce our own ideas of moral and legal values. Where was this person when the last four of my bikes were being stolen, when my sister-in-law was held up at gun-point a block from our house at 2pm on a Sunday, or for the yearly window break-ins of our cars? Are they calling the police when people are littering all over Baltimore or when homeless people are defecating in Patterson Park’s playground? I may have been careless in my younger days but whatever I did and whatever I do I pay for it. I don’t seem to be able to get away with anything but I live a pretty decent life. Therefore I resent being called out for the few times I do things that aren’t ‘by the book.’ It sounds to me like you feel the same way. I’m not sure what we can do about it though. It’s just another one of those helpless feelings we can have.
This post is still bothering me. I cant for the life of me understand why the person who videotaped didnt just offer to watch this person’s kid! The mom could’ve still locked the kid inside, and the stranger ~ being sooo concerned ~ could have still watched the child. But since the stranger wasnt actually a good Samaritan, that didnt happen!
Unfortunately, a sign of our troubled times – I don’t think kids should ever be left unattended in cars. There are just too many things, a lot of them beyond our control, that can happen. WHEN they happen we will never forgive ourselves even if the child is ultimately OK. The videotaping of the ‘crime’ in question was another sad sign of the times. If it was me, I would have just stayed in my car and waited five or ten minutes to make sure the kid stayed safe, and then figured options. If the Mom had been available to talk I would have attempted that, in this day and age, you have to be very careful about what you say and some people feel defensive and threatened no matter how empathetic and human you try to be. The law in this particular instance ‘is an ass’ and should not be enforced, what a farce.
what, he didn’t post it to youtube first? jeeze this would have been a money maker. anyhow the rest of the story, the man goes to court and is found guilty… forced to sign the sex offenders registry, he now finds that he can no longer find employment or an apartment to rent. ostracized by his friends and family and living with the depression and desolation from being cast out of society he finally takes his life. all the right wingers cheer saying well if he hadn’t walked down that road none of this would have happened.