This American Life - The Weiner Circle

I don't know if anyone else is a fan of This American Life, but I love the radio show and I just got around to watching the first season of the television show that was on Showtime (and is premiering it's second season on May 11). If you don't know it, apparently someone on the O.C. described it as "Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?" and, with a dismissive snort, "Gawd!"

I was watching the final episode of the first season, titled Pandora's Box, and one of the segments was on The Weiner Circle, a hot dog stand in Chicago.

Warning: There is very explicit language in this clip.



It's a restaurant where the servers are deliberately rude to you - but not in a sly in-joke way like some restaurants do it. They stay open late and sell hot dogs to drunks. I'd be rude too. The customers often swear right back. People go there precisely for the atmosphere because it's fun, in a way. However, as the clip shows, often times customer comments goes waaaay beyond fun and becomes offensive.

I have no problem with people swearing at each other, as long as it's done in a fun spirit. However, this fun spirit can get taken advantage of and ruined for everybody because of assholes.

The segment shows two different examples of customer-employee interactions. One's done in fun and one is basically a pack mentality, hate-filled, racism, misogynistic free for all that in any other circumstances would be called out as verbal abuse (not that this isn't). It's as if people go there because they can't say their hateful words anywhere else and be tolerated. This does not, in any way, contribute positively to the issue of the hypersexualization of African-American women at all. So thanks, jerks.

Anyway, check out the clip.

Indian woman, accused of being a witch, tied and beaten

A woman in India, accused of being a witch, was tied to a tree and beaten. A journalist filmed the incident before calling the police. The woman suffered no serious injuries, and the authorities arrested "six people, including the man who admitted to hiring her services as a witch. They were due to appear before a magistrate on Friday."

It was reported that such an incident of mob justice was not isolated. Several men were also beaten, one to death, in 2007.

Violence is nothing new. Violence against women is (sadly) not unheard of. But how could this journalist watch this woman be beaten and not do anything until after he had gotten his film footage? The fact that this journalist eventually did call the police shows that they were not completely unaffected by the situation. Why, then, did they not try to get the police involved sooner?