The dangers of stereotypes and stupid people

Jasen Bruce, douchebag

Whenever tragic acts of violence occur such as the Fort Hood shooting of late, the casualties are quite often twofold: not only are innocent people slaughtered in the main act itself, but there are far too often more innocent bystanders who are attacked, and sometimes killed, as a result of stupid, ignorant people stereotyping and demonizing whichever ethnic or religious group the original killer happened to be a part of.

Here is a prime example: a man was brutally beaten with a tire iron and chased down several blocks by a crazed Marine nut, Jasen Bruce, who took him to be a Muslim terrorist. Needless to say, the victim was hardly so: in fact, he was a Greek priest whose only crime was to get lost and then ask this imbecile for help. Just check this out and see what an absolute dumbass Bruce is: he can’t even get his story straight.

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

Bruce ended up in jail on charges of aggravated battery with a lethal weapon. He ought to have been charged with two more crimes: a hate crime for targeting a man solely because of his appearance (or, rather, what Bruce thought the man was), and the crime of being a supreme jackass.

I so wish that last one was an actual charge.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
Technorati tags: Jasen Bruce · Alexios Marakis · terrorists · racism