Sometimes the best reply to ugliness is mockery.
Recently Tucker Carlson stated that he and a friend beat up a gay may who was "bothering him" in a bathroom stall -- a admission that was, astonishingly, met with laughter by his television colleagues. One can imagine the sort of outrage that would have been generated if he had said that he had beaten up a black guy or a Jew that had been "bothering" him.
Be that as it may, for all the justifiably angry responses that this has generated, my favorite is a witheringly snarky comment from a Fark forum:
"I can just picture him now, delivering an adorable flurry of overhand punches with his thumbs inside his fists."
Update: Carlson has offered a clarification of the incident. He now states that it was an attempted sexual assault and that he and his friend did not attack the man in question but merely held him down until police arrived.
Frankly, the change of story seems a bit odd to me. Why would you initially describe a sexual assault as being "bothered"? This is especially puzzling given that the context of the original anecdote was with respect to Senator Larry Craig's alleged bathroom exploits. It's particularly odd the the story was originally told in a way to evoke laughter. If I had suffered an attempted sexual assault when I was younger, I don't think I'd be playing it up for laughs on national television.
It may be that Carlson did, in fact, misspeak (and, in all fairness, he does seem support such things as gay marriage) but I can't help but to feel like his clarification has the whiff of revisionism.
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