Saturday, June 23, 2007

What's Wrong With This Headline?

Alternate Post Title: Remind Me Again Why I Chose to Live in that City For As Long As I Did

From the Boston Herald:

T riders driven to violence: ‘It’s hard to even express how on edge you are’


At first glance, one might be led to believe that MBTA personnel are acting in a hostile manner toward their customers, provoking a discernible pattern of violent reactions from the peaceful travelers on the subways and buses.

MBTA workers are being pummeled, spit on and even beaten unconscious at a soaring rate, making the basic job of working for public transit an increasingly risky one.

The number of MBTA employees assaulted over the past three years has risen 48 percent, from 119 in 2004 to 176 last year, according to agency statistics.

“It’s incredible that people trying to serve the public should be threatened with violence,” said state Sen. Mark C. Montigny (D-New Bedford), a member of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation. “It’s pretty sad when your life’s in jeopardy for trying to collect a fare.”


Or not.

I guess "Violent, Aggressive Scumbags on the T" was too judgmental for them.

Besides, everyone knows that violent behavior is caused by external forces acting to turn otherwise docile individuals into raving lunatics, hellbent on destruction and thuggery.

Personal responsibility? Please. That's so 1950's.

...[one bus driver] was kicked so badly by an irate passenger, he was out of work for three weeks.


I blame Halliburton.

Last January, he said, a rider whose pass he had asked to look at spit on him, regurgitating the food from his mouth.


Just another one of the many perils of global warming!

One bus driver told of a co-worker who was punched by a woman who refused to pay her fare and, when he protested, was dragged off the bus, beaten unconscious and left lying in the street by the men she was with.


If only they were making a "living wage".

Damn you, Exxon!

In another instance, the first driver was himself threatened by a passenger who pulled a knife because another rider bumped into his nephew.


Clearly the fault of New Hampshire's lax cutlery control laws.

And, for todays's QotD:

“We’re basically sitting ducks,” said one Orange Line motorperson who considers herself “lucky” because she has “only” been verbally abused in the nine years she has worked for the T. “We’re easy targets because a lot of people know we can get fired if we try to defend ourselves and fight back.”


Sounds about right for what passes as common-sense public safety policy in Massachusetts, where the right of depraved, criminally-inclined individuals to spit food on you, kick you, beat you, and stab you is infinitely more sacred than your right to prevent them from doing so.

Ahhhh...progressivism.