Savage Toronto Blue Jays owners and fans think they're the epitome of tolerance while offering none to Yunel Escobar on Victoria Day in Canada-DeMarco
5/30/13, "When a Crowd Becomes a Mob," crisismagazine.com, Donald DeMarco
"It was Victoria Day in Canada and the Toronto Blue Jays were hosting the Rays of Tampa Bay. The word “hosting,” however, hardly applied to the treatment that one Yunel Escobar, the Rays shortstop, received, who was lustfully booed each time he came to the plate. When he homered in the 9th inning, he was booed again for employing his signature gesture as he crossed home plate—stretching his arms out to indicate the “safe” sign. Cuban-born, Escobar does not speak English.
Through a translator, he expressed his
astonishment: “It’s something I do every time I cross home plate.” But
that is not the reason for Escobar’s status as a pariah.
Crowds are usually forgiving to athletes and are willing to put aside any number of offences ranging from DUI, PED, torturing animals, sexual promiscuity, siring numerous children out of wedlock, and involuntary manslaughter. What was it that Señor Escobar did that was so grievous and unforgiving?
Prior to a game back in 2012, Escobar inscribed three Spanish words on the black tape that ballplayers place under their eyes as a shield against the glare of the sun: Tu Er Maricón. According to my Spanish dictionary, this means, “You are a sissy.” It was not directed to anyone and did not imply a particular sexual orientation. Spanish players have admitted that they toss this phrase around with each other in a joking and non-offensive way both in the clubhouse and on the field. Miami Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen, avers that he and his children use it around the house all the time.
No one noticed the words and it would have had a quiet death as a non-issue. But a fan noticed it when he looked at a picture he had taken of Yunel Escobar. He immediately interpreted the words as homophobic, and contacted the Blue Jays organization.
Action was swift and punitive.
Instead of explaining to the shortstop that this kind of
thing is unacceptable, the organization suspended him without pay and
forced him to donate his lost salary of $87,000 to two homosexual
organizations. He was obliged to attend sensitivity-training classes
and was traded before the season ended. Escobar’s weak defense was that
the words he used “were not meant to be offensive.”
When does a crowd become a mob?
For that matter, when does the public become a mob? Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was the first to study the phenomenon of the crowd. In his classic work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, he borrowed from Freud and likened the crowd to a “libido” acting without a “super-ego.” He found that the actions of the crowd correspond to three dominant features: anonymity, contagion, and suggestibility. The first, anonymity, combines a feeling of invincibility with a loss of responsibility, thereby leading to behavior that is primitive, emotional, and unreasonable. Contagion refers to how easily this unreasonable behavior spreads within a crowd.
The third characteristic indicates how the crowd becomes homogeneous and malleable to suggestions made by influential sources....
Today, the Mass Media has, to a certain extent replaced the dictator....The persuasive power of the Media to turn individuals into members of a crowd is painfully evident....T. S. Eliot noted this power of the Media to standardize people, in one of his poems when he wrote:
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
The Escobar incident is not about three words in Spanish that were directed toward and offended no-one. It is about the power of the Media to assist in rendering people anonymous, homogeneous, and suggestible. This surely bodes ill for democracy. Political correctness, the morality of the Media, is not enlightening, but controlling.
Its promotion of tolerance as a virtue is obviously a sham.
The Toronto crowd was not displaying any tolerance for Escobar’s conduct; it was exhibiting its own intolerance, and in a way that was cruel, merciless, and unforgiving. It may be the very definition of hypocrisy
to demand tolerance while offering none."...via Free Republic, images from Crisis Magazine
"It was Victoria Day in Canada and the Toronto Blue Jays were hosting the Rays of Tampa Bay. The word “hosting,” however, hardly applied to the treatment that one Yunel Escobar, the Rays shortstop, received, who was lustfully booed each time he came to the plate. When he homered in the 9th inning, he was booed again for employing his signature gesture as he crossed home plate—stretching his arms out to indicate the “safe” sign. Cuban-born, Escobar does not speak English.
Crowds are usually forgiving to athletes and are willing to put aside any number of offences ranging from DUI, PED, torturing animals, sexual promiscuity, siring numerous children out of wedlock, and involuntary manslaughter. What was it that Señor Escobar did that was so grievous and unforgiving?
Prior to a game back in 2012, Escobar inscribed three Spanish words on the black tape that ballplayers place under their eyes as a shield against the glare of the sun: Tu Er Maricón. According to my Spanish dictionary, this means, “You are a sissy.” It was not directed to anyone and did not imply a particular sexual orientation. Spanish players have admitted that they toss this phrase around with each other in a joking and non-offensive way both in the clubhouse and on the field. Miami Marlins manager, Ozzie Guillen, avers that he and his children use it around the house all the time.
No one noticed the words and it would have had a quiet death as a non-issue. But a fan noticed it when he looked at a picture he had taken of Yunel Escobar. He immediately interpreted the words as homophobic, and contacted the Blue Jays organization.
Action was swift and punitive.
When does a crowd become a mob?
For that matter, when does the public become a mob? Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) was the first to study the phenomenon of the crowd. In his classic work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, he borrowed from Freud and likened the crowd to a “libido” acting without a “super-ego.” He found that the actions of the crowd correspond to three dominant features: anonymity, contagion, and suggestibility. The first, anonymity, combines a feeling of invincibility with a loss of responsibility, thereby leading to behavior that is primitive, emotional, and unreasonable. Contagion refers to how easily this unreasonable behavior spreads within a crowd.
The third characteristic indicates how the crowd becomes homogeneous and malleable to suggestions made by influential sources....
Today, the Mass Media has, to a certain extent replaced the dictator....The persuasive power of the Media to turn individuals into members of a crowd is painfully evident....T. S. Eliot noted this power of the Media to standardize people, in one of his poems when he wrote:
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
The Escobar incident is not about three words in Spanish that were directed toward and offended no-one. It is about the power of the Media to assist in rendering people anonymous, homogeneous, and suggestible. This surely bodes ill for democracy. Political correctness, the morality of the Media, is not enlightening, but controlling.
Its promotion of tolerance as a virtue is obviously a sham.
The Toronto crowd was not displaying any tolerance for Escobar’s conduct; it was exhibiting its own intolerance, and in a way that was cruel, merciless, and unforgiving. It may be the very definition of hypocrisy
to demand tolerance while offering none."...via Free Republic, images from Crisis Magazine
Labels: Toronto Blue Jays owners and fans show how easy it is for a civilization to turn into savages
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5/30/2013 05:58:00 PM
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