Here at Scene we’re always open to the occasion hatchet-job, smear, and/or humiliating dig at a public figure. But, hey now, there is a limit to these things. Physical violence is something we’d never advocate; once you get all belligerent in a potentially felonious fashion, shit gets real. A local college student is learning that the hard way.
Police showed up at Lorain County Community College on Monday looking for 19-year-old Shaquille Brown. He came to the notice of authorities after a teacher reported an off-handed and boneheaded threat Brown dropped in class, according to Newsnet5.
According to the professor’s account in the police report, Brown blurted out while working in a group, “can we leave, because Romney is in town and I want to go shoot him.”
The professor then said she told Brown she was stunned by the comment and that she had to report him to campus security.
Joke? Serious threat? When police arrived, Brown seemed pretty surprised, offering this as a defense: “I didn’t even have a gun to do it.” We’re guessing he was just playing, probably couldn’t handle another moment of the endless flip-flopping bullshit stream that’s been gushing from the Republican presidential candidate since his murder-boner for elected office first manifested itself around age nine. But that doesn’t really occasion a threat of violence.
Elyria police took Brown into custody. The Secret Service sent an agent to interview the suspect. Mitt Romney continues to be high-def advertisement for everything that’s wrong with America politics.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2012.
This is just outrageous. Young people say this kind of thing all the time. It’s called hyperbole, which any teacher oughta know.
So look at the racism here. The black youth gets picked up by police. Tagg Romney threats to punch the president and he gets…a free pass.
Back in the late 1980’s while stationed on Ramstein AFB in Germany, a young Airman wanted the day off to see the Queen of England as she was visiting. The young man was told he had to work and was denied going. He said “Oh Well, I would have killed her anyway ” in a joking manner and accepted his responsibilities and went to work. He was summarily arrested and given a Dishonorable Discharge along with 5 years at Leavenworth just because he was upset and make a stupid remark. Whats wrong here ?
Mr. Swenson, is this a news piece or an opinion piece? If it’s a news piece, you’ve failed miserably by interjecting your opinion. If it’s an opinion piece, you’ve failed miserably by not giving examples to support your position. Perhaps it’s time to consider another line of work.
@ Joe…It’s neither…
It’s Scene for ‘effs sake…
Not the New York Times….
Lighten up there bro….
@joe18750 I think you’re missing the point of a news blog . . .
You can’t say your going to shoot someone, whether you are joking or not. Mr Brown is learning a valuable lesson.
Perhaps he will get lucky and have this felony charge dismissed. My gues is that he might but not without learning that political dissent is open and welcome in America – but jokes about assassination attempts are not.
I recommend that all of the other posters on this board that believe they can “joke” about shooting someone, and specifically a presidential candidate, to provide their full name, date of birth, address, and telephone number in a post here on this site and make the same “joke”.
Let’s just see what happens, future felons.
now that’s funny !
@Mr. Swenson, I think you’re missing the point of journalism and journalist standards.
@joe18750 . . . the news blog is an aggregation site with links and recaps of other reported news from the cycle paired with our own opinion, analysis and jokes. Lots of jokes. By all means disagree with the opinions in there (or lack of), and when the jokes are bad, we’re fair game. Bad jokes are the worst. But don’t misconstrue the basics of the format and use that as justification to soapbox from the sidelines about standards. We’ve been known to have those too. For the future, the print product we put out has a more standard delineation between news and opinion. Hope this clears things up. And thanks for reading.
@Mr. Swenson, Right. So basically it’s a modern construct that allows you do whatever the heck you want, without any standards. Got it. Another indication that “change” is not synonymous with “improvement”. A particular presidential term seems to demonstrate the concept, exceptionally well.