Conservative: A Journalist Who Got Mugged

What Toronto journalist Jessica Hume, 25, thought about muggers last week:

... I would have seen the attackers as possible victims of our society. I'd have assumed they were alienated youths, disconnected from their neighbours, teachers, peers -- people who don't feel represented by their politicians. I would even have felt sorry for them to some degree.

What she thinks of them now after getting mugged:

I don't feel any sympathy now, not for the people who come equipped with weapons, waiting in the dark for unsuspecting passersby making their way home. That is a choice they made. No one forced them to make that choice.

Crime · 2007/05/20 · 12 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

So THAT's what happened to me. And this is what happened to Rogers.

#1 · Uncle Mikey · 2007/05/20

"A conservative is a liberal who got mugged and liberal is a conservative who got arrested."

(Not that being mugged would be anything but scary...)

#2 · Bob Morris · 2007/05/20

I'm saddened to read about what Jessica Hume and her friend had to endure. It should be possible to walk home at 3 AM without worrying about physical violence. This kind of crime is too common in North American cities. I can only hope that those strategies that have brought down the crime rate in places like New York continue to bring it down much further.

I think to some extent watching as a friend is attacked is more likely to change one's mind about street crime than if you are the person attacked. I was attacked once, on August 13th of 2004, in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was walking to my girlfriend's house, going down a street that had a mildly dangerous reputation, yet it was a street I'd walked a hundred times before. For that matter, my girlfriend had walked it alone, a hundred times before. It wasn't really all that dangerous. It was also 9:30 on a Friday night, early enough that there were still some people out on the streets. All the same, two african american guys came up behind me and beat the stuffing out of me. I was wearing bandages for 2 weeks afterwards. But the incident didn't lead me to any major reappraisal of crime or criminals. Before the incident, I believed I was under a moral obligation to love all of my fellow human beings, and after the incident, I still felt the same obligation to love all of my fellow human beings, including the two that had attacked me. And I do love them. I've never felt any anger towards them. But things would have been different had I been with a friend and it was the friend who was attacked, which is the situation that Hume faces. Had I, for instance, been walking down the street with my girlfriend and they'd come up and seperated me from my girlfriend and then attacked her, I think rage would be unavoidable. I'm not sure why, but the situation that Hume faces seems to me to be the most difficult kind of situation in which to manage one's emotions and stay true to one's ideals.

#3 · Lawrence Krubner · 2007/05/20

The Toronto Star is a socialist rag. Nice to see one of their own getting a healthy taste of reality.

#4 · k · 2007/05/20

A lot has been said about arming the populace, some think (with some data to support) that the increased likelihood of the good guys being armed gives the bad guys pause (see the result of concealed-carry laws on crime rates), but I have to agree that most people aren't great with deadly weapons and the safekeeping thereof. I do, however, believe in this. Cheap, easy to use, and not deadly, but I'd bet I could keep 5-6 bad guys at bay with one and leave them all wishing they'd never met me. Unless the aggressor has a projectile weapon (gun, sling, bow and arrow, spear), there's nothing better than a sjambok for personal protection.

#5 · Uncle Mikey · 2007/05/20

"...left the bar, even though it was dark and getting close to 3 a.m., we decided to take the shortcut home..."

Morons.

#6 · Matthew Carrick · 2007/05/20

I never really understood the allusion. If I got mugged, I'd want the guy strung up -- but that never prevented me from supporting social security for grandma, healthcare for all kids or cross-ownership limitations in broadcast and print media.

There's just no connection.

#7 · Leo Klein · 2007/05/21

Yes, Nice to see one of their own getting a health.

Peter form Germany

:-)

#8 · Klettern sicher · 2007/05/21

...left the bar, even though it was dark and getting close to 3 a.m., we decided to take the shortcut home...

Toronto is like that. You can walk home in the dark a thousand times and never get more startled than some nocturnal black squirrel browsing in the leaves.

However like all big cities, it happens to somebody, somewhere, sometime.

What didn't happen was that her friend and she were shot.

Toronto is like that, too.

Jessica Hume forgets how much the societal factors she's now uninterested in, shaped that encounter, for bad, and for good.

Regards,
etc.

#9 · ThePerfectStorm · 2007/05/29

Liberal Neanderthals like Jessica Hunt sure are slow learners. Ms. Hunt should have ALWAYS know and understood that muggers are simply SAVAGES that need to be neutralized with 25 to life prison sentences. You cannot reform human filth, you can only isolate it or it will destroy your civilization.

#10 · Ames Tiedeman · 2007/06/03

I was mugged tonight.
I have never been racist but now i am beginning to understand why Blacks need to all be thought a thing or two.
I have always done what I could.
Food not bombs
volunteering at shelters.
You name it i have done it.
Tonight i was on the el and these black guys grabed my bag and took off. The only thing they stole was a laptop after i bargained with them.
The beat me up in the process and broke my leg. The doctors say i may never be able to dance again.
so in short tonight changed my life.
I am no longer dancing(ballet)(btw that was my career)
I am no longer helping any black people get food or health care.
They can fucking rott.

-Kristen Green

#11 · Kristen · 2007/06/10

I come from a tough neighborhood in South Philly. I can remember how great it was to live there in the 60's and 70's when Mayor Frank Rizzo was in charge. Since then, it's been one dumbass bleeding-heart liberal mayor after another - a few of them black. We have a new black mayor now who seems to be in line with Rizzo. He's tough-talking and just hired a guy from Washington DC to be the new police commissioner who has a very tough stance on crime. I hope to God he cleans up my city so I can walk safely down the street again.

Like a lot of people in South Philly, I come from a "connected" family, meaning I have mob ties. But then again, Rizzo was connected too. Anyway, if I was the victim of a violet crime, I'd do everything I could to get the guy strung up, but if that didn't work in the legal system - which it wouldn't under a liberal regime - then I'd do the next best and sensible thing: send a mafioso into the prison or if the guy got off, to his house, to take care of business.

#12 · south philly italiana · 2008/01/26