This is why you should get your news from more than one source.
No, I am not going to talk about the attack on Iran, although that is definitely an example of why.
Rather, I will mention something that happened in Brooklyn last night. It doesn’t have the same ramifications as the war Fake Tan Fũhrer started, but it does have implications for relationships between drivers and cyclists, based on common assumptions about the latter.
According to a Yahoo News story, a sixteen-year-old boy allegedly held onto a B6 bus as it moved along Bay Parkway near East Second Street. ABC-7 News says he appeared to be holding on, which is somewhat different (in legal terms as well as semantics) but conveys more or less the same impression to most people. The New York Daily News headline, on the other hand, claimed that the boy “interfered with the driver’s route.”
(All italics are mine.)
Whatever happened, the driver—42-year-old Michael Brown—and the boy got into an altercation. Now Brown is under arrest for punching him in the face, leaving him with a broken nose.
If we can accuse the boy of anything, it’s recklessness and maybe stupidity. But neither makes him any worse than any other kid. (Confession: I did similar things at his age, and even later.) And it certainly doesn’t warrant what Brown did.
I hope the boy is OK. I worry, though, that whatever he did could reinforce stereotypes too many people—including, possibly, Brown—hold about cyclists.
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