[Jurassic Referee]

Originally posted by jbduke
Mark,

That a way to foster civilized discourse. Don't respond directly and thoughtfully to a person's ideas, just tell him that his ideas are garbage.

Rut, here are my two cents.
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Last night I went to the symphony. The first-chair violinist was really, really stinking it up through the first two-thirds of the concert. I was in the lobby of the concert hall during the second intermission when I noticed a man having a spirited discussion with his wife over how the aforementioned violinist was so bad that he was ruining the whole evening for the patron. He was clearly drunk, as exhibited by his red face and loud, boisterous demeanor.

Near the end of the concert, I happened to spy the drunkard in the audience, sitting only a few rows from the orchestra pit. Just after I noticed the man, he stood up, began booing loudly, and sloshed the contents of a champagne glass onto to the object of his disgust, the violinist. Upon feeling the spiritous shower, the violinist sprang from his seat in the pit, then clumsily hurdled the two rows between him and his assailant. When he reached the stunned patron, he (thirty-ish) put the fifty-ish man in a headlock and pounded on his face for three strokes before dropping him, his body collapsing onto the lap of his mortified wife seated adjacently.

Witnesses sitting in the immediate vicinity of the incident said that the wife of the man was heard to apologize to the musician as he dusted himself off and returned to the orchestra pit.

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I told this story to a class of 12th grade government students today, more than a week after the Artest incident. I was not at all amazed at how much more sympathetic they were to the violinist in this story than they were toward Artest when we talked about that a week ago. I'll leave it to the individual to decide where the relevant differences lie; I know where they lie for my students.

Gee, great story. However, I think that the relevant differences to the actual Artest situation really lies in the fact that that the violinist didn't go into the audience and beat the crap out of the violinist's wife or some other innocent bystander- like Artest did. I wonder how sympathetic your kids would have been if the violinist hadda done that, instead of getting the actual assailant.