{"id":1024,"date":"2014-06-24T09:51:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2014-06-24T11:18:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T19:18:25","slug":"people-behaving-badly-whats-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/people-behaving-badly-whats-good\/","title":{"rendered":"People Behaving Badly &#8211; What&#8217;s Good About That?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"TweetButton_button\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  data-url=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/people-behaving-badly-whats-good\/\" data-text=\"People Behaving Badly &#038;%238211; What&#038;%238217;s Good About That%3f\" data-lang=\"en\">Tweet<\/a><br \/>\n<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,\"script\",\"twitter-wjs\");<\/script><\/div>\n<p>The news is full of stories about people behaving badly &#8211; what&#8217;s good about that? \u00a0Well, nothing on the face of it. \u00a0We have all heard that two wrongs don&#8217;t make a right, but sometimes I&#8217;m not sure that is universally true.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, the internet and news media in general were abuzz with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox17.com\/news\/features\/around-the-web\/stories\/little-girl-kicked-out-of-kfc-because-scars-scared-customers-wztv.shtml#.U6mlc_ldUYs\" target=\"_blank\">story about a 3 year old little girl with disfiguring facial scars who was asked by employees to leave a Jackson, Mississippi KFC because her face was &#8220;disrupting their customers&#8221;<\/a>. \u00a0That&#8217;s bad behavior. \u00a0The story went viral immediately &#8211; KFC was roundly condemned on social media; \u00a0employees and managers at two Jackson KFC locations have faced constant verbal harrassment, death threats and have had drinks thrown at them. \u00a0That&#8217;s more bad behavior. \u00a0To KFC&#8217;s credit, they immediately launched an investigation and donated $30,000 toward the girl&#8217;s ongoing medical expenses from the incident that caused her disfigurement. \u00a0More on that in a minute.<\/p>\n<p>So, where to begin? \u00a0Believing the story is one thing. \u00a0But to go take physical action &#8211; go to \u00a0a KFC restaurant, not knowing if it is the one in question (the original story and facebook post did not specify the location) and berate and\/or assault someone over it? \u00a0That&#8217;s&#8230;crazy. \u00a0Anyone who would see this story then go and threaten or assault a random person over it is simply bat-shit crazy. \u00a0Did anyone take a moment and think whether this story of boorish behavior by KFC employees might not be exactly true? \u00a0Certainly the news media did not before reporting this incident. \u00a0That&#8217;s also bad (or irresponsible) behavior.<\/p>\n<p>But KFC did think about it, after all it was their reputation on the line. \u00a0I mentioned that they launched an investigation, and the investigation now has found that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clarionledger.com\/story\/news\/2014\/06\/23\/girl-tossed-from-kfc-hoax\/11284405\/\" target=\"_blank\">incident never happened.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Without assigning malice toward the girl&#8217;s family, there would have been immediate reason to doubt the story if anyone had thought to look for a motive. \u00a0The young girl was horribly injured when she was mauled by her grandfather&#8217;s pitbulls, and the family either had no insurance or very little. \u00a0They have \u00a0a facebook page and were attempting to raise funds online for the child&#8217;s medical expenses, attempts that yielded meager results: \u00a0only $595 prior to the KFC incident. \u00a0After the story went viral, donations have soared to approximately $135,000, including $30,000 from KFC. \u00a0Intentional, or happy accident? \u00a0I don&#8217;t know &#8211; or care that much. \u00a0It&#8217;s obvious this little girl is going to need surgeries, medical care, etc. that the family probably cannot afford, insurance or not. \u00a0I do hope that somehow this money is put into a trust so that it will be used exclusively for those ends, and not hijacked by the family who had a record of at least marginally responsible behavior.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s do the math: \u00a0grandfather&#8217;s pitbulls maul child (bad) + KFC employees disrespect child (if true bad) + girls family fabricates incident (if true bad) + media casues firestorm without fact checking (bad) + public goes bat-shit on KFC (bad) = child gets needed treatment (good). \u00a0That&#8217;s four bads (plus another two possible bads) equals a good.<\/p>\n<p>Math is hard and my question still stands: \u00a0can two wrongs make a right? \u00a0It is wrong for a three year old child to be mauled by her grandfather&#8217;s dogs. \u00a0It is also wrong for random people to be threatened or assaulted by bat-shit crazy people for no reason. \u00a0It is wrong for the news media to jump on a sensational story and put people at risk thereby. \u00a0But it is right that the child will be getting the treatment she needs. \u00a0And in that context, I suspect any of the parties taken in by the hoax will be OK with it. \u00a0I know I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tweet The news is full of stories about people behaving badly &#8211; what&#8217;s good about that? \u00a0Well, nothing on the face of it. \u00a0We have all heard that two wrongs don&#8217;t make a right, but sometimes I&#8217;m not sure that is universally true. A few&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}