A video of a man, a former state department official and reportedly an advisor to president Obama, harassing a street vendor in New York City has gone viral.
The street vendor in Manhattan who was racially harangued about the Gaza conflict woke to huge lines of well-wishing customers on Wednesday as the the former state department official who was filmed berating him was arrested and charged with racial harassment and stalking as a hate crime.
Mohammed Hussein, 24, was back to work at the Q Halal Cart grill on Wednesday on the corner of Second Avenue and East 83rd Street, with lines of customers queuing for food in a sign of support.
Hussein has said he is still shaken by the encounters with Stuart Seldowitz, 64, who repeatedly harassed him with Islamophobic invective. Seldowitz called Hussein a “terrorist”, said 4,000 dead Palestinian children in Gaza “wasn’t enough”, called the Prophet Muhammad a “rapist” and told the vendor he’d be tortured “when they deport you back to Egypt”.The vendor repeatedly asked Seldowitz to leave him alone in the clips, to which Seldowitz was filmed replying: “Why should I go. Why should I go? Tell me why I should go? I’m standing here. I am an American. It’s a free country.”
Seldowitz was arrested and charged at the 19th precinct on the Upper East Side on Wednesday with one count of aggravated harassment of race or religion and four counts of stalking as a hate crime.
…After the videos were shared online and Seldowitz was publicly identified, the political lobbying firm he had consulted with said it had cut ties with him, and offered to represent Hussein. “I’ll represent the food vendor pro bono if he wants to bring a lawsuit,” Gotham Government Relations president David Schwartz said.
I watched the video and what struck me was how smug and self-satisfied Seldowitz looked throughout it all, smiling all the time, full of the confidence that in this encounter with an immigrant street vendor, he had all advantages of inequality. He spoke of how he could use his contacts in the state department and in Egypt to create trouble for the vendor and his parents.
I am not in general supportive of online viral shaming because it can be abused, with edited and misleading videos used against ordinary people. But in this case, Seldowitz seems to deserve it.
If half of what that prick pretends to believe about Muslims was actually true -- if he ACTUALLY believed it -- then he would be too shit-scared to actually say it to the guy’s face for fear of getting the shit-eating grin perforated with bullets. It’s almost a shame that the street vendor was considerably more civilised than him.
On the other hand, he’s been arrested and made famous, so there’s that. I wonder if Trump will embrace and defend him?
Trump just might do that, and maybe add “He used to work for Obama, he was an advisor, and he advised Obama to get tough with the Muslim terrorists, but Obama didn’t listen, and that proves all the killing in Gaza is Obama’s fault!”
“I’ll represent the food vendor pro bono”….
So you think of him as being his occupation, not his individuality? Another example of privilege.
[Something funny just happened -- my phone’s auto-suggestion function suggested a word that was was better than the one I had in mind.]
@3:
“You misunderstand me Prime Minister, I was merely being specific.”
Is the silly epithet ‘Karen’ now deprecated, or is it only for women?
Obviously, it’s not actually privilege if one can’t get away with it, it’s merely acting as though one has privilege. Not the same thing.
No need for a Ken or Karen epithet. The only name he needs is what he is, a fucking asshole.
@ 5 Morales
Still utterly clueless after all these years.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Privilege
bob, I give you permission to feel free to stay clueless for as many more years as you want.
Thing is, the term here is used in relation to a particular incident which is featured in the OP, right? Now, if you want to imagine that person is somehow privileged by reason of being arrested and charged with racial harassment and stalking as a hate crime, well, I can’t stop you.
@ 5 Morales
FFS, as has been explained to you before, that archetype depends on weaponizing the patriarchal concept of women as vulnerable. So yes. It only applies to women because, “help, a scary black man is talking back to me”, depends on the supposed vulnerability of white women in the face of the coloured horde. Why do we keep having to explain the same shit to you over and over again? Have you ever thought of listening and learning?
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/weaponization-white-womanhood-on-the-media
Mmmhmm. So you think, but reality indicates otherwise.
cf. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-social-media-scarborough/612193/
(Counterexample, May 28, 2020)
Heh heh heh.
You’ve so got it into your head that I am a supraliteralist that you don’t even recognise the blaring sardonic sarcasm there.
My reckoning is that it’s a fading fad.
Have you ever thought of thinking for yourself?
(you know, freethinking)
No retort, of course.
I quote from your own link: “Karen is a form of behavior that is not gender exclusive in that men like GymSecurity Tom also fall under the umbrella.”
Only applies to women (you), and also is not gender exclusive (Mano).
Because I grok E-Prime, I get that both can be correct, given the proper phrasing (or framing, as you types like to think of it).
Anyway, this dude carried on like a pork chop, got done for it.
(Not very privileged, was he? Defs not the type of exemplar of the kind I would use, anyway)
Apparently what the English speaking world needs is another explicitly anti-woman epithet.