aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, March 06, 2008

People Power: the good, the bad & the ugly over a puppy

Duncan points to the Monroe family ‘nightmare’ as Marine puppy throwing video spreads:

A Monroe Marine’s sister said her family is “living in a nightmare” as news spreads around the world linking the man to a video of what appears to be a U.S. Marine throwing a puppy off a desert cliff.

Death threats and graphic descriptions of physical violence continue to be directed at the Marine and his extended family as their personal information is being spread on the Internet. [...]

“They are getting angry about this puppy and the loss of this puppy, if this is real,” the sister said in an interview with KIRO (710-AM) radio talk-show host Dori Monson. “On the same hand, they are also threatening human beings’ lives. They are putting this puppy’s life above human beings.” [...]

“What it says for them is when they are so passionate about a single dog’s life, yet they are willing to—they say they are—willing to kill the entire family over something like this,” the sister of the Marine from Monroe told KIRO. Her brother has served his country in Afghanistan and Iraq and “none of them take that into account,” she said. “They just want to jump on him and immediately call him a mental maniac.”

To the best of my knowledge (and the story reports that) it has yet to be determined whether or not the video footage is real.

RELATED: On The Media talked with Clay Shirky about his new book, Here Comes Everybody, which depicts the activist audience in this new online world, driven by networks that grow and act in never-before-seen ways.