{"id":42325,"date":"2016-04-28T12:40:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T16:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=42325"},"modified":"2020-07-19T12:40:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T16:40:38","slug":"a-wince-worthy-double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=42325","title":{"rendered":"A wince-worthy double standard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been out of touch.\u00a0 To no surprise.\u00a0 Heck, even at the time I\u2019m writing this, my brog is still down, en route to its new home, and I\u2019ve been dealing with varying degrees of separation anxiety with my greatest and longest-tenured hobby, but the point remains, I\u2019ve been out of touch with day-to-day current events, and struggling to find time or want to continue writing, without my platform.\u00a0 And this is the first of many topics that I\u2019m trying to use to jumpstart my writing muscles, and hope for the best.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I was going into work one day, and I couldn\u2019t help but notice that there were a few notable buildings that I see on the drive, that had their flags at half-mast.\u00a0 Clearly, something had happened, and I grew curious to what major event could have happened to have made the decision to go flags at half-mast was.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got into the office, and I took a few minutes to look on CNN, to see if there was anything major that happened somewhere in the world; nothing.\u00a0 Perhaps it was at a more local magnitude, something that happened in the state, that is making just Georgians fly Old Glory at half-mast?\u00a0 So in spite of my endless criticism towards the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I still went on AJC, because criticism aside, they\u2019re fairly up-to-date on things.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bingo, I see a candlelight vigil<\/a>.\u00a0 Surely, there has been some massive tragedy in the state to cause people to somberly conglomerate and stand in silent vigil towards presumably the recently departed.\u00a0 And then I read the story:<\/span><\/p>\n

Four University of Georgia college girls dead after crashing into another car.\u00a0 The two drivers of both vehicles survived, but with injuries, but four passengers in one of the cars, dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the police incident report, which was released on Friday, the vision of the driver that crossed the center line was not obscured. The incident report said it was unknown if the driver had been distracted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Weather conditions at the time of the collision, which happened around 8:55 p.m., were listed as “clear” in the report, and the roadway was said to be dry.<\/span><\/p>\n

The incident report said that alcohol and drug tests were not given at the scene. Officials have previously stated that drugs and alcohol are not suspected in the crash.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although officials have claimed to rule out that drugs or alcohol were not a factor in the accident, it doesn\u2019t take a genius to realize that in a car with five girls ranging from 19-21 years of age, \u201cdistracted\u201d kind of goes without saying.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to assume SnapChat, selfie-taking, or a combination of both were involved in this incident, if drugs and\/or alcohol really were not involved, which I kind of don\u2019t believe, because UGA is one of the drunkest schools on the planet to begin with.<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting back to the point though:<\/span><\/p>\n

To honor the crash victims, Gov. Nathan Deal ordered all flags be flown at half-staff, Deal\u2019s office posted on Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday, we are all Bulldogs,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, it\u2019s a sad and unfortunate tragedy that lives were lost in this incident.\u00a0 In no way shape or form is it ever a good thing to hear that people died from anything other than old age and\/or natural expiration.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t help but think to myself, with a wince on my face, was it really that<\/em><\/strong> tragic, to the point to suggest a statewide flying of flags at half-mast?<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, when a president, past or present dies, I can get a half-mast.\u00a0 When a public figure that actually did something substantial in the world, I can understand half-mast.\u00a0 But four college girls dying, and then the state reacting like September 11th<\/sup> happened?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m wincing again, but I kind of don\u2019t agree.<\/span><\/p>\n

Especially when not even a full month prior to this incident, there was another incident, where a crash occurred on I-85 in Coweta County that left three people dead and four hospitalized.\u00a0 Bad weather was<\/em> a factor in this incident, as well as people not wearing their seatbelts.<\/span><\/p>\n

If there were any candlelit vigils, they went unknown and the AJC didn\u2019t bother to find out.\u00a0 Nathan Deal didn\u2019t send a memo out after this incident, to raise flags to half-mast in honor of the Wilson family, whom yes were all relatives in the accident.\u00a0 There was no day in which we were all Wilsons<\/em>.\u00a0 And weeks afterward, there\u2019s been no follow up stories or articles about the incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference between this incident and the one involving the UGA students?<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll never believe it, but the UGA students were all white, and the Coweta County crash victims were all black.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Honestly, there\u2019s really nothing more to say about it, when you take a few steps back and see patterns like this.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been out of touch.\u00a0 To no surprise.\u00a0 Heck, even at the time I\u2019m writing this, my brog is still down, en route to its new home, and I\u2019ve been dealing with varying degrees of separation anxiety with my greatest and longest-tenured hobby, but the point remains, I\u2019ve been out of touch with day-to-day current … Continue reading A wince-worthy double standard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,8,89],"class_list":["post-42325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-fail","tag-ohgeorgia","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42328,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42325\/revisions\/42328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}