I'm sure many of you (if your Canadian 99.999%) have heard of the little "party" that occurred in Vancouver on June 15th after the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. For those of you that have not, here is an article from CNN that should give you a good summary of the events (I haven't read it, I'm just assuming that's the case). I suspect though, that if you have any interest in this article, you will already know enough about this incident so I will not discuss the events anymore at length.
News Video from CBC covering the event.
The purpose of this blog entry is to give my take on the aftermath of the riot and specifically the apologies made by some supposedly remorseful "miscreants" who took part in the events. The first thing I want to get off my chest here is that unlike so many other people who feel that they have to express outrage regarding these events, I don't give a rat's hairy cock about this riot neither do I hold any animus against the people that took part. In fact, if an event like this only happens every time the Canucks get to the finals, then I am pro-riot because it makes the news a little bit more entertaining than usual. Given that, I suspect that we can look forward to another repeat in say, 2028. Now I'm not a fan of hockey in the first place, and for all I care, the Canucks franchise should fold or move to Portland then they can tear down that blight on Vancouver, Roger's Arena (give some of those looters work) and replace it with a bird sanctuary.
Moving on from that, as many of you are probably aware, much of this event was filmed and the video footage was posted on the Internet with the result being that many rioters found themselves on camera exposed to the world and consequently were identified by "good helpful citizens" and will now presumably have to face "justice." In the wake of this, some of those identified have decided to apologize for their actions for the purpose of, well for the purpose of I don't know. Now as I said before, I don't give a flying fuck about what these people did so I have no desire to be apologized to, thus the title of this post. I neither accept nor reject these people's apologies.
One thing I will say though is that I'd like someone to actually not apologize for a change instead of always taking this route. I feel the same way whenever celebrities get caught in scandals and then always make these stupid pleas for forgiveness from the public. For one thing, it's probably not going to help you anyways, from what I've seen, most people seem to assume that if your apologizing, it's only because you got caught so that being the case, your reputation won't improve by apologizing. Likewise, if your life is going to be fucked up by the legal consequences of these actions and your aspirations shattered, than in my view, the least you can do is maintain some pride and not suck up to the public. Actually, for once I'd like to see some people not only not apologize, but actually come out with an anti-apology, saying that not only are they not sorry, but on the contrary, are proud of their actions. That's my take on this matter anyways.
Now I want to deal with two people in particular, who seem to have been the most publicized penitents in the media.
The first is Nathan Kotylak, a 17 year old who was caught destroying a police cruiser and whose shot at a Water Polo scholarship is now up the air. In the video below, young Nathan gives a tear filled apology to a whole list of people and organizations in front of news camera crew waiving his right to not be identified due to his status as a young offender. At the end of his apology, the first reporter to ask a question seems to imply that his apology was one of convenience, thus confirming my statement earlier about how such apologies will not improve one's reputation. Likewise, if this guy's future does go down the drain, then what the hell did this even amount to in the first place. Here is a clip of the apology.
The second infamous penitent goes by the name of Camille Cacnio, who was caught on video stealing two pairs of pants from Black and Lee, she appears from the 1:30-1:33 mark in this video clip.
This "perpetrator" made a blog camillecacnioapology in order to make her apology which she altered from the original apology, which contained some excuses for her acts, after a public outcry. Nevertheless, from the twitter posts that I have seen, it does not seem as if most of the public will be any forgiving than they were before the alteration again confirming my point about the futility of apologizing. By the way, I'm guessing the blog in question isn't going to be an ongoing one, though that would be kind of funny if it morphed into a general blog.
As an aside here, I also have a Wordpress blog that I have only posted one entry on, and I must say that Wordpress is really complicated to use. I have heard people diss Blogger and praise Wordpress, but all I can say is that if you are an idiot like me who just wants to write stuff and not bother with the fancy gadgetry than I would recommend blogger over Wordpress.
To return to the subject at hand, many commentators have been giving their two cents on this topic with me being the latest schmuck to jump into the fray. Here is a typical Conservative view from the Canadian shit head and neocon, Ezra Levant
Now when it comes to Conservatives, and especially neocons, I admit that I am about as unbiased as can be. The thing that bothers me about these people and these sorts of issues are the double standards that are held. First of all, I remember back a few years ago when I was a moralist type and opposed the US Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I remember that there were arguments for these things that had some merit but I also recall that there was a more subtle type of argument that was being made about this issue. It was essentially that those who opposed the war were foolish and naive because the world was an amoral battleground where all nations were fighting for their own self interest and any sense of morality beyond that was poppycock. Civilian Casualties? Well these are just collateral damage and all that jazz. This kind of view is quite common among Conservatives, a hardcore Machiavellian view of the world. The thing is when it comes to domestic issues like this, suddenly they become moralists to the nth degree whining about even the most minor of infractions and how unthinkable crime is.
That brings me to another issue, which is that these types (and most people) are convinced that human society is only kept together by the threat of force and that without all these instruments of coercion, human beings would destroy each other in a chaotic bloodbath as parodied in this article http://www.lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli50.1.html. Now let's assume for the sake of argument that the view I mentioned above is in fact true, how would that affect one's assessment of this incident. Well for me, it would make all this whining by these idiots in Vancouver and elsewhere seem rather silly as the majority of these baboons would be doing far worse if they could get away with it. Likewise, it's rather laughable for those whose businesses were looted to whine and cry because the members of those businesses would probably be destroying rival businesses if they could get away with it, e.g. all those Blenz employees would be destroying Starbucks if they knew they would not get caught.
Well that's about all I have to say on this issue. To close this blog entry, I think it's fitting for me to make a little apology of my own. I apologize to myself and to any readers of taste for my gratuitous use of scare quotes in this article as they happen to be one of my pet peeves yet I found myself here repeatedly offending myself so as a final word, let me just say I'm sorry.
Sincerely,
Luna
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