The recent crash of the Asiana jet at San Francisco airport has shown the upside of citizen journalism, what with the photo above taken by passenger David Eun, a Samsung executive, who also tweeted this:
I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal… (at @flySFO) [pic] — https://t.co/E6Ur1XEfa4
— David Eun (@Eunner) July 6, 2013
…and with this eyewitness video shot by Fred Hayes on his smartphone:
And then, there’s the downside. You’ll find more on the Public Shaming blog, in the article titled Idiots Use Plane Crash in San Francisco to Mock Asians, Blame North Korea.
The ignorant tweets came in two categories, the first being “let’s use a tragedy to make racist jokes”. Click on any of these screen captures to visit the corresponding Twitter accounts and see what other great intellectual gems they’re sharing.
Imagine the hue and cry from these people if someone made an “Americans can’t drive” joke in reference to reports that one of the people killed in the crash may have been killed by being run over by a rescue vehicle.
The other category of tweets made about the crash is “It’s enemy action!”, in which people are clearly unable to discern the difference between Nice Korea (home of Samsung, PSY) and Naughty Korea (home of Kim Jong-Un, son of the bad guy from Team America: World Police). Once again, click on the screen captures of the tweets to see the Twitter accounts of these masters of geopolitics.
...and by that, I mean, being completely ignorant of the larger world outside the U.S.…
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The cover painting says it all.