Some days, solidarity comes from the unlikeliest places, with the unlikeliest of tones. Sometimes your most ardent defendants can be a total dicks about it. For one gamer facing prison time, that happened this morning.
You may remember the 19-year-old League of Legends player from Texas that is facing 8 years in prison for Facebook comments he made. Well, the folks over at Fox’s late night show Red Eye heard about it, and for the most part are none too pleased. So they made jokes about it for about four minutes.
“By this logic, shouldn’t we be arresting half of the commenters on the internet?” said Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld.
The panel went on to refer to the anonymous Canadian woman who saw the original Facebook comments as a ‘pederast’ and refer to the way the Texas cops handled the case as a travesty of justice.
If you’ve never been up at 3 in the morning and seen Red Eye, trust me when I say that this is par the course. The show plays to a cloyingly immature sense of humour, but to its credit it is still one of the most watchable and transparent shows on the network, in a grotesque, Morton Downy Jr. way. It is a show that knows exactly what it is. After all, Fox and Friends wouldn’t book Damian Abraham or GWAR.
“Kids today talk about how awesome their video games are, and how much better they are than the ones we had, but I never got in trouble for bragging about taking a wooden mallet to a gorilla throwing barrels at me,” comedian Keith Alberstadt joked.
After they were done correcting the punctuation of a 19-year-old currently on suicide watch, Greg Gutfeld offered a glimmer of support.
“Everybody should stay on top of this story. I can’t believe there’s a kid, in jail, obviously for making a joke,” he said. “It’s like Turkmenistan,” another panelist chimed in.
Sometimes the only people who have your back are the most cynical, black-hearted people on television. Good on you, Red Eye.
“But I do predict we’re going to forget about this,” one of the guests concluded, before the other guests quickly agreed.
Oh well — it was nice while it lasted.
To contact the author of this post, write to chrisperson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @papapishu
Comments
9 responses to “Fox Hosts Support Gamer Facing Prison Time, Are Kind Of Jerks About It”
He wasn’t making a threat to anyone in particular, it was an internet comment. people throw insults all the time. This was a dumb joke who ended up with the kid in jail because a dumb woman couldn’t tell the difference between a bad joke and a real threat.
What a joke.
I’d think it’s more because Fox would hop on anything that smells like a hint of gun control and the suppression of their so-called liberties.
It may have been a joke, but he isn’t a comedian and he could have chosen anything to illustrate his point, even using TV shows. Instead he says he’ll go shoot up a school. At a time when schools are getting shot up year on year. The freedom of speech brings with it freedom to bear the consequence of ill chosen speech, this should be a cautionary tale, not a crusade against perceived heavy handed justice.
Anyway like I said elsewhere, if you had a child attending the school this guy lives near, you’d be taking a very, very different tone.
The thing is.. they were being dicks about it, because it’s ridiculous. I know how FOX is, but even for them… it’s like.. ‘WTF.. This kid is in JAIL for this… how serious can you be about it?’
That’s how I feel! I mean… shit. I’ve said some stuff before, and have been NO FURTHER from actuality than you could imagine… And thinking that I may be criminally tried for it.. wtf
In solidarity thousands of people should start making similar jokes across all social sites, see how quickly it diminishes the actual menace of the original infraction (or simply start cataloging all the shit talk that happens… the back log of despicable trash talking would be immense). This is a clear case of a busy body making life hard for people and the press using it as fodder, then eventually… the law using this silly kid as an example.
First idea? No. Second idea? Yes.
It is fair enough for the woman to make a complaint it’s her right to do so. Let’s put this in the context why the woman possibly made the complain in the first place – increase of mass shootings at schools by kids that have shown “odd” or “aggressive” behavior online, heated debate on gun control in the U.S. and political climate most likely factor into this. It was a touchy subject when he was arrested and still is.
It is how the local police dept. has handled it that is the real issue here. The police should still have investigated the complaint i.e. – quick visit to the house, chat with the parents and kid and then moved on if there was no cause to continue with the investigation, and it seems on the surface bloody obvious there is no cause to continue. And instead of saying “oh well we won’t remember this…”, the Red Eye douches could get of their crapulant arses and help the kid out they “seem” bright enough to do so, but being FOX I could be kidding myself.
Yknow, not ALL programing on FOX is terrible. It might not appeal to uni students or super lefties, but theres actually a sizeable slice of programming these days that appeals to so called moderates. Their problem is that the loudest voices also tend to be the most insane, and they havent managed to ditch the bad rep they earned during the Bush years.
Im a BBC man myself when it comes to news programming, but Id say FOX and CNN are pretty even these days in quality. One went up, the other went down.
I like that Greg Gutfeld’s opening jokes were almost entirely “Heh, L-O-L? Pssh. Nerds, amiright guys? High five!”.
Good writing there guys.
Americans take things too serious, most are great, just retarded ones not taking jokes need to settle the fuck down, also those fox news reporter things need a beating once work finishes, and report on some real current affairs because some of the shit that’s on fox is…shit.
I will find that woman, kill her, skin her, then put on her skin and go shoot a school fool of children just for the hell of it.
P.S. I live near elementary school and I’m not joking either.