Shame Ol' Song (Vol. 1)

I've decided to add another new facet to the blog, something I will call Shame Ol' Song.  In this segment, I will breakdown a news story that I find particularly alarming or disturbing.  Hopefully there won't be consistent updates to this segment, but we all know we live in an imperfect world.

The story of Joe Rickey Hundley gets the nod for the first installment of Shame Ol' Song.  Here is his story according to Yahoo! News:

Hundley was on a flight from Minneapolis-to-Atlanta, set to land at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Feb. 8, according to an FBI court affidavit. He was sitting next to Jessica Bennett and her 19-month-old son, who began crying as the plane started to descend."Jonah starts crying because he's feeling the pressure in his ears," Bennett told ABC News. Bennett, who was seated in row 28 alongside Hundley, told FBI agents that she tried to get her son to stop crying when Hundley "told her to shut that ['N word'] baby up.""I said, 'What did you just say?'" Bennett said. "And he was so drunk that he fell onto my face, and his mouth moved over to my ear and he said it, just directly into my ear."The 33-year-old mother then says Hundley slapped her son in the face."When I had looked at Jonah's face, he had, his eye was swollen…and it was bleeding," Bennett said. "I was just scared to death."That's when fellow travelers stepped in."After Joe Rickey Hundley struck [the child], Ms. Bennett received assistance from several people on the plane, including male passenger Todd Wooten," court documents said.Wooten, who was seated in row 16, said he heard derogatory language coming from the rear of the aircraft and witnessed Hundley slapping the child.Hundley was charged with simple assault, and if convicted of the misdemeanor count, he faces a maximum term of one year in prison."Let's just let the case speak for itself as it develops," Hundley's attorney Marcia Shein said.Shein said her client will be pleading not guilty.

Wow! This sounds like a video on WorldStarHipHop. I was just waiting to read that the pilot stormed out of the cockpit and yelled "You goin' to jail now!" and uppercut the shit out of Hundley.

What makes a grown man think that this behavior is acceptable?  The ghost of Jim Crow just Facebooked me and said that Hundley is trippin'.  Westboro Baptist church just tweeted "Not cool, Joe Rickey! #racist."

His actions by themselves are deplorable and ugly, but the most disgusting aspect of the story is that he plans to plead not guilty.  He feels no remorse.  C'mon, Joe Rickey, you slapped a baby.  That shit is not even funny in the movies, Will Ferrell couldn't even get a giggle for jokingly doing what you did in reality.

Not only did you slap a baby (which is up there with kicking a puppy and choking a kitten), but you also dropped the N-bomb on said baby.  A child should never be subjected to a racially based verbal assault...ever.

The fact that he's declaring innocence in this case, makes me wonder what else he has gotten away with in his miserable life, and question how far we have really gotten as a society.  Are we moving backwards?  Hopefully the justice system will do its job, and restore my faith in humanity.  'Merica...right?