File this one under the ever-massive “better late than never” category, but a while back I got a comment on one of my articles on the Space Shuttle Program which I just had to rip into. Specifically, this little quip on my article “The Greatest Test Flight – STS-1” — in that article I mention the Challenger and Columbia disasters. For whatever reason, the author of the comment in question decided that this should be something to focus on with a dose of insensitivity which, as you can imagine, got under my skin.; not likely, though, in the way the author intended.
The comment from “Renegade707” reads as follows:
“It’s good that the tragedies happened. Imagine the bloated egos of hordes of rednecks and yankees were these tragedies to have been avoided!“
Real classy, huh? We’ve got someone saying that it’s a good thing that 14 people died, lest “rednecks and yankees” — obviously him meaning Americans in general — would somehow have “bloated ego’s” were the Shuttle to have had a perfect flight record.
From this we can discern very clearly that our friend here is not a citizen of the United States. I originally suspected European, as this type of speech matches a phenomena I’ve been long overdue on writing on which I describe as “European Elitism” — think Europeans acting like the international stereotype as to how Americans act.
Naturally I did a bit of digging — namely on the IP address, 197.224.153.0. A quick search found that IP was not European at all, but an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa: Mauritius.
Now, this is a place I would say I’ve never heard of in my life, but that wouldn’t be true — of all things, this happens to be the island where the Dodo bird once lived! Of all the places, that certainly wouldn’t be one I’d expect to have a hit on my website from, let alone someone to leave such an idiotic comment as the above.
So what we have here is, basically, some jerk ass who lives on an island in the middle of fucking nowhere which isn’t known for anything much beyond having been the native land of an oddly famous extinct avian species.
Okay, being series any research on the island brings up plenty of information about its history and current culture — I’m not going to make a serious attack against Mauritius or its population, beyond this one particular asshole, but I have to get my jabs in where I can — this island isn’t much of a player on the global scene and is, like most every former European colony to gain independence post WW2, still very much like the nations which spawned it.
So, while geographically it’s quite a distance away, I feel my statement of this being, in effect, an example of European Elitism as still an accurate way to describe this comment. Of course, nationality doesn’t matter and regardless of the commenters ethnic and national background, them being an asshole is just them being an asshole. I just find it funny that someone from a nation that most have never even heard of would mock the tragedies of a nation which has had its citizens not just in space, but on the fucking Moon!
No, the United States is far from perfect — what nation is? But I place incredible value on space exploration and nations which are able to and choose to contribute to or directly conduct such operations always get a nod of approval from me. It’s a little better than a nations claim to fame being where a bird species died a few hundred years ago, I think.
Okay, enough jabbing into them, I’ve just been so delayed on writing this piece that I’m happy to finally get it published so I can delete the comment from the approval cue and move on with more random articles.
I will end with, yes, I fully consider that this could have been sent via some kind of proxy / VPN type setup, and the person could still have been anywhere in the world and the exit node — and thus IP address shown — was in Mauritius, but it’s more fun to just go with how things are and make a few wise cracks. Let’s not ignore this commenter was an insensitive prick about 14 people dying in two separate national tragedies.
With that done, more to come, as always.