Comments

1

Radalyn King was driving high on meth and with the intent to kill someone. Are you THAT clueless Charles Mudede?? Hell, a 2 X 4 is a mundane item until handed to someone with the intent to swing and kill with it. Same with one of those "scary" guns. This is the shallowest, least-educated, must SJW anti-vehicle piece we have seen in a long time. Thanks for the laughts!!

2

PS - directly from the local news (or will the SJW's throw a fit and call this "fake news"?)...

"A woman who is suspected of being high on drugs during a fatal crash told police she intentionally crashed the car and was driving with her eyes closed, according to Seattle Police investigators."

4

@1, right? Hey I’m all for safer streets, but intentionally leaving out relevant details in favor of a political narrative doesn’t do anyone any good, just feeds the pro-car, Next Door, anti-everything trolls.

5

I'm with Charles; car culture sucks. However, I suspect he and I diverge when I say I think she should have walked the bridge and jumped off midspan.

6

Excuse me, sir, do you have a moment to talk about Jesus Christ?

...Sir?

7

Sweet! I'm gonna get shit faced and take the SUV out for a high speed spin on Capitol Hill.

8

Charles, your point, solid as it is, is defeated by your inexcusably bad choice of example.

9

Besides getting suicidal tweakers off the road, it would also help if the junkies didn't play Frogger on Aurora Ave at 2am while high as kites.

10

Amazing how emotional you get a crowd with writing like this, which only proves the point of the article.
The fundamentalist attachment of @1&2 @3 @7 to their cars is common between them and King, and what put the driver in question behind the wheel that night.

12

@8 he has a point?

14

As I leave Seattle, fuck you, Charles. What a shitty, shitty point to make out of something so terrible.

15

Typical crime apologist nonsense. Thousands of people make a turn at that intersection every week without harming anyone. But the poor, poor meth addict? Oh dear, she’s a victim of our car culture.

16

@2 - the only ones I ever hear bleating about "fake news" are the polar opposite of SJWs.

And yes, the tweaker deserves 100% of the blame for this. I suspect she'll do a good number of years in prison.

17

One simple reading of JG Ballard's Crash is that it's a metaphor for late capitalism. That reading driven further points to a hyper-literalization of metaphor: Capital eating itself, or the accelerated production of death.

18

"On Friday, November 29, there was a deadly terrorist attack near London Bridge and a deadly car crash on Aurora Avenue. The terrorist attack claimed two lives and injured three people."

Wow Charles my mind is blown. Just when I think you couldn't get any more insane with your POV. So are you blaming the knife for the London bridge attack? Because that's the logical extension here if you're making this argument.

Is it just impossible for you to ever assign blame to someone who actually commits a crime? In this case, we have a worthless tweaker who deliberately mowed down innocent civilians. Just think, maybe if she'd been locked up for previous crimes, you know, IN JAIL, this might not have happened. Oh, and have you thanked the cops for arresting her? Or are you going the blame the car manufacturer next?

19

10 is a sociopath that is indifferent to the deaths of innocent people.

20

This is proper thinking. It's 'systems' thinking. When it's used to turn profits, it's loudly lauded. When used for social change, well, just read the belligerence here! Wow.

21

You have a point, but people are dead because of HER actions. No one made her drive like that. I hope she spends a long time in prison.

22

Can you imagine Charles going out and looking for work with his clippings once The Stranger folds? Now there’s a column.

23

I know that Journalism is a publish or perish environment.
Just saying that, verification may be in order, as well....

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/state/washington/article237969844.html

26

“Person killed when struck by Sounder Train near Sumner”

I blame train culture.

27

Their names were Rebecca and Michael Richman. They were people who had names. Not "pedestrians."

From all of us who are working towards a safer city for walkers and bikes, please stop trying to help, Charles.

28

What in the hell are you talking about?

29

it's awfully intellectually dishonest to compare the risks of something without also comparing the benefits. The benefits of individual transportation are huge and widespread, helping not only the individual engaged in their own transportation needs for economic and emotional benefits, but for society as well by improving commerce and well being on a global level. Yes, there are costs, including environmental costs and higher risk of death/injury. But to reduce the automobile to only a single cost, pedestrian injury/death, is just sophomoric.

30

This accident was completely the drivers fault. But the posted speed limit on Aurora is 40 mph and I consistently drive in traffic going 50mph and even more along parts of Aurora. There needs to be more speed trap emphasis on that street.

31

Yep, when you choose to consume Methamphetamine and get into a vehicle and drive, AND you happen to end up killing a couple of people, it isn't your fault. No, society has forced you into a situation in which you had to take Meth and you had to drive. I mean, the public transit in this city is terrible and all being all hopped up on Meth you simply could not wait for the bus.

Mr. Mudede, I read your stories and I listen to oyu on KUOW, and many of your opinions I agree with and respect, but on this one, you have gone off the rails.

32

Dude, your "hot take" is a hot mess. Bitch was tweaking, and deserves a fucking murder charge. We ought to just drag the tweaker bitch to death behind a fucking semi-truck, green river style.

FUCK TWEAKERS AND JUNKIES.

33

Well Charles, I know you posted this to try to get some click bait and foot traffic on Slog but sadly you haven't broken 40 comments. Not like the good old days when people read The Stranger and bullshit like this would have garnered at least 80 to 90 comments in the same amount of time.

34

I look forward to the soon-coming day when The Stranger goes out of business for good.

35

Haters gon hate

Gimme them clicksbois, fill my coffers.

36

Car culture is disgusting but this argument is moronic. I actually had a dream the other night the stranger would defend the meth head somehow, and here it is. Ridiculous.

37

i wonder if Charles brother had been killed by this person instead of an illness he would still be making the same argument.

38

Hate cars. Don't own one. Our car culture gives nobody the excuse to murder someone with a car. If you're too dumb, high, drunk, or stupid to realize operating a 2,000 lb machine is dangerous and don't act as such, that's a personal responsibility problem and you should and will be held accountable.

39

Ok. My answer to a mourner is my answer to all who fail to understand my point. I wrote like this: "Just know that I know that it is hard for you to see the big picture in your position. But I have to do it. I'm sorry. Mine is what Hegel called 'tarrying the negative.' You have no other tool available for processing your grief but the individuation of its cause. Even the driver is most likely with you on this. But this only reinforces a system that at every moment wants only individuals to the ontology of success or failure. To blame the driver is not your grief speaking; it is your conditioning." I say this same to all other critics of my post. Tarry the negative. And what is negated here is car culture. Do not get weak at any moment. Stick to, tarry, this force that
negates.

40

Your comment is a shitload of nonsensical babble.

41

This is just poor journalism. The Stranger is notorious for it's piss-poor journalism but Charles Mudede, you have taken it to a new level with this. You have lowered the bar soooo low that you have reduced all credibility that this publication every had.

42

This is just poor journalism. I get it, you don't agree with car culture, but to divert blame because someone was high on drugs with the intention to run these people over, even after she admitted this, is just inexcusable. And to call her the "alleged" driver? Come on, man! The Stranger is trash and this article further proves that point.

43

@39 - You seem to have missed the fact that so many commenters stated they understand what your overall point was. It's the fact that you used the worst possible example for your article in discussing said point that is the problem. And your comment here is even more concerning: "To blame the driver is not your grief speaking; it is your conditioning." Do you actually think someone who intentionally hits people with their car is not to blame? Are you truly saying that you feel she is not at fault? This was not a tragic accident caused by car culture, this was someone who admitted, 'Yes, I knowingly drove with my eyes closed hoping to crash.' She is 100% to blame for this.

44

I was a friend of Michael's. He was a really nice guy, polite and helpful. Very intelligent as well, he had studied abroad during college. He actually lived in LA, so I'm assuming he was on vacation or visiting family in Washington.
I think most people commenting didn't read your article and are falling into groupthink. I understand your point that our car dependent society will continue to lead to these tragedies.

I believe you think the driver should spend their life in jail. I think you're just begging the question of how do we prevent the next tragedy along these lines.

Michael was sharp. He would have understood your point.

45

44 Be sure and tell Michaels's friends and family that it was the car's fault. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

46

The Stranger is such a rag catering to the weak of mind. Nonetheless, I would expect even The Stranger’s editorial board would have the sense not to print this. I guess your readers get what they pay for.

47

Hey Charles, here's the big picture....the car is one of the central features of most major cities. With the exception of vehicular attacks by terrorist nutjobs, nowhere else do i see meth-addled nitwits given such leeway to visit disorder upon the streets to the point that they can feel enabled to just close their eyes and plow thru innocent human beings. Nowhere. And nowhere would a two-bit huckster from a local smut rag be trying to deflect blame away from exactly where it belongs....the intoxicated driver, and more so the brain-dead Seattle
(and West Coast) culture of coddling and enabling lawless drug-addled vagrants.

The real problem is that too many in our society are conditioned to put up with the PC psychobabble that nutjob activists promote. The real solution would begin with having the nutjob activists committed to a psychiatric facility so that adults can deal with the issues with viable solutions to this public health crisis.

48

Charles, if you were White, your pretentious 'intellectualizations' would have been scorned off the Stranger's pages 20 years ago. But you're Black, a self-identified victim of "oppression" and "racism" (did you have to take a low fare airline flying here from Africa so you could be so brutally mistreated?). And that's the only thing that protects you.

49

@48

Yes, it's affirmative action. Because Charles has to be spotless and a shining paragon of journalistic integrity, while Trump can speak venom with a forked tongue and his Zambodi-riding zombies will put him on the highest pedestal and give him a pewter trophy for the chance to lick up the froth spewing from his most tainted orifice.

50

The central presumption behind demagoguery—and the most attractive promise it makes—is a stable taxonomy of identity, woven into the fabric of the universe. The taxonomy is also a hierarchy; some people are entitled to more goods than others by virtue of being better—they are better by virtue of having a certain identity, regardless of their behavior. Hence, paradoxically, members of the ingroup (by virtue of being essentially “better” people) are held to lower standards, and can behave worse.

One thing that surprises people about demagoguery, or that they don’t expect to see, is that it relies heavily on a rhetoric of victimization. The ingroup is being victimized by the situation (often by being treated the same as the outgroup, so there is a kind of political narcissism operating), and the claim is that the ingroup has responded to this victimization with extraordinary patience and kindness. (If the actual history is disenfranchisement and violence, then that behavior is reframed and patience and kindness because it could have been worse.)

Now, however, to react with anything other than punitive violence (to try to think about the situation, or deliberate on it, or include the outgroup in any deliberations) is weak, vacillating, cowardly, and feminine.

As a consequence, demagoguery has to square the circle of inspiring fear while not looking fearful (since fearfulness is being paired with thinking and deliberating)—there are often claims of extraordinary courage in the face of a terrible situation, or a representation of one’s self as calm and reasonable while making apocalyptic predictions, and the odd insistence of the sheer rationality of hyperbolic claims.

http://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/characteristics-of-demagoguery/

51

@44

I was a friend of Michael's as well. I think you're being a little too charitable here. Doesn't take a genius to understand that climbing into a vehicle high out of your mind is an irresponsible act in itself.

52

Pinhead journalism. Dori Monson absolutely LOVED the interview, as did I . What a disgrace to the printed word.

53

The man who was hit and is still in the hospital with multiple broken bones lost his wife, the love of his life, 2 years ago and his only 2 children in this accident. His daughter had just become an attorney and he is a prominent attorney in LA. I hope he uses his pain to help make changes that will save lives and make the streets safer for everyone. Please pray for him, he just lost his entire family.

54

This is assuredly one of the most preposterous pieces of crap ever to pass itself off as "journalism." Radalyn King (the driver) has admitted to intentionally crashing her car while driving with her eyes closed, high on meth. Shame, shame on everyone who endorsed this at The Stranger. And let this be a wakeup call to its advertisers.

55

"The reason that's higher, and therefore closer to the truth, will not just see the driver and pedestrians in the Aurora crash, but that the driver and pedestrians are entangled in a structure that prioritizes the mobility of cars in all of its transportation decisions and policies. " Actually, it is more a STRUCTURE THAT PRIORITIZES THE RIGHTS OF DRUG ADDICTS AND CRIMINALS rather than the non-drug addicted public. We are the victims of countless crimes committed by 'our most vulnerable community members'. The City of Seattle government, specifically the City Council and Mayor, are to blame for the filthy, unsafe state of a once beautiful city.

56

Aurora is a death trap of speed and poor traffic segregation. It should have physical barriers between the sidewalk and traffic, and might as well let the cars drive faster if you do that.

But.

I'd read this article with some respect if those people died as a result of a car crash that didn't involve an intentional tweaker.

59

Why is the Stranger printing such a heartless opinion from a at best "fringe" lunatic?? It is because of these attitudes that Seattle continues to plunge into disrepair and neglect and now resembles a city in a third world country. The Stranger needs to disassociate itself from this writer for good AND offer an apology to the family of the victims for this heartless opinion that was published by the Stranger.


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