Trimess

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

What do "Penny Lane" and Lane Jensen have in common

TYRANNY
They both spoke up and both got banned

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

IMO, I think you do a disservice to Lane to compare him to her. He was actually becoming more and more concerned with challenging the power structure at Trimet and exposing the hypocrisy rampant in many of their narratives. His methods at times may have been overzealous, but "Penny" seems much more obnoxious and her case way more trivial.

Anonymous said...

IMO, both are outspoken, civil rights activists, both are roughly the same age, both have white skin.

I have transported both many times and categorize them in the attention seeking group.

In other words, neither wants to look out the window and see sunshine or clouds, they both want to focus on the system negativity in hopes of some sort of recognition they never got fulfilled in some other part of their life.

Bottom line: our jobs are tough, here is the proof!

anonymous#3 said...

I was taught not to be obnoxious in public. Sure, we should act when we see injustice. We should let our voices be heard when blatant violations of somebody's civil rights are being violated. However, there is a time and a place for everything.

Imagine if we obnoxiously called out anybody in public because we disagreed with how they are doing their job. Free speech? ...perhaps, but it would get quite ugly if we all did this.

There are much better ways to complain if we disagree with how somebody is doing their job than to call them out in public in an obnoxious manner.

If the fare inspector was doing something that was completely out of line, say, assaulting a person because they didn't show a ticket, then "Penny" or anybody else would have the right to yell out "Hey! what the *%#k are you doing!" or taking other actions to aid the person being treated inappropriately. But to yell out "Why are you hassling people for their fare?!" I'm thinking is not appropriate for the setting as the fare inspector is just trying to do his job; nothing more. It's only Penny's subjective opinion that he is "hassling" people. Does Penny have the "right" to pose that question to the fare inspector under her First Amendment rights? I suppose, but is it appropriate for the situation, probably not.

Again, in Lane's case, there are appropriate ways and inappropriate ways to ask a transit agency what steps they are taking to address security issues on their buses and trains. Was he within his rights to ask those questions in the manner he did? Sure, but did he do it in an absolutely appropriate manner? ...possibly not.

Al M said...

Do you have any idea how many 'obnoxious' people I dealt with as a Trimet bus driver?
You learn how to deal with the public when you are dealing with the public. You do not resort to abusing the governmental authority that you may possess to deal with 'obnoxious' people, PERIOD

anonymous#3 said...

Nowhere did I say that the fare inspector handled it correctly either. I'm just saying that I don't consider Penny a victim nor do I necessarily wish giving her kudos for what she did that night as she started the whole ordeal.

If not for her obnoxiously calling out the fare inspector for what she subjectively considered his "hassling people," then the fare inspector may not have not have abused his "governmental authority."

I agree that he did not handle the situation properly but for you to single him out as "abusing governmental authority" because a passenger riled him and he acted out of emotion rather than reason is rather absurd.

The acts of TriMet should be scrutinized as "abusing governmental authority," not the actions of a mere underling in the chain of "authority" at TriMet because he let his emotions get out of control because his ego being challenged by an obnoxious young lady.

I agree with most of what you stand for, Al. But this isn't one of them.

Al M said...

She expressed herself, that's supposed to be allowed in our civilization.