May 062010
I live in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and home of the Phillies, a major league baseball team (that beat the Mets the other day – Wehey) A couple of nights ago, an excited 17 year old fan jumped onto the field during a game and ran around for about 30 seconds. The police responded by tasering him. Argh! But what I find even harder to grasp is that the kid’s family have apologised – to the fans, to the team, to the Philadelphia Police Department and to the ballpark security workers.
There are apects of politeness in ‘merica that will forever be beyond my ken.
It’s a preemptive action. It could well be that the kid’s family are concerned that they will be sued by the policeman for the stress suffered in using a weapon in front of so many onlookers.
Fascinating. In my stereotyped and cynical view of typical American behavior, apologizing is the last thing they would have done… (“Threatening to sue” springs to mind.) Heh.
Oh, I’ve been out-cynic’d by Olaf!
Ha! Yeah, Clarissa.
‘Fraid Olaf’s thoughts took a little while to appear and until they did, I was right with you.
He’s out-cynic’d us both!
An interesting event that made the front page of the British press too – maybe the family apologized because they felt a ton of shame would descend on the nation?
It was interesting watching the video in that the guard with the teaser looked to be well out of condition and it was only when the fan ran back towards him that he was able to get off a shot/tase/stream? maybe they apologized for making him look unfit?
Or maybe they apologized because i have no idea who won the game or why they were playing it but i know about the taser?
In somewhere, spain, germany – i can’t remember – but they were talking about it on talk sport yesterday in respect of an 11,OOO pitch invasion here in England (i mean there in England – i’m in France where NOBODY apologizes for ANYTHINg – except the English when someone stands on their foot in the post office) – there is apparently an automatic 5,000 euro fine if a fan steps onto the pitch.
One person in the debate said they felt the pitch was sacred and that fans have only paid to go into the stadium – so maybe the family were apologizing to God?
I spotted this subject-verb agreement error in your Taser Love post. It’s supposed to be “the kid’s family has apologized,” not “the kid’s family have…” The subject is family, which is singular, and it takes a singular verb, “has”.
Hi Steven and welcome.
I take it you must be an AmE speaker? ‘Family’ is one of the collective nouns where BrE and AmE grammar diverge. Maybe I should write a post about this because I know it can sound pretty irritating to an American ear – specially when you get people writing stories about American families using British grammar.
https://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-grammar-collective-nouns.htm
Ha! Yeah, Clarissa.
‘Fraid Olaf’s thoughts took a little while to appear and until they did, I was right with you.
He’s out-cynic’d us both!
Granted that the taser was a gross overreaction, the kid was still behaving badly, which disgraced his family: thus they apologized to all the people who were annoyed as a result.