You clearly don’t agree with what I’m actually saying and that’s fine.
But also clearly I really annoyed you when I brought up the idea of a shooting. I made you feel I was arguing in bad faith and it was probably very frustrating. Even for what I was doing it was a terrible example because it introduced the idea that the people could be hurt as mere bystanders which is a totally separate axis. So sorry I took this out of the space of a good faith discussion by raising something that was needlessly inflammatory.
I’ve deleted my posts about that. Water under the bridge. The real point (setting all of that other stuff aside) is what doormen are for and, in particular, whether their position as doormen increases their responsibility to act in these situations. I am not saying that they are the same as security guards, but I feel that they, as doormen, were more than simple bystanders and did have a heightened responsibility to act. Their failure to do so, though perhaps understandable given fear and shock, is not fully absolved in my mind. But we can agree to disagree on that.
(There is a whole branch of situational ethics that deals with exactly this kind of dilemma, and it does take into account things like personal risk or psychological barriers to action. It makes for interesting discussion, and I will be the first to admit that there are no easy or even “correct” answers. One way people vary the famous trolley problem is by asking, “Would it change your action if you were an employee of the rail company, rather than just a bystander?” Anyway, food for thought.)
The Kitty Genovese case is a good example of the damage misreporting can cause over decades when it’s used to sell some salacious copy to the masses, ever since i first read about it in Watchmen i thought ‘oh my god, people are monsters’ but as you point to it has been thoroughly debunked at this point. Once the urban myth takes hold though very little is gonna shake it loose.
I admire your innocent optimism. New York City treats stuff like this as a spectator sport.
Likely they were union and their union will call for a strike if they are not rehired as “saving people foolish enough to get beaten up in front of the doorway” is not in the union contract.
They could have opened the door and politely asked, ‘Please stop attacking that lady. It would be in your and our best interests for you to do that. Thank you’. /s
