Headline: Funny or Offensive?
Feb 17 2009 | Comments 13
Travis the Chimp Commits Suicide by Cop; Attack Injures Woman
liz | 2:14 PM | Funny or Offensive?
The Trouble with Spikol | Make Major Moves | PW Style | Cup o'Joel
Travis the Chimp Commits Suicide by Cop; Attack Injures Woman
liz | 2:14 PM | Funny or Offensive?
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
The headline and story aren’t offensive, but they’re not funny either. Not because of the topic, just the structure of the story. If I were working for Associated Content I’d be spending most of my time being secretly jealous of anyone working at The Onion.
When humour about tragedy goes wrong it can be offensive, so I guess I’d be on the “Offensive” side of your poll…
interestingly enough, reports are surfacing that the owner had given the chimp a xanax that day!
if anything is amusing here, it’s the stupidity of some humans!
re: xanax
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=6893073
a CNN commentator made a good point about the impossibility of ever truly domesticating a wild animal, no matter how much a person might want it to to be domesticated
I don’t know who I feel worse for in this completely messed up story. Also, I really don’t like that headline. A woman got her face mauled off, they don’t need to be cute about it.
If they wanted to be cute they should have gone with a better joke, at least. Suicide by cop? Eh, I see what they’re trying to do, but it’s not all that funny.
At least the Post went with FURIOUS GEORGE. That’s much better. And think of all the banana puns that Associated Content left unused!
I’m offended by the lack of humor, honestly.
Death by cop is decidedly not funny. The fact that that the victim was a 200 pound undomesticated chimpanzee owned by a 70 year old woman, who apparently had to drug the wild animal to keep it docile, makes it no more amusing than anyone or anything else whose life ends as a result of a bullet.
Not funny.
I choose neither.
I think it is sad… very very sad.
Wow, you’re laughing at this. Poor Travis, doped on xanax and then beaten with a shovel and stabbed, and his evil “owner” said he looked at her like she was his mother after she stabbed him. Maybe some tactic other than beating and drugging and this could have been avoided. The owner, not Travis, should have been killed. She’s a monster.
“Headline: Funny or Offensive?”
Dude, seriously you need to ask? Not to mention the other “comic” gems in the body such as:
“The first sign that Travis would one day attempt suicide by cop was when he switched from being a Mets fan to being a Yankees fan.”
Eagghhhh-shiver.. Now I just want to take a shower. It’s telling this is from a freelance posting site paying the heady sum of 3-20 bucks for its copy. Not to mention the various links of Favorite Shark Attack Videos. Jesus Christo…
I don’t believe “Saul Relative” is a vapid individual but just sometimes- with the immediateness of posting online,(Hence the numerous spelling grammar errors here) we are lacking the VERY serious human filter process known as pause. Another reason why print will not and should not die. Leave it to the pros- like [cough*brown noser*cough] Liz.
Offensive, but not as offensive as the New York Post cartoon.
What comes out the more I hear of this…the woman and the chimp had this really bizarre bond. Bathing and sleeping together? Eating meals together? WTF?? Apparently, the chimp went totally territorial when the friend showed up, hence the damage he caused that led to his death. Someone said you cannot domesticate a wild animal. This Herold woman is not Jane Goodall, and I doubt even Goodall shares her bed with an ape. It’s still wild. You cannot domesticate it. I would love to be able to own a wolf but you cannot get the wolf out of the wolf, and even if it was playing, it could demolish you. This is a tragedy for everyone. It’s not in the least bit funny. And to say Travis committed suicide…bullshit. Suicide is an exit strategy that humans reserve for themselves.
Is this game funny or offensive:
http://www.adultswim.com/games/game/index.html?game=schizophrenzy&cid=EM_G_20090227_schizophrenzy
What do you think?
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