Isn’t this just entirely fucking predictable:
The man who called 911 to complain about a group of black teenagers at a pool party in Texas, and defended the controversial police response as a “good amount of aggression”, is a convicted felon who spent time in jail for violent behaviour and torturing animals.
Sean Toon was sentenced to more than nine months in jail after pleading guilty to killing and maiming prize farm animals and covering them in paint, according to court records in Texas. He was separately sentenced to two and a half months for an assault.
***In November 1999, aged 18, Toon and three high school friends were arrested and expelled from school after vandalising the agricultural centre of a rival high school district and attacking animals housed there, many of which were owned and cared for by school children.
“Cows and pigs were cut and bruised, apparently beaten with wooden boards. And baby turkeys were slain, their limbs torn apart,” the Dallas Morning News reported at the time. Dale Gardner, a teacher in the school district’s agriscience and technology program, told the newspaper: “It was brutal. There’s no way to describe it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
About a dozen prize turkeys, which were reportedly being bred by a student aiming to win money for his scholarship fund, were feared killed.
Animals and buildings were covered in green and gold paint, according to reports. These were the colours of Toon’s high school, Newman Smith, whose football team rivalled that of RL Turner High, whose students used the agricultural centre.
Why is it that every fucking one of these assholes always looks like an extra from the cast of Mississippi Burning? I seriously don’t know how people blog without swearing, as a side note.
craigie
“Thank you for keeping us safe”
Yes, one of the things I fear most is teenagers in bathing suits.
Corner Stone
Youthful indiscretions?
Trentrunner
Wait, is that Toon in the photo holding the sign?
Lolis
@Trentrunner:
Yep, it is him.
Corner Stone
@craigie:
I think you mean “obscene near naked animals”.
Corner Stone
Personally, I think “Sean Toon” is a truly awesome name for this individual.
Trentrunner
Also, McKinney PD really needs to release those 911 calls.
Corner Stone
I wonder why the “g” in keeping is so bold as if it’s been overwritten a few times due to speeling errors.
Karen in GA
He’s a Toon? Where’s Judge Doom when you need him?
(It’s not an obvious reference — it’s just drawn that way. Also, fuck that guy.)
shell
Yes, attack of the 14 year old girls. No cop is safe.
Betty Cracker
He even looks like a turkey-murdering, cow-battering, pig-torturing psycho. In other news about Texan animal abusers, a mare who was apparently tired of being raped by a serial horse-fucker broke the dude’s leg. To paraphrase one of the wags in the Gawker comments, maybe the psycho will finally learn that “neigh” means “neigh.”
Trentrunner
@Lolis: Thanks.
And just in case you are missing it, the wingers’ response to all these obviously racist incidents is:
1) It’s not racism.
2) Those black victims were no saints.
3) If they would just obey the police, none of this would happen.
4) Obama is fomenting previously non-existent racial strife in our country.
5) Let’s put all the blacks back in their own neighborhoods, away from the “innocents.”
6) It’s not racism.
shell
Well, I’m sure those animals he tortured were no saints.
Germy Shoemangler
Coming Soon: “Attack of the 14 Year Old Black Girl”
scav
The existential threat posed by unsanctioned teenage pool parties to the culture and very being of this exemplar of ‘Mercan manhood should not be underestimated. Annette Funichello (the first thin edge of the wedge), unless properly vetted, documents stamped and instantly subverviant to male authority could take down the nation.
Cacti
At a blog as nerdy as this one, how is it that we’ve gone through the whole day without a Sir Christopher Lee memorial thread?
Please turn in your nerd cards at once, front pagers.
gogol's wife
@Cacti:
Right. And Ron Moody too (my brother informs me).
Germy Shoemangler
Who is the guy in the video; the fat white guy who hovers over the action like he’s in charge? Is that Toon?
Cacti
@gogol’s wife:
For any wrasslin’ fans out there, “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes passed away today also.
At 69 years old, he was surprisingly long-lived for a pro wrestler.
Joel
He’s got the Zimmerman look, that’s for sure.
Howard Beale IV
Look at #SeanToon911 on Twitter. Some great Snark there.
Baud
That guy votes.
TaMara (BHF)
So I came home to news that Tamir Rice might get justice after all.
Gene108
Dusty Rhodes, “The American Dream” also died today.
Beaten by Cacti, <- Edit
Valdivia
@Cacti: Also the #distractinglysexy hashtag in honour of Tim Hunt the Nobel pirce winner who complained about girls in labs, making him fall in love with them and criying.
Hungry Joe
Who the hell blogs without swearing?
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
It literally looks like it first read “keepin'” and his wife/6th grade teacher corrected it for him. Probably added the lawn, too, which is weird.
Baud
@Hungry Joe:
Fucking no one.
sharl
@Cacti: As you say, nothing on the front pages (yet), though some of the commenters have come through. Raven provided this:
From the SAS To The Gurkhas: The Story Of Sir Christopher Lee
I hope to read it this evening – it’s not very long. A quick scan suggests it will be a good read.
Tommy
I saw this video clip, I think from Hannity, where he is talking to one of the African American ladies that was at the pool party. Hannity says something like, well somebody could have had a weapon. She said something like (totally paraphrased):
Let’s say I am having a pool party. People show up that were not invited. In the world I live in I can only think of two things to do. (1) just let it go (what I think I would do) or (2) politely ask them to leave.
Starting a fight. Calling the police. How are those even options that come into your mind? Heck if somebody I had invited started a fight I’d kick that person out. Not the other way around.
But I guess I am just a hippie liberal that doesn’t seem to think when I see an AA person they must live in the “projects” and they might get our pool all dirty with their jerry curls.
scav
@trollhattan: I figured — or at least could interpret — the grasses as signalling they’re the right sort of people, those with lawns in their gated community.
jl
@Trentrunner: And whites (at least any and all whites of the correct ideological stripe) always mean well even if they don’t look it (or act it).
The pure unadulterated mindless tribalism of these people is amazing.
gwangung
@TaMara (BHF): recommendation only. It holds no legal force unfortunately.
Hungry Joe
@Valdivia: Never mind his comments about women — I can’t get past his nose hair. Astonishing. Never seen anything like it.
jl
And this is over an effing HS graduation pool party that got slightly out of bounds, for goodness sake.
Apparently all it was, was some uninvited guests because somebody sent out twitter announcements.
trollhattan
@scav:
Seems like a lot of nuance for an animal-torturer. Just sayin’.
trollhattan
@jl: Note to self: no more flash mobs in Texas gated communities. Not Florida, neither.
Valdivia
@Hungry Joe: See that I had not seen, all the pictures I saw had him well groomed for the occasion of his dismissal and abject apologies ;)
scav
@trollhattan: Did try to point out that’s only how I could interpret it. Could be the multisyllabic word defeated him and he handed it iff to the nearest toddler, who in turn was too short to tape it up so he handled that part of the operation.
Tommy
I think at some levels this is why I hate gated communities. That somehow you are sectioned off from everybody else. You are “special.”
In the town I grew up in the pool, baseball fields, tennis courts, skateboard park, everything was public. Anybody could use the facilities even if they didn’t live in the town. It seems to me that most people were just happy people both used and enjoyed themselves. What a novel concept!!!!!!
Seems that should be the way it is everywhere.
My little rural town now has a somewhat gated community (no gate) outside of town where the pool, hiking path and such are “private.” I am an avid walker and have often wondered if I just showed up and went for a hike on their path what they’d do.
Being a middle or upper middle-class white guy, I guess not much. But I honestly don’t know why they think they “own” those woods or the ponds.
trollhattan
@sharl:
Speaking of News That Must Not be Ignored Illegal buttocks surgeon jailed in US after Briton dies
I want to believe that was inspired by the passing of Mr. “Headless body found in topless bar.”
trollhattan
@scav:
Heh, well, it’s also possible it was aimed at the lawn owner/lawn cutter divide.
Cutters!
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: I hate gated communities too. Tear down that wall!
FortGeek
@Germy Shoemangler: From what I heard on (I think) Maddow, the fat guy in a polo shirt is someone associated with the pool. Toon is a lot scruffier-looking than him.
wasabi gasp
It’s a k. Fuckink moran.
Iowa Old Lady
It’s not uncommon for teens to throw parties that attract way more guests than they intended. Sometimes those parties get loud and drunken enough that someone calls the cops. But I’ve never before heard of cops drawing guns and throwing kids to the sidewalk by their hair.
realbtl
@Hungry Joe: I tried to find the Don Martin “You can’t train nose hairs” cartoon but abjectly failed.
NotMax
Safe from what? What was the peril?
Melanin-infused cooties?
JCJ
@craigie:
Well, remember many people say George W Bush “kept us safe.” Safe from what I don’t know, and all the soldiers killed and injured in Iraq were most certainly not kept safe.
Jay C
Fuckin’ A you don’t!!
trollhattan
@Iowa Old Lady:
And further, doesn’t the mayhem generally occur after dark, not some random blazing afternoon?
Or was I doing it all rong?
Funnily enough I have to pick up the kid at a swim party and drag her to soccer practice. Earlier she was complaining that her life was so COMplicated. This, mind you, on the last day of school, of which the school portion comprised a half day avec barbeque.
shell
@Cacti: 8pm on TNT tonight, ‘Fellowship of the Ring.” Saruman!
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Thank you Betty. I needed that.
El Caganer
@Gene108: Ornette Coleman, too
jl
@trollhattan:
” the last day of school, of which the school portion comprised a half day avec barbeque. ”
I never got that in HS.. WTF? But, then I never got a an Easter break for ‘ski week’ either (but those have been defunct for last three years in CA anyway).
Mike Furlan
What upsets me the most about these endless replays of the same event, African American person being brutalized and or killed, is not the event itself as the surprising number of people who will try to justify the crime. The cop or “Zimmerman” might just be committing the most horrific action of their life, but it is in the heat of the moment. But to look at the video, and with the advantage of time and emotional distance to think “Fine police work Lou” that is chilling.
Maybe it is just the same 27% of the population that is crazy?
Will we ever be able to fix the problem, when so many don’t think it is a problem?
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: I am a little torn. I think if I own a piece of land. It is zoned for residential housing. Some developer wants to come in, pay me a lot of money, and build a gated community. Should you or others tell me I can’t do that?
I think not.
Instead I think the local governments need to put a stop to the practice with zoning regulations.
Let me give you an example. There is a 5,000-acre field in front of my house. Mostly corn and soy beans. The lady that lives next to me owns it.
I love it is an open field. I love the smell of wet corn after rain on a warm summer night. I like going across the field and grabbing a pod of soy beans and just eating them.
But 76 houses are going up there in the next few years. I got all these letters from the city informing me of hearings if I wanted to protest. I wanted to a little, but it just came down to me understanding how things were going to be done and SHE OWNS the land and should be able to do as she wishes as long as she follows the regulations.
In a long winded way I am kind of saying is cities should zone out a gated community. You build a housing project. You put a lake in it, stock it, some kid that doesn’t live there ought to be able to fish.
Or swim at their pool. Play on your playground you build.
Otherwise it makes me want to go to City Hall and say those people that live in that new community, well they can’t use the City pool, the Civic Center to play hockey.
If you won’t let us use your stuff you can’t use ours!!!!!!!!
Hungry Joe
@realbtl: Good god — I remember that Don Martin cartoon. But then, I remember a lot of MAD mag stuff from my youth. Whenever I’m in a store and I hear “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” I sing (VERY softly), “Seven clods are painting the town.”
sharl
@trollhattan: Oh, man, I’ve only read a couple of those illegal butt-enhancement stories, but that’s more than enough; they really give me the creeps, especially seeing the kind of fluids they’re injecting into human tissue. {{{shiverrrrrr}}}
OzarkHillbilly
@JCJ: 9-1-1…. How did he do his job that day?
El Caganer
@sharl: @sharl: Oh, it’s illegal butt-enhancement. I couldn’t figure out what kind of buttocks would be illegal.
Tommy
@trollhattan:
LOL. My six-year-old niece, and I love her to death, has said the same things. I am like Dear your life is micromanaged down to the second. Complain about that if you want but life isn’t “hard.”
Heck when I was your age I had to find my own fun and things to do. As a kid during the summer I was told by my mother to go outside and “do stuff.” Next to organized baseball we organized stuff ourself.
Hungry Joe
@sharl: Back when I was a feature writer I got assigned to do a story on pen1s enlargement. Talked to patients both satisfied (smug and not quite believable) and un- (horrorshow tales about What Went Wrong), as well as a doc who described the procedure. It was a fairly long story — maybe 35-40 inches. (No jokes, please: too easy.) But how to illustrate it? A page designer solved the problem: A ruler! One foot long! With a hed referring to “size”! Of course!
It looked great … but the paper’s editor got wind of it and ordered it to run not on the front page of the features section, but inside — with no art whatsoever and as boring a hed as possible. And people wonder why papers are going under.
MattR
@Karen in GA: P-p-please, Karen. You’re making a big mistake. That reference isn’t obscure at all. :)
Catherine D.
@gogol’s wife: “I’m reviewing the situation” Heard an interview today with Tony Robinson (Baldrick from Black Adder) about Ron Moody. Tony was one of the urchins in the London cast of Oliver!, and he said Ron was wonderfully kind. As apparently was Christopher Lee.
realbtl
@Hungry Joe: Yeah, old Don certainly sticks with you. Kind of like a persistent social disease.
Patricia Kayden
“Why is it that every fucking one of these assholes always looks like an extra from the cast of Mississippi Burning?” Because they’re unrepentant racists.
I guess he must be disappointed that the cops didn’t shoot up some of those N words. Perhaps his next call will be more satisfying.
Hungry Joe
I’m in moderation because I wrote about an assignment I once had, back in my newspaper reporter days, to write about the phenomenon of, let’s say, phallic enhancement … and I used the “p” word. Damn.
Hungry Joe
Re-posting here; will dodge the “p” word:
Back when I was a feature writer I got assigned to do a story on, shall we say, phall1c enhancement. Talked to patients both satisfied (smug and not quite believable) and un- (horrorshow tales about What Went Wrong), as well as a doc who described the procedure. It was a fairly long story — maybe 35-40 inches. (No jokes, please: too easy.) But how to illustrate it? A page designer solved the problem: A ruler! One foot long! With a headline referring to “size”! Of course!
It looked great … but the paper’s editor got wind of it and ordered it to run not on the front page of the features section, but inside — with no art whatsoever and as boring a hed as possible. And people wonder why papers are going under.
Gene108
@El Caganer:
I could never get into Ornette Coleman’s music. I like a lot of his contemporaries, like Mingus, but I guess Coleman was too avant garde for me.
SuperHrefna
@sharl: Thanks ( to Raven too!) for the link. He was an amazing man. Does anyone know when his war records get declassified? Many fascinating stories in them I’m sure.
I’m just heartbroken for those poor kids who just wanted a pool party on a hot day and instead were victimized by those psychopaths. And the 14 year old girl who is now a meme as well as a victim, I hope she is coping ok, but it’s hard to see how she can.
Gene108
@Tommy:
By that logic no one’s life is hard or complicated and we should all be super happy and contented because someone, at some point in time, somewhere in the world had it worse.
different-church-lady
Not that you’re wrong, but I’ve got a new game: I’m going to start by reading the last sentence of each post and see if I can guess who the writer is from just that.
Pogonip
How’s Thurston feeling?
bemused
@Iowa Old Lady:
One of my first thoughts was of the drinking parties that teens, predominately white, some native american, have in my area at, night usually. Party get raided, kids try running through the woods to get away, kids get citations, etc, but I have never heard of officers drawing their guns. Parents aren’t happy with their kids but if an officer ever drew a gun on teens at a beer party, the parents would be as horrified and furious as the parents of the teens at the Texas pool party.
PurpleGirl
Wrong movie Cole… The maroons look like extras from Deliverance and have the corrupted DNA one would expect them to have.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
I think it’s the main reason to hate gated communities. They’re effectively an attempt for well off people to secede from the local community and set up their own tiny government. They don’t have to obey ordinary democratic rules or share their money with poor outsiders, and they can set up local rules so simultaneously petty and draconian that nobody would accept them if they came from an organization that officially called itself a government.
I am also an avid walker, and I have gone through some of the nominally private but non-gated communities without ever being challenged. I have even gone on some routes that were obviously blocked off- I think to limit them to fire vehicles rather than to keep outsiders out- without ever being challenged. OTOH, the ones with actual gates have always managed to keep me out. I hate that. I just want to walk through their stupid neighborhood, but they don’t want to let peons like me in.
Betty Cracker
@Tommy: Yeah, my objections to gated communities fall along the same lines. My aim isn’t to obstruct the sacred “personal propitty” rights of some old lady with a spare cow pasture. I’m saying either the development is part of our community or it isn’t.
And if it isn’t, they can build and maintain their own goddamn infrastructure, including roads, schools and fire department, instead of expecting me to foot the bill. And they can provide bridges and paths as rights of way through the land they occupy so normal people who don’t live in their personal republic can easily traverse the town in which they’ve set up an exclusion zone.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: Keeping African Americans out of public pools and beaches has been a long standing white supremacist obsession in this country. You! May not! Swim! Paging Dr. Freud.
Another Holocene Human
@scav:
The semiotics of foreign and un-environmentally sustainable lawn treatments. Thorstein Veblen tried to work that one out a century ago, and here we still are.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
I think you’re being very inconsistent. Bou think it’s wrong for people to tell others what to do with their property, but it’s just fine for the government to do so. But the government is just the people acting collectively, so the government making a zoning rule is no different from people telling others’ what they can do with their land. And while you think it’s fine for the government to tell your neighbor what to do with her land, you think it’s wrong to go and tell the government your opinion on the matter so they can make an informed decision.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy:
Welcome to the brave new world of massive income inequality. The public good is the first to go.
Tommy
@Hungry Joe: LOL but in a sad way.
I was at LSU. Working on a MA in Journalism. I didn’t want to write for a paper, I wanted an education in PR and to work running political campaigns. Had to do it through the Manship School.
To get through I had to take an internship with the Baton Rouge Advocate. The paper of record in the state capital. I got thrown to this lady that did the teen section. One page, four color article that ran on the back of the A section each Sunday.
I pitched her I was in fact a “Yankee” and there might be a ton of cool stuff I was doing as something of a tourist in the state, gems right in their backyard, that many people in Louisiana overlooked and/or forgot.
The first story was on a swamp tour. It went well.
Now I had some Hunter S. Thompson in me and I inserted myself in the stories. The second was me going to a “fake” Creole town for tourist where they made a recreated town when the French Canadians came to southern Louisiana.
I did something strange and noted that you didn’t have to go to a “fake” town to see this, it was right out there for everybody to see. I found it and I am a “Yankee.” There are Creole towns all over the state with folks living not that different than they did 200+ years ago.
You should go see them. Eat their food. Buy their art. Talk to them.
Somehow this didn’t go over so well with the editors. I never got a reason why. I was just told the story will not run, and I would get full credit, but thanks but no thanks no stories needed. Walk away.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: This is a hard topic so I might seem to say two different things. Not my goal. Let me give you another example. Years ago the guy that lives next to me wanted to tear down his car port and put in an actual garage.
Now the dude and his wife never talk to me. I am easy to talk to. He could have come over and asked me about my thoughts, but he didn’t. So I get these letters from the city telling me I could protest it if I wanted. These are the dates the permit are going to come up.
I got these letters and walked over to his house, knocked on his front door, and said build the darn thing if you want. Keep it on your property line. If the city gives you shit in any way, call me and I will say I don’t have any problem with it.
I just don’t mind if somebody builds shit on the land they own. Heck I am in a fight with the city because the lady that lives behind me and myself want to put in a chicken coup.
The zoning isn’t clear on this but it would appear somebody around me doesn’t want it. I am like “dude(s), what the fuck.” I feel live and let live. I’ve never said you can’t do this or that to anybody that lives around me, why stop me? Never made a stink. But you are fucking with me now ……
Alice
@Iowa Old Lady:
One time, we left the house for a walk early on a Friday night. The teen was on the phone figuring out where everyone was meeting up and how to get there. About an hour later we turned back onto our block. Music thumping, kids spilling out of every door and window of the house, inside was full of other people’s children and bottles and crashes from upstairs. The teen met us at the door, weeping with joy, drunk and full of love. The kids literally evaporated as we walked up the stairs, and within 10 minutes the house was empty. Later she said she had no idea how it happened so fast. Two guys said they would come over, and then ….
There’s college parties on our street at the hockey players’ house, and a young rock band who has practiced the same song every Thursday night for two years now. Like others above said, that’s how it goes in a community. When we need help shoveling snow or moving a couch, the band house and the hockey players’ house are the first places we ask.
Bruce Webb
@Hungry Joe: It could be worse. On a lot of political blogs you can’t talk about socialism not because it is a forbidden subject but because spam filters see it as so-c!al!s-m. No boner pill talk on MY political blog.
Aleta
@Alice: Tonight the auto corrector keeps changing my name to Alice. It might have a drinking problem.
jl
@Gene108:
” I could never get into Ornette Coleman’s music. I like a lot of his contemporaries, like Mingus, but I guess Coleman was too avant garde for me. ”
Coleman had many sides. Check out his ‘disco funk’ era, the early years of his Prime Time band.
And then (HELLO COLE! where the hell are you on the passing of Coleman?), his collaborations with the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. I put two links to some nice toons and jam session noodling he did with Grateful Dead and Garcia in the commemorative Coleman thread earlier today.
seaboogie
@trollhattan: Yep – the lawn illustration was a nice touch.
@trollhattan: I’ve got a fiver on Herr Toon’s wife making the top part of the sign (based on the lettering, and yes – perhaps a teacher), and a child doing the bottom lettering and the grass.
A nice little family-values art project and civics lesson in one – I’ll be they felt really good about that. Wait til the kidlet finds out what Daddy did to the livestock.
I had some visitors in the shop from McKinney today, and managed not to mention anything pool-related
RK
I was unaware that Newman Smith and RL Turner had such an intense Ag rivalry. I remember they both sucked at football when I was in high school at Plano High School, which is the largest city in Collin County where McKinney is the county seat. Newman Smith is in Carrollton, where I believe they tried to pass a law a couple of years ago that made it illegal to rent an apartment to undocumented immigrants. So many layers of suck going on here. Glad I live in Austin now.
scarshapedstar
Dubya, this asshole, Josh Duggar, Denny Hastert – is there any Fox News folk hero who hasn’t tortured an animal or molested a child?
dedc79
Every day in this country millions of farm animals are brutalized and killed in a manner very similar to what this guy did when he was a kid.
I understand the outrage (and yes, he did it for “fun” and not to eat the animals), but it’s odd that when Purdue does it then it becomes ok.
Sherparick
@jl: It is the effect of 30 years of Rush (and all the mini-Rushs out there on Right-Wing Radio) and 20 years of Fox and 10 years of Breitbart, Free Republic, and Powerline. The Asshole Neo-Confederate Party is born of “Real Muricans” consisting of about 60% of the white population (most of them either Southern in fact, Southern by roots or Southern in sympathy).
Sherparick
It just occurred to me what a huge Freaking idiot this guy is! Did he not realize as he ascended the Fox News bullshit mountain of fame as the next “Bill the Plumber” that all this shit about him was going to come out? My Conservative friends may hate Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, but almost all of them dote on their animals. They will tolerate child buggery if the bugger is a good Christian, but animal cruelty is treated as grounds for 2d amendment solutions.
Fred
@realbtl: I found that Don Martin cartoon. Google “It’s no use, you just can’t train nose hair.” There is a pdf called MAD-LandSurvival.com.
Ah yes I remember it well. My ill spent youth.