The slap heard round the...Wal-Mart

We have all been in Roger Stevens' position before. You're trying to shop, and some annoying little kid is screeching because mommy won't buy the little heathen their favorite cereal or something. I see it almost daily at my Other Job (Cracker's got bills to pay, ya know).

We've ALL fantasized about giving the savage little bastards a swift backhand. Don't lie, in the dark corners of your mind you know it to be true.

That being said, what Mr. Stevens did was wrong. Slapping a child is usually pretty frowned upon, especially when it isn't yours. However, I think it raises a lot more issues (and not the fact that he was white and the mom and child were black).

Like the fact that the mom raised a little demon-spawn in the first place. I was not the poster child for public restraint (most children aren't), but I was behaved. Down here in CrackerTown, we beat our kids in the privacy of our own home. And the fear of such retribution for public displays of embarassment were usually sufficient to keep me in line when being forced to march through the local supermarket.

Of course, this wasn't the local supermarket, this was the Big WM, where classy folk who raise obedient children rarely congregate. Coupled with the fact this was in Georgia, I'm surprised an incident like this hasn't come up sooner.

I'll leave you with the musings of the wise Katt Williams on the subject: