You may want to play the fool, but don’t expect US to be fools.
“When did you stop beating your wife” is a classic example of a loaded question.
“Did Wahlberg stop being a racist” is NOT a loaded question - HE WAS CONVICTED.
Unless you have some evidence that Lonewolf 93 was convicted of spousal abuse, your use of this loaded question makes you literally an apologist for bigotry and hate crimes.
Congratulations.
Wahlberg was 15.
His victims were in 6th grade. Approximately ten years old. (Five years difference between him and the one mentioned.
A 15 year old kid who throws rocks at and racially harasses 10 year olds? And then beats a man unconscious with a stick while calling him racial epithets?
Then becomes a millionaire but wants a pardon so he can start another business?
Scumbag.
Perhaps he’s changed in terms of how he perceives different races and cultures. The article makes no mention of that, nor of any mention of what kinds of philanthropic ventures he’s involved in…are any of them cultural outreach in any way? That might make me look at it differently.
As it stands to me right now, it looks like a white guy trying to expunge a past he’d like forgotten, while forgetting the victims of the crimes themselves and the scars they still bear. If he’s truly remorseful, he’d continue on as he is and leave the pardon stuff alone.
You CAN learn not to be a racist, because it takes someone teaching you to be one in the first place to become one. You aren’t born that way. That said, I’m just not seeing enough in this to make me think he’s remorseful…he’s just coming across as a white guy with enough money now to try and buy away his problems.
What makes me uncomfortable is the idea that, of all the convicted felons disenfranchised and permanently stigmatized for the sins of their youth, the pardon should goe for the violent hate crime offender because he has the time and vast amounts of money necessary to pursue it.
I suspect that tribalism is hardwired into the human brain, a primative neurological legacy of our evolution as territorial social hunter-gatherers and one that is counterbalanced, at the primitive level, only by the equally primitive imperative to outbreed that comes with a live based in small family or clan-based social groups. Once your social group’s population grows large enough for outbreeding to not require overcoming tribalistic fear/hate/revulsion, all we’ve got left to fight it are the higher emotions of compassion and empathy and the still higher cognitive function of reason and the ability to abstract compassion and empathy toward individuals to groups.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s all nurture and not nature. Or maybe what gets defined as “your” tribe doesn’t really get fixed until your brain reaches a certain stage of development. I don’t know. I’m not qualified to do that science and the topic is so inherently toxic and politically fraught that it’s hard for those who are qualified to choose to study it. Certainly, kids don’t seem to have any innate tribalistic instincts, but, on the other hand, respond powerfully to injuries or birth defects that result in serious facial disfigurement.
Regardless, I know experientially that for at least one white southern male of my acquaintance, not being racist has been the work of a lifetime. Maybe some day, I’ll be done, but I’ve found over and over again that self-congratulatory declarations of victory are really just the result of hitting a point where the work gets harder.
So, no idea where Walberg’s head is but I also see no reason why his youthful sin should be more worthy of having no lasting consequences than non-violent offenses. If he were to devote himself to the passage of laws making the restoration of citizenship rights automatic after a certain amount of time without further convictions barring a specific judicial ruling to the contrary, entered after notice and an opportunity to be heard, I’d be more sympathetic. But he’s not doing that, is he?
According to the article, his victims were actually fourth graders, so they probably ranged from 8-10. Just think about the difference in size between an elementary school kid and a kid nearly old enough to drive. The fact that he preyed on kids so much smaller than he was is really unsettling.
Frankly, it isn’t up to you or I to forgive him because he didn’t do it to us. It is up to those he assaulted. That said, feel free to believe he is a different person today, he simply is not entitled to the extraordinary reward of a pardon. If he weren’t famous or rich, it wouldn’t even be considered. How about we start pardoning all the people who served jail time for possession of marijuana—or other non-violent offenses?
I looked up the Wahberg/Samberg incident as it seems too incredible. In fact, what you are stating as fact was, in fact, a skit.
Not for want of trying; with Thanh Lam, he came damned close.
I don’t know that it’s up to me to forgive him; it’s up to the people he victimized. As to an official pardon – I’d have to know what he has done in the 20+ years since, whether or not he has done anything to atone for the sins of his youth. (I know nothing about this actor at all.) I don’t think anyone is beyond redemption, but you don’t get forgiveness just by asking for it – you have to work to earn it.
This rich white man’s burden is sooo heavy.
Byrd wasn’t convicted of the “crime” of belonging to the KKK, it’s a fact about him. I think we are talking about two separate issues - judging someone’s past actions (what’s the statute of limitations) and whether one’s criminal record should have past convictions expunged. I have no opinion one way or the other on whether Wahlberg’s convictions should be expunged; I was thinking more about how harshly he should be judged today for something he did 25 to 30 years ago and for which, as far as we know, he has had no recurrences since then.
A bit self-righteous, aren’t we? Whether Mr. Wahlberg’s record should be expunged or not in the long run will be up to a process that will follow its due course. I am not particularly sympathetic to him, nor I harbor the obvious dislike that you seem to have. Evidently in your view, once a racist always a racist. In reality is totally immaterial to the character of Mr. Wahlberg how old his victims were, given the fact he was a kid himself. I also understand he attacked a older Asian fellow and beat him pretty bad. All this things before he was 16. If we are to believe that young minority men that get in trouble before they are legal adults deserve not to have their lives destroyed by those misdeeds, and I for once believe that, how can we fault Mr. Wahlbert from looking for legal remedy to his situation. Please spare me the argument of his wealth or race. In pure intellectual terms you cannot on one hand argue that young black men that commit crimes should have their lives destroyed by that, but when it comes to a white man, well, then is not ok. I don’t know what is in Mr. Wahlbert’s heart. I know what is in mine. And I made very poor decisions when I was a youngling. I am not, in my ripe old age, what I was when I was 15. I suspect nor is Mr. Wahlbert.
I think pack mentality and tribalism occur naturally when groups of young boys start to hang out together.
thank you. If there’s no possibility of redemption, few people will bother to change. Naturally, abhorrent crimes like murder sprees or child rape excluded. We should also keep this in mind when it comes to those with whom we have profound political differences. People can and do change their minds, even teapartiers.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Urban street gangs go back centuries in this country, probably back to the beginnings of urbanization, not just here, but everywhere. Boston, New York, and Chicago are famous for them; I believe London and Paris are, too. Chimpanzees are tribal by nature, so I don’t see any reason to think that humans wouldn’t be, also. They are our closest living relatives, after all.
The biggest difference between chimps and humans is that we have a far greater cognitive ability to overcome those tribal instincts, as you say. And even then, you are right, it is a lifelong struggle to overcome both instinct and social conditioning.
The victim has the right to still feel bitter about the incident, but to assert emphatically that Mark will always be racist is a bit over the top. People are allowed to grow and change and you can never really know what is in a person’s heart.
That being said, I still don’t think Wahlberg deserves to have his record expunged. His goal should be to live a life that shows he has put his past behind him whether or not his past deeds are on his record. True or not, this smacks of someone using their status to get privilege not available to others.
Frank Bruni had a great editorial about this in the NYTs on Sunday: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-mark-wahlberg-penance-and-pardons.html?_r=0.
He served only 45 days of a two-year sentence.
To this day Wahlburg has never paid restitution to the victims of his hate crimes. And he has never reached out to any communities of color with the targeted charity and philanthropic presence befitting someone who is truly remorseful for the repulsive actions of his youth.
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He isn’t applying for a pardon out of remorse, but to line his pockets. Wahlburg states his major reason for seeking a pardon is the desire to expand his own burgeoning restaurant chain, whose liquor license has been hampered by his record as a felon.
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I am sure his victims would also like a “magic wand” to erase the permanent injuries he inflicted. Sorry Mark, you own it for life, be thankful your life is what it is and move on … the same thing your victims had to do.
the reality is that Wahlberg’s biggest mistake (beyond actually doing these hideous things when he was 15) was to have been dirt poor when he did all of this horrible stuff … and then only later amassed a fortune.
Any - any - 15 year old minor from a middle middle class or wealthy family would have had an attorney hired to deal with navigating a path through all of this - they would have sorted things out and would have taken steps to seal records - and to have made all off this go away - long long ago - provided he kept his record clean.
In reality - there are a fair number of high profile individuals who did things that dwarf what Wahlbert did - who now have pristine records - because Mommy & Daddy had an attorney promptly see to it that their pre-18 behavior was sealed - and then later their records were expunged.
one example -
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels - serious drug bust during his junior year at Princeton (about 20 years old when you are a junior in college) :
Police found enough marijuana in his room to fill two extra large shoe boxes, and also charged him with possession of LSD and prescription drugs without a prescription (yeah - ‘distribution’ - potentially genuine long sentence & felony record). After lots of lawyer work … Daniels eventually escaped with a $350 fine for “maintaining a common nuisance.” - no felony - no serious ‘record’ … wealth gets you good attorneys … who know how to promptly clean things up.
Replace Mark Wahlberg, with Will Smith…we would not be talking about Will’s illustrative career like Fresh Prince of Bel Air because Will would be in jail.
In requesting a pardon, all he did was highlight his past: and, whether he gets one or not will not change what happened.
Yeah, the chimps plays a big part in my half-baked difficult to experimentally test hypothesis… Barring convergent behavioral evolution, It like all the worst thing about our species got locked in before it got out of the trees.