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YouTube's latest star
By Stewart on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 1:13am
Gawker just posted a link to a truly appalling YouTube video supposedly secretly filmed by a postal carrier in Hingham as he's being verbally abused (and at one point, physically assaulted) by a middle-aged woman who honestly seems flat-out unhinged. Which of the local commentators will be the first to knock out a couple easy columns over it?
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Comments
Wow.
What I just don't understand is why he stayed to let her go further down the rabbit hole instead of just moving on or calling the cops.
By the way, it seems "the internet" has figured out who she is from the info in the video (there are parts where the address on the envelope is almost readable and she says enough to sort it out from there). I have a feeling the Hingham pizza parlors are going to ring her bell quite a bit over the next week and she might even be ordered a few African-American strippergrams.
Internet lynch mob makes me uneasy here
Why was the postal carrier filming this interaction? Why didn't he walk away?
If the lady was trying to reject the letter because it was delivered to the wrong address, or to someone else who shares her name, then isn't it possible that her now-widely-publicized name and address are just wrong?
What I've heard
It seems he's filming it because she came at him fairly belligerently to begin with. I too wonder why he didn't just roll up the window and call his boss or a cop though instead of letting her get rolling on all the crazy. It makes me wonder if he's had run-ins with her previously on the route.
Her nonsense about the wrong name/address was just a lie to try and convince him to take it back. She signed her name and the letter was addressed to her husband at the same address. It seems that the backstory includes her husband getting sued or something and this certified letter was part of that and she didn't want to accept it for fear that she could help her husband put off the suit, etc.
If she gave him the letter back and got her signature back, then she and her husband could keep claiming that they "never got the letter, they must not have sent it, your honor" kind of coy bull crap. So, it's most assuredly her husband's mail and it was delivered. However, I have absolutely no idea what the policy is on her returning it to the carrier/USPS/etc. So, maybe he still screwed up by not just taking it back to the post office. I have no idea.
But still, regardless of whatever this guy did wrong, she was completely in the wrong on how she handled this situation. So, I'm pretty certain they've named the right person and I'm pretty certain there should be repercussions for her behavior (assaulting a federal employee is a crime, right?). It also sounds like she got away with it because she babysat the cop's kid who responded to the original complaint, so he let her off...however, that info comes only from the guy with the video, so it's uncertain how true it is.
I don't think he could drive
I don't think he could drive away without injuring the woman as she was leaning on and in the truck. It's ludicraous to suggest that he somehow planned this.
It's offensive that his motives are questioned when she makes it clear over and over that he is powerless.
She will see to it that 'the white people' kill him when she tells them what he's done 'to her'.
the letter is hers, she just didn't want to open it for 'legal' reasons. She didn't want to be served, simple as that.
I believe her whacked out rant proves that she is not exactly someone who feels that the rules of society apply to her.
$e was smart to film the incident.
The Smoking Gun figured it out
http://rss.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/vil...
Brief summary:
*Threatened "fellow" cast members of a cabaret, was arrested, and told the cop she'd chop off his genitals. Charges dismissed.
*Crashed her car into another, left the scene, and tried to punch one of the ambulance crew. License suspended, sent to rehab.
She's got a friend somewhere. And I have never seen someone that deserving of Internet Justice in quite a while.
No jail time for drunk
No jail time for drunk driving? License suspended for 45 days?
WTF?
Should be 5 years in prison, at least.
Whatever the penalty is for shooting a gun in a public street should be the same for drunk driving.
If the information out there proves to be true
Then WBZ and WBUR may want to ask her to take their names off her company's old client list.
Apparently this happened over
Apparently this happened over a year ago and the guy was fired over it.
http://www.postalreporternews.net/2010/11/12/posta...
Why was the postman fired?
Doesn't seem to make sense.
And why does this woman seem to get off (comparatively) scott-free from her misdeeds?
Other reasons
It appears the mailman, Hugson Jean, was fired for other reasons related to not doing his job, like driving over someone's lawn. The ranter, Erika Winchester, was not charged in part because Mr. Jean refused to testify and did not want to press charges.
As for getting off scott-free, becoming a national laughingstock is hardly getting off scott free. Mrs. Erika Winchester of Kimball Road in Hingham doesn't need to be arrested to get the worst end of this. See that? It just got worse.
I'm thinking that not so many people will hire her to help improve their public image after this, either.
Driving across a lawn?
He may have done that, but the link you provided doesn't say anything about it.
Correct
The allegation that Hugson Jean drove across a residential lawn comes from an anonymous comment posted to the original Around Hingham Blog that started the whole ball rolling. "Other reasons" are alluded to in the Globe, but the USPS is probably not mentioning any specifics publicly for legal reasons.
Her aunt is crazy too
Aunt's blog
Wow.
That page just screams out 'troll' to me
No way is it real.
Trolling who though?
The site's been around since at least October 16th. So it wasn't setup just to troll this particular incident.
The site definitely suffers from Poe's Law.
Could be for this after all
Some of the Gawker comments suggest that these YouTube videos have already been doing the rounds among people that know her in Hingham for a few weeks now, so it could be in response to this after all.
The Hingham post
I found the Hingham post. It's from Nov. 1. I am thinking the "Aunt's blog" is satire/mockery and suffers from Poe's Law of being too believable because the real thing is just as insane and unreasonable to be "over-the-topped". I think they just saw a chance to latch on to the overt racism as a tie-in (and Google score jump) to their attempt to pan the Tea Party as psycho racists.
I don't think the blog is real nor does it have anything to do with this nutjob in Hingham.
Maybe my math's off,
But I'm pretty sure even ol' Strom wasn't old enough to run for president in 1918.
I personally would like to send her a gift basket of
fried chicken and watermelon. Maybe deliver it myself. If I had a dime for every time in my life I've heard a sentence start with "I'm not prejudiced, BUT...." , I'd be as rich as Michele (on Facebook with one L!) McPhee, who thankfully is now out of a job and chalkboards all over the state breathed a collective sigh of relief.
I used to hang out on a forum
I used to hang out on a forum that auto-replaced "I'm not racist, but..." with "My statements are obviously racist, but...". It also replaced "I don't mean to offend", with "F**k you, and also..."
The woman is obviously
The woman is obviously deranged, paranoid and delusional. Again, the question is this - why was this mail carrier allegedly fired? This woman insulted, assaulted and threatened a federal employee. Why are these videos coming out a year later?
Wiretap, Right?
Surreptitious audio recording is a crime against non-cops, too, isn't it? Except, unfortunately, the legitimately-aggrieved postal worker doesn't have a diminished capacity defense.
Not saying I agree with that outcome. Just offering a possible explanation.
"You can call me a n****r"
A fine offer of reciprocity from Poor Deranged Lady, after he complained that she was insulting him with the N word. Were I in his shoes, I might've started calling her Viet Cong or Hezbollah, just to see where it took me...
The interwebs are saying this postal worker got fired for unrelated work reasons. I wonder if anyone called him on his clear crime - I don't hear Poor Deranged Lady consenting to be, or even acknowledging that she is being, audiotaped, which, as we know, is wicked illegal in Massachusetts.
I believe the term is "cracker"
...as I've been called, at least once, by someone black in Boston.
Some lady was on the bus a couple weeks ago bitching about how Boston was "more racist than when I lived down in da South, mmmm hmmm."
Felt like asking her when the last time was that someone was lynched in MA (answer: 1800's)
Felt like asking her when the
Actually, there have been no recorded lynchings in Massachusetts. Now, that doesn't mean there weren't some that went unrecorded - apparently collected statistics only began to be compiled in the 1880s. Also, it's clear that there have been horrible incidents here of other types of bigotry-motivated violence, racial and otherwise (witch trials an obvious example).
But as far as the historians can tell, Massachusetts is one of only four states where no one ever got strung up by a mob because of the color of their skin (the others being, unsurprisingly, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont).
Perhaps not lynched ...
Just nearly run through with old glory for the "crime" of being black at the wrong place and time:
Extreme instances of hate are one obvious form of racism. There are many forms and types of racism that may not seem like a "big deal" to you, but they might if they happened to you constantly over a lifetime. Believing that you get to decide what is and isn't racism when you have had the privileges of dominant group membership is still a grand form of ignorance when practiced with the very best of intentions.
Hate to disappoint you, Brett
but Boston is one of the most racist cities in the country.
Have you read an issue of Boston Magazine lately?
Plot thickens
Meet the Volvo-driving, mailman-harassing racist. Evidently, she's known to be a bit of a nutjob in Hingham. Also, evidently, the mailman wasn't fired over this. He was fired for declining to do other aspects of his job.
Channel 4 tracked the mailman down
They say they'll have him on air during their 6 o'clock newscast.
Top of the hour
They talked to the mail carrier about the incident and he accused the Hingham Post Office of verbally assaulting him at times because he was the only black employee there. His supervisor had it out for him, according to him, and they trumped up other problems to get him out after this problem with her.
He also said he couldn't leave safely because she was too close to his truck.
The cops also said that they filed a hate crime assault charge on Winchester, but that the mail carrier didn't want to pursue the charge so they dropped it. Of course, he said that's nonsense and that nobody ever contacted him about the charge.
He also said that she knew she was being taped so it was consensual from both parties making it a legal recording.