Last year, I read about an incident in a water park in the United Kingdom.
A father took his kids to the park so they could frolic in the cool and refreshing waves. When the children said they wanted to hurl themselves down the water slide, the proud father decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for some action photos of the apples of his eye.
He positioned himself at the end of the slide, camera at the ready, only to face a muttering and hostile crowd that apparently wanted to lynch him then and there!
The justification for the violence was that he must be a pedophile. After all, what other reason would a grown man have of snapping shots of young children in swimwear? The explanation that he was only photographing his own progeny were rejected out of hand. What else would child molesters say to escape just punishment when the righteous crowd gets their blood up?
Lucky for all concerned, the police were notified by someone in the mob. A police officer arriving at the scene averted any ugly actions.
Unfortunately, I cannot now find the online article to prove to my readers in the United States that such a ridiculous incident actually occurred. It seems unbelievable, that such a climate of suspicion and paranoia can actually exist in Old Blighty. I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you thought that I was simply writing as fact a bad comedy I once viewed on cable TV, or some uncomfortable dream I once had where everyone around me turned into bizarre and violent zombies.
But such an environment of hatred and prejudice is all too prevalent in Great Britain, and simply scanning the online news article from that country proves it to be so with appalling regularity.
