Seems almost fitting that in a week where I posted a link to Dan Hill’s nauseating ’70s hit “Sometimes When We Touch” that a story hits the stands in Macleans about his son’s and later family’s brush with a group of street thugs.

Kathy (buy her damn book you weenbags) has more on the story here with a bit of a knee to the nuts to Toronto men:

like so many Toronto women, you’ve stuck yourself with a Dan Hill of your own: a spindly careerist wet who considers safe “uncolourful” communities a peculiarly “American” (sniff!) fetish, and who prefers spending hours alone in the editing suite or watching tv or playing computer games or — in Hill’s case — listening to music on headphones to exposing his faintly effeminate, still-adolescent self to the unpredictable messiness of mature family life.

What struck me about the article is that Hill is despite his experience still lodged in that morally muddy morass of liberal guilt. His son like a lot of teenagers became enthralled with the glorified violence and thuggery of “ghetto culture” that is propagated via rap music. Yet Hill still manages to take a swipe at white kids who skateboard and listen to blink-182 (because so many of them are machine gunning skate parks one assumes) and after his son is beaten up by allegedly a white gang who preyed on minority youth in the hi-toned but staunchly NDP neighborhood that Hill lived in he convinces himself that it was an isolated incident of racism rather than anything related to sonny-boy’s own actions.

Let me re-set this for you. Hill’s son was tangled up with a group of violent extortionist gang-bangers. When he was able at one point to pry him away from those gangsters his son was violently assaulted shortly after that. Isn’t it possible that A. It was some kind of retribution. B. it was done by a bunch of kids who had been previously preyed upon by junior and his gangster friends and the chip of the old Hill block wasn’t so tough when he wasn’t surrounded by his posse? Considering Hill admits in the article that at 50 years old he has NEVER been in a fist fight that might not be a bad assumption.

But no Hill remains convinced that there was this gang of racist white boys who roamed the Beaches neighborhood looking for off-colored chaps to pound.

This could be true but let me tell you something. I lived in that neighborhood from 97-2003. It is the most annoyingly liberal neighborhood in Toronto with a staunch record (despite their wealth) of voting NDP at all levels of government. If there was a racist gang operating out of there it would have been front page news on the Star and all over CityTV every night. (editors note: I don’t watch City TV or read the Star that often so if this phenomenon was reported please feel free to correct me). At the very least it would have made great fodder for the local community papers (or certain bloggers who write books about that sort of thing and live in that very neighborhood) , but I heard none of it.

Used to be that the definition of a Conservative was a Liberal who had been robbed (or the victim of some sort of violent crime). Seems that it isn’t so true after all.

Update: I was going to rewrite this post but have been away from the computer for 24 hours and since then Kathy has linked to it so I am leaving it as is with this addendum.

I don’t want to come accross as making light of Mr. Hill’s situation. It certainly is not something that anyone would like to find themselves in. But I think that the lesson here for most people is that you can spot this kind of trouble a long way off if you are willing to look at people as individuals not as members of an identity group. The problem with assuming that certain pathological behaviors are to be excused or understood because of someone’s supposed historic maltreatment at the hands of another (often majority ) group is that it leaves out the fact that no matter what the group or the circumstances, there are psychopaths and sociopaths out there in all races creed and colors. If you treat people as part of an identity group instead of individuals you will excuse sociopathic or psychopathic behavior or hints of this type of behaviour and pretty soon you will be in way too deep. As the Hill family found out.

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