Bernhard Goetz

Um, you'll be in court for years.

I was just reading about Bernie Goetz.

You remember Bernie Goetz in '84?

Of course I remember Bernie Goetz.

We were just-

I wanna mention-

And I guarantee you that there are people who would rather be robbed than shoot someone, officially a non-white, who's i-invaded their home.

I, I know that there are people like that, and maybe for good reason.

Um-

But people kept-

...

Amazing.

And I, I had had that life and, and I said, "I, I can't tolerate this anymore." Uh, a- and that was just at the time Bernie Goetz shot, uh, several of them, uh, trying to, uh, uh, mug him on the subway, and all the New Yorkers were, were so happy that somebody finally stood up to the gangs that, that walked through the subways every day.

You couldn't bring your wife on the subway with you because they would stop and make terrible comments and that.

That's amazing.

83.

Um, when you mentioned the school situation, I remember...

And by the way, uh, hey, hey, who was Bernie Goetz?

Ber- Bernie Goetz.

You know, the, probably the biggest of my youth was the OJ Simpson trial, um, which was, you know, this sensation and also seemed to have every intersecting sort of line in America from sports to celebrity to race to policing [laughs] to gender-based violence, like everything running together in one story.

And there's been others, you know, through the years that when I was a l- a kid in New York, there was a shooting on the subway by, by a white man named Bernie Goetz who shot a number of Black teenagers that approached him in the subway.

This also became a national story.

It also seemed to have like...

Among outer borough, Suburban and conservative Manhattan whites who believed that post-pandemic New York had become crime infested and riddled with random violence, especially on the subway.

They saw Penny not as a vigilante, let alone some 21st century Bernard Goetz, but as a good Samaritan stepping in where the city had failed.

now being made a fall guy for a New York that had surrendered to public disorder.

Outside New York, the case became a cause celeb on both the left and the right, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, then gearing up to run for president, raised more than $3 million from his social media followers for Penny's defense.

Isn't it rich? [laughing] Are we happy? [laughing] Me here at last on the ground [laughing] and you in-

Then flees, and like Bernie Goetz, he ends up becoming a bit of a folk hero for this, because we all know that it is the Wall Street types, the wealthy white individuals, that are jumping you on the train in the '80s in the United States of America in the city of New York.

And this was obviously meant to be a callback, an image evocative to the Subway Vigilante scene, where, of course, four or five Black individuals armed with screwdrivers tried to rob Bernie Goetz, and then he shot them in self-defense.

And again, these were not Wall Street executives in suits or anything of the sort, and the guy who did the shooting wasn't a madman like the Joker.

Yet that depiction, that retelling, that Netflix-ivization of the cast right there, yeah, that was just allowed to be in the movie without anybody really getting upset by it.

"I will still tap."

But I'm a legalized comedy guy-

Yeah

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