What do you do when you can’t get your cable hook up?
One option is to go after the Comcast offices with a hammer. As reported in the Thursday Washington Post Style section, a 75 year old woman, Mona Shaw, smashed a monitor, a keyboard and a phone at a Northern Virginia Comcast office. The couple had ordered the combo service (full phone, cable TV and internet) through Comcast but the company came two days late, only did half the job and then turned their service off completely. When they went to the office to complain they were asked to wait outside on a bench for two hours in hot August heat. When someone finally came out it was only to tell them that the manager had left for the day. The couple fretted over the weekend and Mona decided to go back to the office on Monday with a hammer and smashed things up. The story ends by telling us the couple attends a local Unitarian Universalist congregation.
I found this story hysterical and indulged in Unitarian and hammer jokes all day. It is in a sense a “safe” vigilante story—safe because no one is hurt, because the perpetrator is a 75 year old woman, because she’s part of a church known for its peace work. She’s a charming outlaw—a church lady who had too much!
For people who have had horror stories with some aspect of the service industry—and most of us have—it’s a nice little vigilante tale. Yet it also raises serious questions about how the elderly are often ignored and discounted. About how we create systems were violence seems to be the only option left for people. About how destruction of property is lauded as a way to prove one’s vitality and courage. And, how because the women with the hammer is elderly, white, suburban and a church lady, it is easy to identify with her frustration when with a different set of circumstances, and a different casts of characters, the situation would seem threatening.
About Me
- Sharon Groves
- Currently I am with the Religion and Faith Program at the Human Rights Campaign. Our mission is to mobilize people of faith to work for LGBT equality in their places of workship and in their communities. I am also an active lay leader at All Souls Church, Unitarian, where I’ve chaired the Committee on Ministry and have worked on issues of racial justice, community voting rights and neighborhood outreach. While I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, I am deeply drawn to the early history of Quakers, particularly their practice of spiritual discernment. I received a PhD in English Literature from the University of Maryland in 2000 and am currently working toward a Masters in Theological Studies from Wesley Theological Seminary.
3 comments:
The story says the hammer incident happened on a monday, after she stewed over it all weekend. One wonders if she went to church on Sunday, and if when there she even bothered to ask God about this and what to do.
Honestly, people are so egocentric and wound up about everything these days, I think the watch word should be, CHILL OUT and LET IT GO!
I don't know if Washington D.C. area Unitarian*Universalist Mona Shaw should have "let it go" but she definitely should have chilled out. Intimidating and terrorizing Comcast employees by vandalizing office equipment with a hammer makes a total mockery of the purported principles and purposes of the Unitarian*Universalist "religion". You can be sure that the situation *did* seem threatening to the Comcast employees. In fact it does seem from some of her statements that it was Mona Shaw's intention to physically intimidate and threaten Comcast employees by smashing up their office equipment so I guess that makes this deranged U*U something of a tin-pot terrorist. . . The "unhinged" Mona Shaw, willingly aided and abetted by her U*U husband, definitely took things too far and committed criminal acts in hammering home her anger and frustration to Comcats employees. This sub-moronic imbecile of a U*U skipped several logical steps such as making some more phone calls to pertinent Comcast employees, writing letters of complaint and even publicly protesting in front of Comcast's offices, all of which would have been perfectly acceptable and legal and may have even gained her some media attention.
Calvin is quite right to point out that Mona Shaw stewed in her own juices over the weekend, and wonder if she went to her U*U "church" on Sunday prior to her committing her criminal acts of tin-pot terrorism against Comcast employees. Calvin may not be aware that many U*Us are atheists and agnostics who would not even think of asking God about their problems and what to do but one would hope that if Mona Shaw had at least consulted her fellow U*Us that they might have dissuaded her from her violent acts of vandalism and intimidation.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this story is that some, if not many. . . of Mona Shaw's fellow Unitarian*Universalist U*Us not only condone her act of tin-pot terrorism but have chosen to make something of a U*U folk-hero out of her. The UU World blog page about Unitarian*Universalists in the media equates Mona Shaw's criminal acts of vandalism and physical intimidation with the civil disobedience of civil rights activists by aligning it with "famous Unitarian" Pete Seeger's anthem 'If I Had A Hammer'. The Bull Run U*U "church" seems proud to be auctioning off The famous Mona Shaw/Comcast hammer on November 17th. . . Is this the best that Unitarian*Universalists aka U*Us can come up with in terms of folk-hero's these days? If so it is a pretty sad statement about the current state of the U*U World. . .
Hi Sharon,
I guess I should have read your blogger profile prior to making the above comment. I did not realize that you were a Unitarian*Universalist yourself when I made it. If you find some of the language a tad offensive it is likely just a parroting of the words of unhinged U*Us like Mona Shaw herself. For instance, in describing the "unhinged" U*U Mona Shaw as a "sub-moronic imbecile" I am simply applying her own publicly stated description of Comcast employees to herself, and not without some justification. . . You seem to be condoning Mona Shaw's tin-pot terrorism yourself, albeit not without some reservations.
Are you quite sure that no one was hurt emotionally and psychologically by Mona Shaw's violent act of intimidation?
Just how "nice" is this little vigilante tale?
Would you consider it to be "a nice little vigilante tale" if I or any other victim of U*U injustices and abuses, such as clergy misconduct of various kinds. . . walked into a U*U "church" and/or 25 Beacon Street in Boston with a hammer and started vandalizing the place in front of U*U congregants or UUA employees? Violence is rarely the "only option left for people" even when systems are created that delay and deny justice, equity and compassion in human realtions. The UUA and individual U*U "churches are guilty of creating systems that delay and deny justice to victims of clergy misconduct, including clergy sexual misconduct, and leave very few options open for victims to seek redress for the injustices and abuses they have been subjected to, yet I have never heard a reliable report of a single victim of U*U clergy misconduct, or indeed other U*U injustices and abuses, resorting to vandalism and violent physical intimidation in their efforts to seek some "customer service" as it were. OTOH I have definitely been the victim of criminal physical assaults, various threats of violence including one that a 911 dispatcher characterized as "death threats", and indeed property damaging vandalism at the hands of not so nice Unitarian*Universalist vigilantes. . . for peacefully protesting against U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy in front of the Unitarian Church of Montreal.
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