BRISTOW, Va. - She was fined and got a suspended jail sentence, but Mona Shaw says she has no regrets about using a hammer to vent her frustration at a cable company. "I stand by my actions even more so after getting all these telephone calls and hearing other people's complaints,'' she told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
Shaw, 75, and her husband, Don, say they had an appointment in August for a Comcast technician to come to their Bristow home to install the company's heavily advertised Triple Play phone, Internet and cable service. The Shaws say no one came all day, and the technician who showed up two days later left without finishing the setup. Two days after that, Comcast cut off all their service.
At the Comcast office in Manassas later that day, they waited for a manager for two hours before being told the manager had left for the day, the Shaws say.
Shaw, a churchgoing secretary of the local AARP branch, returned the next Monday - with a hammer. "I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor ... and I went to hit the telephone,'' Shaw said. "I figured, 'Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.'''
Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, disputes Shaw's version of its customer service record and calls Shaw's hammer fit on Aug. 20 an "inappropriate situation.'' "Nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior,'' Comcast spokeswoman Beth Bacha said.
Police arrested Shaw for disorderly conduct. She received a three-month suspended sentence, was fined $345 and and is barred from going near the Comcast offices for a year.
The Shaws did eventually get phone and television service - with Verizon and DirecTV. She said many people have called her a hero. "But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit,'' she said.
#1
She said many people have called her a hero. "But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit,'' she said.
Someone needs to straighten this old lady out. Hissy Fit[tm] is a privilege reserved by our members of Congress to be done upon the floor of the people with appropriate C-SPAN coverage.
I believe we will require a little respect. I'm Capt. Augustus McCrae, and this is Capt. Woodrow F. Call. Now if you look over there, you can see us in earlier days when the people around here wanted to make us senators. Now the one thing we didn't put up with is doddling service. And as You can See, We still DON'T put Up With It. You broke my nose you old son of a bi....
#5
Criminal or not, I can certainly sympathize with this lady's actions after my recent experience with the ultra-lame Xanadoo wireless (and speedless) internet service. After hours of twiddling and moving the little antenna around, I got it up to something like what my 28.8 modem could do ten years ago. Their tech people were clueless about the problem, but they did say that "placement is crucial." At one point they claimed that high winds in the area interfere with the signal. Next thing you know, it'll be the phases of the Moon.
I am taking the mess back Monday and demanding a refund.
Posted by: Lord Piltdown ||
10/20/2007 16:32 Comments ||
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#6
To re-appropriate a Sam Kinison line: "I understand what turns Mr. Hand into Mr. Fist." It's Comcastic.
#7
You pay for cable and you get a lot of damn commercials. It seems like commercials have increased in number and duration over the years. Where's my hammer, the 12 pound sledge dear?
#8
Why, yes John, you've noticed. Back in the old television dark ages there used to be a non-governmental group to self police the burgeoning new technology. They established a standard of no more than 10 minutes in an hour for commercial play. Of course, that all died and now you're running damn close to 10 minutes on the half hour of commercial and program announcements, icon placements, bottom streamers, compressed credits for more non-programming. Of course, in the beginning, stations and networks didn't have the fat income they have today. They needed to attract viewers. Then and now, they also didn't pay royalties to the federal government for using public property [which the airwaves are much like land or mineral resources other corporations pay for regularly to mine or harvest or glean for $$$].
Blackshirts on a rampage in the nation's capital:
Local D.C. TV News stations are reporting in their 11 p.m. newscasts that a woman was hit in the head with a brick, store windows smashed and a man had his camera destroyed by anarchists protesting the annual IMF meeting in Washington, D.C. this weekend.
The protest is called 'October rebellion' and has been endorsed by leftist groups including Code Pink.
Of course. Was ANSWER there?
News footage showed black-clad people with bandanas covering their faces marching down M St. An agitated man told a news crew his video camera was taken and smashed by the protesters because he was wearing a Fox News ballcap.
A woman in front of an Abercombie and Fitch store was hit in the head with a brick thrown by the protesters. Some stores had put plywood on their storefronts Check out the comment from Blackshirt apologist Egg-Weasel at WJLA in DC: Hey MD_crab it's called the first amendment. And Shovelhead if you don't like it move somewhere else...like North Dakota.
How odd, I don't remember anything in the First Amendment about hitting people with bricks or destroying property because you want to make a point. What about the guy whose camera was destroyed because blackshirts didn't like his Fox News cap? That is an obvious violation of First Amendment rightd but an ass-clown like Egg-Weasel would not understand that.
This is part and parcel with media slavery, however. Reminds me of the incident last year when a fat little Lubbock ass-nugget named Richard Tickle (for real) threatened to get his gun and start shooting people for violating the Dixie Chicks' rights by criticizing them. These authoritarian fools actually believe they have the right to kill and terrorize anyone who opposes them. The next civil war will be between them and the rest of us.
Posted by: Lord Piltdown ||
10/20/2007 04:08 ||
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#1
As George Bernard Shaw once said: "Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you."
And this face looks like its been beaten more than a few times. This lovely lady is the queen of the anarchists, the late emma goldman. She was supposedy behind the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.
#6
Good point, Lars. Problem with Beirut is, no one would notice them, and their egos can't handle that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/20/2007 15:04 Comments ||
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#7
Having lived in D.C. and the surrounding Metro area from 1982 to 2000 I can attest to the fact that the wingnuts frequently overrun the streets. However, having said that, there was a time when the D.C. police took absolutely no shit from anyone. It sounds as though that policy might have changed.
#8
Some years ago, a rumor started up about a fake new illegal drug. It turned into quite a circus, with undercover police "bikers from hell" offering any amount of money to get some so that it could be analyzed. It got sillier and sillier as rumors abounded about the drugs' amazing high.
At one point, someone suggested that the Anarchy symbol, used as a graffiti, was how the users of the drug communicated with them. This was when those letter "A's" were everywhere. Some uniformed cop was seen going all over town, taking pictures of them.
Scientists from the Technion in Haifa, Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and Teva Pharmaceuticals, continuing the success of the Israeli anti-MS drug Copaxone, may have found the way to personalize it according to one's genes.
Medical treatments in general rely on trial-and-error methods to determine the correct dosage, often leading to errors and complications along the way. Scientists from Teva performed tests at Weizmann Institute, using Israel's only genome-variation scanning equipment, to determine specific genetic markers and their link with the patient's response to Copaxone.
Prof. Doron Lancet of Weizmann's Department of Molecular Genetics says, We analyzed the DNA sequences in 27 candidate genes from each patient participating in the trial, and we identified two genes with a high potential for determining the response to Copaxone. In the future, it may be possible to use this method to scan the genome of MS sufferers, to predict the response levels in advance, and to optimize the dosage and treatment protocol to suit each patient personally.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
BRISTOW, Va. - She was fined and got a suspended jail sentence, but Mona Shaw says she has no regrets about using a hammer to vent her frustration at a cable company. "I stand by my actions even more so after getting all these telephone calls and hearing other people's complaints,'' she told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. 
