Bulldrek v3.0

Background Information

Updated: Saturday, 29 August 2009 4:40pm (GMT)

Bobby Joe Blythe posted a video to his YouTube account, bobbyjoeblythe007, on 1st April 2009 with the accompanying description.

This dummy was in my shopping center while I was on a Bodyguard Job in Washington, DC. This guy was in the Pizza Hut eating pizza off the plates of others and the Pizza Hut Manager ran him out with a pistol. Later the very same day, police officers were called to remove him from a nearby pharmacy after having been caught reaching into customer's purses.

A short time after that, he visited a Napa Auto Parts store next to my Karate Dojo and told the management he planned on teaching in that Dojo and that Jesus taught him. The Napa guys told him he was confused (their polite way of warning the man against such action), but not wanting to miss a show, they told the man they would close early just to watch and that he must not know the owner, which is nobody to play with.

Needless to say, the police pulled him out of the dumpster behind my Karate Dojo where he was neatly placed. Semper Fi to all my Marine brothers. The karate student in the white is also a Marine Sgt. and a brand new Black Belt.

Never get stupid with a Marine, you could get jacked up and have your clock stopped.

YouTube removed the original video after the story circulated but this is the copy posted on Liveleak.

WARNING! This video is rated 18A, 18 or X depending on your country. It shows two stomps to the head/neck resulting in critical injuries, a disturbing wheezing noise and a pool of blood. Viewer discretion is STRONGLY advised.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e55_1250787987

This all happened in 1984. Nothing ever happened about it. Nobody sees to know who the victim is. Nobody knows whether he lived or died. An investigation is starting but it's a cold case.

Ow. Guess that's why you shouldn't take acid and watch Enter the Dragon.

This has gone all over the Internet over the last couple of days and caused quite a bit of outrage. If you go from one website to the other, the story changes a little with each telling, so I wonder what the real deal is, you know.

For what it is worth, here's what Snopes had. There seems to be an 88 page thread on another forum, linked in the last post. I don't have enough interest to go through 88 pages, but from the bit I looked at, folks seem to think there is enough in the video to be skeptical of it as something staged or a possible hoax.

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=49791

Well, most of the controversy seems to center around a) whether the guy died and was found in a dumpster behind that gym the following day, b) whether he was mentally unstable or not, c) if the sensei had given the guy beating him the order to do so, and d) whether or not the guy who beat him was a US Marine and newly minted black belt.

The guy seems rather obviously schizophrenic, and I'm fairly good at spotting actors. I could be wrong, but am pretty confident. I also seriously doubt he died, but I'm no doctorologist. A lot of the conversation centers around the idea that the black belt kept going after the dude conceded, which is strange, because, if you pay any attention at all, the guy clearly never wanted to fight in the first place.

Yeah, maybe I'm wrong but I've seen this sort of behavior in convicts before, generally speaking the mentally disordered prisoners. I'm not sure what the deal here-real, staged, outright fake; but I'd say that it's pretty clear the kid was outclassed, and needed help. There's no victory in beating down a mentally disordered person in my book.

The latest is now in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... eheadlines

The guy seems rather obviously schizophrenic, and I'm fairly good at spotting actors.

I don't think he looks even a little schizophrenic, but he certainly looks seriously mentally ill. I'm also not totally surprised to hear that he's still alive. He took quite a bit of head trauma, but I didn't see much that would comprimise his airway.

Marius wrote:

The guy seems rather obviously schizophrenic, and I'm fairly good at spotting actors.

I don't think he looks even a little schizophrenic. . .

Really? It's certainly more your area than mine, and maybe "rather obviously" was a little strong, but he seems at least symptomatic to me. His thinking appears pretty disordered, and he's fairly delusional and socially dysfunctional. That doesn't mean he's schizophrenic, but, to my understanding, it suggests it's possible if not likely. Am I off base here?

I thought the big thing about schizophrenia was that you don't perceive reality correctly. That you see and hear shit that isn't there, you know. (That's probably a bit too easy.)

AtemHutlrt wrote:he seems at least symptomatic to me. His thinking appears pretty disordered, and he's fairly delusional and socially dysfunctional.

DV8 wrote:I thought the big thing about schizophrenia was that you don't perceive reality correctly. That you see and hear shit that isn't there, you know.

The hallucinations are common in schizophrenia, but not necessary. And this guy definitely appears symptomatic for something, including thought disorder and delusions. What strikes me about him, though, are the nature of his delusions, his level of energy, and his interest in interacting with other people. Schizophrenics frequently have a flat affect and don't seem to connect in a human way. The delusions often have a certain feel to them, too, even if they're not the frank paranoid or persecutory brand that are most common. You get things like thought broadcasting or thought insertion. This guy's delusions are notably grandiose, and they look to me more like a manic picture.

Now I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say bipolar disorder, but it's on my list. He could have schizoaffective disorder. Or he could be high. But most commonly with somebody like this the behavior never really layers out into the look of any particular disorder, and just looks like a big drug and stress-induced affective psychotic load of bullshit.

I certainly can't argue with that. I know the guy is a bug, his behavior is very similar to what we see in convicts who are on meds, and about to do something really stupid. Self mutilate, assault staff, you name it a lot of them put on a real good show before they go. Obviously not all of them are schizophrenic, and their individual diagnosis's vary I'm sure.

Marius wrote:

AtemHutlrt wrote:he seems at least symptomatic to me. His thinking appears pretty disordered, and he's fairly delusional and socially dysfunctional.

DV8 wrote:I thought the big thing about schizophrenia was that you don't perceive reality correctly. That you see and hear shit that isn't there, you know.

The hallucinations are common in schizophrenia, but not necessary. And this guy definitely appears symptomatic for something, including thought disorder and delusions. What strikes me about him, though, are the nature of his delusions, his level of energy, and his interest in interacting with other people. Schizophrenics frequently have a flat affect and don't seem to connect in a human way. The delusions often have a certain feel to them, too, even if they're not the frank paranoid or persecutory brand that are most common. You get things like thought broadcasting or thought insertion. This guy's delusions are notably grandiose, and they look to me more like a manic picture.

Now I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say bipolar disorder, but it's on my list. He could have schizoaffective disorder. Or he could be high. But most commonly with somebody like this the behavior never really layers out into the look of any particular disorder, and just looks like a big drug and stress-induced affective psychotic load of bullshit.

Have you considered the possibility that he might be black?

I'm sorry, a what now?

Marius wrote:Now I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say bipolar disorder, but it's on my list. He could have schizoaffective disorder. Or he could be high. But most commonly with somebody like this the behavior never really layers out into the look of any particular disorder, and just looks like a big drug and stress-induced affective psychotic load of bullshit.

That would be my completely uneducated guess. He really seems to do a lot of the same things my bipolar dad does when off his meds and during a manic episode.

Giving the Christ-fu practitioner the absolute minimum benefit of the doubt, we could render him as simply a complete jerk, someone zany who showed up at the dojo and wouldn't shut up, one of those "free spirits" who isn't exactly crazy, but also isn't exactly sane.

What then? We could perhaps forgive the membership of the dojo for jerking him around a bit in return, maybe arranging for an experienced member to spar with him and show him the error of his ways, that delusion and watching kung-fu movies does not an expert make. Even this, though, from the perspective of the responsible martial artist, is a borderline condition, an abuse of power that shouldn't be permitted, but is understood and grudgingly tolerated when it does happen.

Maybe this started out that way, but the sparring should have stopped long before it did. The black belt simply and obviously lost his cool, and you can watch it happening. Worse, the spectators, cowed perhaps by social contract, the personal bonding of the dojo, or the personality of the instructor, remain quiet when it's clear the black belt's lost his control. A voice here or there, protesting, marks the clear thoughts of the audience, but no action is taken until the loss of control has gone so far that it's transcended any kind of "lesson teaching" or "jerking around," and has become simply a beating.

Even when the "jerk" is on the ground, and the black belt is kneeing him repeatedly in the head, no one takes action. Not until he starts stomping on his opponent's head does anyone really step in, and then only half-heartedly. Then the response is not, "Oh, damn, somebody call 911, we went too far," but rather, "Drag him out the back door."

Look, I've been in situations like this before, enough so that it makes my skin crawl to rewatch this video. I've been in situations where someone stepped in when they should have, and I've been in situations where no one has stepped in until it's clearly far too late, and until some unfortunate Rubicon has been crossed. This is clearly a case of the latter, and I would think a clear-cut case of a legally actionable beating.

Any respectable instructor or dojo would be ashamed of this incident. No one with any sense of human decency - whatever that is! - would try to take pride in it. Just like beating a child, an animal, the mentally or physically handicapped, the aged or infirm, there should be no sense of pride in assaulting someone who has no reasonable ability to defend himself, and whether this particular man was insane, disturbed, or merely a jerk, he was clearly beyond any ability to defend himself...particularly when he was on the floor getting his head stomped on.