{"id":1653,"date":"2016-09-13T14:41:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T14:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/?p=1653"},"modified":"2016-09-13T14:41:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T14:41:42","slug":"35-gorillas-in-the-midst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/35-gorillas-in-the-midst\/","title":{"rendered":"#35: Gorillas in the Midst"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gorilla-and-child-1\"<\/a>
\nThere is no such thing as \u2018personal accountability\u2019 anymore.
\nIn May of 2016, a three year old boy was visiting the Cincinnati Zoo with his mother and father.
\nThis little boy somehow, someway, ended up inside the gorilla exhibit alongside a wild, 450 lb. gorilla.
\nAs a result, sharpshooters had to shoot and kill the rare, endangered silverback gorilla in order to save the boy\u2019s life.<\/p>\n


\nIt didn\u2019t take long for hordes of politicians and lawyers and activists and victim\u2019s rights groups and journalists and talk show hosts to ask\u2026
\n\u201cWho is responsible for this near tragedy?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cWas it the fault of an inadequate or faulty cage?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cWere there undetected design flaws in the construction of the enclosure?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cDid the pen lack sufficient safety features?\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cWas there sufficient security and were those guards properly trained?<\/em>
\n \u201cWas there something more the zoo could have done to prevent this from happening?\u201d<\/em>
\nThese blowhards were starting to make me go ape-shit, so I looked it up\u2026
\nThe Cincinnati Zoo opened in 1875, which is almost 150 years ago.
\nApproximately 1.5 million people visit the Cincinnati Zoo every year.
\nUsing those figures, that\u2019s well over 200 million visitors who have visited that zoo in the last century and a half\u2026 or, to put it into perspective, about 2\/3 the current population of the entire United States of America.
\nThat\u2019s one hell of a lot of people.
\nIn 2016, one<\/span> kid fell into the gorilla cage and everyone flipped out.
\nIn their scramble to assign blame, these idiots were losing sight of the fact that, over the last one hundred and fifty years\u2026 roughly 199,999,999 people did NOT<\/em> <\/span>end-up accidentally holding hands with an untamed, 450 lb. primate, inside a formidable cage that was specifically designed and constructed to keep dangerous animals away from people\u2026 and visa-versa.
\nThe cage was secure enough to keep 199,999,999 people out.
\nI don\u2019t know about you, but I think that\u2019s a pretty damn good safety record.
\nIs there really something wrong with the enclosure?
\nOr was it just a perfect storm of unrestrained curiosity\u2026 bad judgement\u2026 ignorance\u2026 neglect\u2026 and a series of massive brain-farts that caused this to happen?
\nWas the zoo negligent?
\nOr was it just the right mix of a pair of one terribly careless set of parents in combination with one incredibly stupid offspring?
\nOn the video you can hear a woman screaming\u2026
\n\u201cMommy\u2019s right here! Mommy loves you!\u201d<\/em>
\nApparently, not quite enough to keep an eye on her little \u201cTarzan in-training\u201d kid in a crowded park filled with menacing animals and infinitely more menacing humans.
\nWow! Way to go! Congratulations! You should be very proud of yourselves!
\nYour kid is special\u2026 He\u2019s the only child, out of millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of other children, of all different shapes and sizes, backgrounds and educations, intellects and disabilities, ages and colors\u2026 who ended-up in the fucking gorilla cage!
\nYour parent and child team overcame insurmountable odds, and breached seemingly impassable obstacles, to win a face-to-face meeting with King Kong\u2019s not-so-little cousin and getting him killed for just minding his own business and acting like the animal that he is\/was!
\nNow, all because of these soft-as-shit parents and their equally soft-as-shit, \u201cchip off the ol\u2019 block\u201d kid, the zoo doesn\u2019t have a gorilla anymore\u2026 and all the other kids and zoo visitors will have to suffer for it.
\nThe boy\u2019s too young, so maybe we shouldn\u2019t to punish him for monkeying-around.
\nJust be patient.
\nI have a gut feeling that the public won\u2019t have to wait too many years before we are all entertained with a You Tube video of this numbskull getting ripped to shreds when he attempts to cuddle a crocodile, slow dance with a Great White Shark, or \u2018spoon\u2019 with a Grizzly Bear.
\nBut his parents should<\/em> be reprimanded for their role in this.
\nThat\u2019s why I think they should make the mother and father dress up in gorilla suits and put them in the cage until the zoo can get a replacement gorilla.
\nThat can be their way of giving back and, if another kid is ever dumb enough to find a way into the cage, and a swat-team sniper is lining up a kill shot, stunned zoo patrons and horrified children will hear the gorilla screaming at the top of his lungs\u2026
\n\u201cPLEASE, DON\u2019T SHOOT ME! I\u2019M NOT GONNA HURT HIM!<\/em>
\n \u201cI AM NOT A REAL GORILLA! MY NAME IS TED!<\/em>
\n \u201cI\u2019M JUST A BAD PARENT BEING TAUGHT A LESSON!… HOLD YOUR FIRE!\u201d<\/em>
\nIf you ask me, all this monkey-business is fucking bananas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no such thing as \u2018personal accountability\u2019 anymore. In May of 2016, a three year old boy was visiting the Cincinnati Zoo with his mother and father. This little … Continue reading #35: Gorillas in the Midst<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,23,24,25,32,69,330,331,332,333,334],"class_list":["post-1653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-paul-dangelo","tag-dangelo","tag-comedy","tag-comedian","tag-comic","tag-paul-dangelo-paul-dangelo-comedy","tag-zoo","tag-animals","tag-gorilla","tag-cincinnati","tag-monkeys"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p614ww-qF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdangelo.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}