An African-American woman has posted a sobbing video that has gone viral in which she delineates a vicious assault on her person by occupants of a red pickup truck.  They ruthlessly tossed a piece of fried chicken through her open car window as they passed her while she was turning onto another street.

According to KSDK St. Louis, Alexis Newsome, a resident of the largely white suburb of Manchester, was assaulted by the flying poultry as she made a turn onto highway 141:

[A]ccelerating, a red pickup truck going west, the opposite direction, threw a piece of fried chicken through my window, into my car. At the time it was being thrown I did not know it was fried chicken, I thought it was an egg.

Upon examination of the weapon, she came to the obvious conclusion: this was no ordinary chicken attack, but a racist act, a white supremacist assault on her dignity and security.  As KSDK reports:

Newsome went on to say she posted the video so people would understand what the experience felt like.

A piece of fried chicken was thrown through my window, there is only one way to take this. This implies so much negative connotation.

Yes, it bespeaks the serious problem of excess saturated fat in the American diet.  How could someone throw away a perfectly good piece of chicken when there are starving people in the Third World?

But that's not what Alexis meant:

It's not easy living in this brown skin, but I want you to understand. I can't make you understand if you don't want to.

The fact is, the driver likely did not even see who was in the car, as she was in the turn lane, and the driver (we have no description) was likewise turning.  Was this a case of bad manners?  Absolutely, but does it have anything to do with racism or white supremacism?  There is absolutely no reason to think that is the case.

That didn't stop several local news stations from running this story.  At a time when Black Lives Matter are prowling the metropolitan area, invading shopping malls and restaurants and harassing white people, we are being treated to stories about flying chicken legs and other "microaggressions."

Maybe the press should worry more about the bottles of urine being thrown at police by protesters.

Alexis may be sincere, or she may be another fake hate story manufacturer, but if we assume she is sincere, it illustrates the problems we currently have in this grievance-drenched society.  It is a matter of egos, puffed up pride.  Some people seem to think they are so important that white people sit at home at night plotting ways to degrade and suppress them.  Their egos will not allow them to understand that most people simply live their lives and don't give a lot of thought to others one way or another.  If a piece of chicken was tossed into her car (and we have only her word for it, since she had no camera to show that someone other than herself put it there), then the logical assumption is that it was a thoughtless act.  Was it a nice thing to do?  Of course not, but people do that sort of thing.  I had a bag of MacDonald's tossed at me out of a car full of black people a number of years ago.  I could have assumed that it was black racism; Ronald McDonald is white, after all.  But I assumed they were just some jerks wanting to be rid of a bag.  I didn't take it personally, because my ego is not that large.  I do not believe that black people are plotting against me in the night.

That is the core of this "microaggression" business.  An angry, resentful emotional state is inflated by civil rights leaders, by teachers and professors, until it becomes so large that every action by an individual outside the protected class becomes a slight.  Even though the U.S. government has done "race-norming" for decades, giving at least ten points to minorities on the civil service exam, and given the affirmative action policies implemented by most H.R. divisions inside most major corporations, one must wonder at claims of black suppression.  Black people appear to have special privileges in modern America, ones that the white majority is denied.  And it shows, as white males are the only demographic with a falling life expectancy.

But when the white majority vote for their interests (as in electing Donald Trump or Missouri governor Greitens), we are treated to an endless parade of stories about evil assaults on minorities.  There aren't any happening, or none of any real consequence, so we are given faux outrages such as flying poultry or ribbons in trees representing nooses.  Where once there really were horrendous racial attacks worthy of being remembered, the modern civil rights movement is left to indulge in kabuki theater, in farce.

One of the things mature people realize is that the world does not revolve around you, and even if something is intended as an insult, a grown person shrugs it off.  The ability to ignore a slight is far greater than the childlike ability to get worked up.  Children always throw tantrums when they are not happy.

Tim blogs at The Aviary www.tbirdnow.mee.nu.