Owning a Harley-Davidson is not a crime, it is not cheesy, but some authors of the self-proclaimed "independent" media, out of who knows what impulse, felt that it was a good idea to make the participants of an entire festival the subject of public ridicule. Moreover, they didn't even think about who else they were kicking in besides the "target audience".
Thousands of motorcyclists gathered last weekend in Budapest for the jubilee 120-year Harley-Davidson festival held in the capital. The huge vehicles arrived at the brand meeting already on Thursday. But this did not make everyone happy, pointed out the author of Totalcar, Zsolt Péter Perlaki.
"On Saturday, the panic of closing the gates is the biggest, the Harley parade rolls through the city center," writes 444. "Six thousand are pounding along the Harley-Davidson pride parade," I read on the Telex. "How are you?" I ask. Surely it is a responsible and ethical decision to shame any community?
Gate closing panic is a complex biological and psychological phenomenon that is only funny until it affects someone. After all, what is it about? About a life management crisis, the correct name also refers to this - midlife crisis. There is nothing to smile about when someone blows out the 50th candle with a gloomy look, while rummaging in his head about what he would have liked to do differently, so that at the end of the reckoning, dissatisfaction, unhappiness or non-acceptance of changing abilities weighs heavily on the scale. How humorous isn't it? Well, let's laugh some more!
Because despite the harsh reality, the stereotype brings a smile to most people's faces, and subordinating the entire audience of an event to this prejudice is, at the very least, wrong and generalizing.
Sure, there are obviously Harley-Davidson owners out there who fit this picture. Someone who, at the end of a successful business or career, wants to feel something, do something that is about them, but making fun of them is not fair either.
Sure, I understand. In 2023, provocative headlines must be written in an overloaded editorial office, because the material will be lost in the sink. Readers, on the other hand, appreciate the joke: if not with anything else, then with a laughing smiley. It's a clear win-win situation, because Facebook also values it more than a simple like, i.e. it spins the article more.
With that much power, it would have been possible to empathize with the participants of Harley-Davidson's 120th anniversary European festival and use the word impotence instead of the subtle gate-closing panic, right? However, the author of the Telex article was not even that brave. He's just using hearsay, and whoever understands it is his business, right? But let's ask the question: if anyone asks around their immediate environment, how many out of ten will associate the term pride march with the Pride gay parade?
The organizers of the Harley-Davidson festival do not refer to their event in this way anywhere. However, feel free to Google it as a pride parade. How many hits will there be that are not related to the LGBTQ parade? I just want to point out that you can safely hide behind the "evil is the one who thinks evil" narrative, but that doesn't make it more than a hidden roadside prank, which is not only unfair to the Harley-Davidson community, but the gay neither against men nor women. In fact, it's not really the case with them, because the author subordinates their case to a hearsay joke.
Sándor Czinkóczi and Dániel Zách together made a joke out of ~40-45 thousand guests of Harley-Davidson's 120th anniversary, which is at least as bad as organizing an obviously extremely loud event in the middle of the city.
I would like to point out, not only to the authors, but also to the readers, and to the world: owning a Harley-Davidson is not a crime, it is not cheesy. An emotional choice, but still what it is. A motorcycle. Blaming the participants of an event instead of its organizers is unpleasant. Because, dear gentlemen, let's not forget one thing here in the big media space: spitting is always elegant only upwards, never downwards.
