No Death Threats Please

In 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign for the presidency of the United States of America was effectively over when he was caught on video in his now infamous "47 percent" speech. Here in Singapore, we have our own 1-percenter who got his foot caught in his mouth.

British wealth manager Anton Casey is the one in the hot seat when screenshots of some his Facebook posts surfaced on various Singapore websites and forums on Monday. In the posts, he referred to public transport commuters as "poor people" and how he looked forward to washing "the stench of public transport off me" when he got his car back. One of the post even show a photo of his son seated on an MRT train with the caption, "Daddy where is your car & who are all these poor people?"

Needless to say, Singaporeans are outraged with even Law Minister, K Shanmugam, publicly stating that Mr. Casey's posts were "deeply offensive". It doesn’t help that Mr. Casey drives a silver Porsche, is staying in the ultra-rich, ultra-exclusive Sentosa Cove and is married to 2003 Miss Singapore Universe pageant winner Bernice Wong. However, as moronic and idiotic as he is, a line must be drawn somewhere.

For me, that line is crossed when people issued death threats to him and his family. The guy is an idiotic, moronic, foolish, elite dirtbag, but that doesn’t mean Singaporeans have a right to issue death threats to him and his family. Whether they were issued to Mr. Casey, his wife, or his son, does not matter. They are all wrong. 

Mr. Casey isn’t the first person to get into problem for posting stupid thing on Facebook, and he will not be the last. I agree that even counting that in, his posts were ultra-stupid but you can’t kill someone for being stupid. He’s an idiot, but death threats to him and his family are crossing the line.