Last week Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz was taking the New York City subway home after watching an NFL playoff game at a Manhattan bar. At one point he noticed a group of teens smoking pot on the train and harassing an older gentleman, going so far as to intentionally set his hair on fire with a joint. Townhall’s Guy Benson, who spoke directly with Klotz later, described what happened next:
As the man frantically extinguished the fire on his head, Klotz told the group that they couldn’t do that to someone, which is when they turned their attention and wrath to him. It sounds like one of the ringleaders feigned umbrage over Klotz scolding them for their dangerous act, sneering that nobody could tell them what to do. One of the teens punched Klotz in the face.
That’s when another person on the train (Klotz says the car was pretty full, despite the late hour) suggested that Klotz get out of there, before events spiraled further into something more dangerous.
The lawless thugs saw that their victim had but one lone defender in the train car, and decided to unleash on Klotz “a bit of the old ultraviolence,” as the sadistic gang leader Alex calls it in A Clockwork Orange.
In an action flick, this would be the moment when our cool, calm, and collected protagonist kicks criminal butt and leaves all five thugs sprawled unconscious as a train full of lesser mortals looks on in amazement and gratitude. But this was real life, and Klotz knew he was no Jean-Claude Van Damme. He moved to another car, along with everyone else. No one wanted to be the gang’s next target. But things didn’t end there.
“At the next stop (after Klotz relocated to de-escalate),” Benson continued, “the pack of teens barged into the car he'd retreated to, and ambushed him. That's where the major assault occurred. They punched, and stomped and kicked.”
“I get off that train after taking a punch,” Klotz said later in a appearance on Fox & Friends. “The whole group – the doors open again at another stop – the whole group just comes and bum-rushes me, and suddenly I'm like, on the ground. I'm getting kicked in the side. I'm getting wailed on.
“They were trying to knock me out, and then once you're unconscious, and you're getting punched like there’s no defense, so I was just doing my absolute best to cover my head,” he continued. “So I kind of get knocked out, and now my side is black and blue. My knee, I can hardly bend because I was getting kicked and punched.”
Benson noted that “other passengers tried to get help, but did not directly intervene.” That’s disheartening, because had any three other men – or even two – stepped up for Klotz the way he stepped up for the elderly man, the thugs almost certainly would have backed down, because bullying bravado dissipates fast when faced with a fair fight.
The young suspects fled at the next station after the assault. Three of them — two 15-year-olds and a 17-year-old — were soon nabbed by cops but later released into the custody of their parents. The police claimed they didn’t have the option of holding them because of their ages and because the crime initially seemed to be a misdemeanor.
After the incident came to light, social media responses alternated between hailing Klotz as a hero and venting outrage over the police claim that the assailants’ “cascade of serious crimes,” as Benson put it, including violent assault, wasn’t sufficient to warrant holding the teens, at the very least.
But issues of crime and punishment aside, there is another question worth addressing here. Klotz was rightfully praised for his courageous intervention, but at what cost? He was damned lucky that his injuries were not serious, or that his assailants weren’t armed. The beating could easily have left Klotz brain-damaged or otherwise maimed for life or even killed. I don’t know if Klotz has a family of his own, but if he does, and the assault had turned fatal, he would have left a widow and fatherless children behind. All in the defense of a stranger on a train. Why be a hero?
Klotz himself wondered why he took the risk. “Why is the weather guy on the train trying to stop crime in the middle of the night?” he asked himself at some point while intervening. “Why am I doing this? Why is it up to me?”
Reasonable questions. Taking a moral stand against evil has consequences, sometimes dangerous ones. Heroism by definition means putting oneself in the line of fire for others. When you take such a stand, whether consciously or impulsively, you accept the risk because doing the right thing is honorable and righteous. Accepting that risk is what distinguishes a hero from the pack of mankind.
The world needs heroes. For men to abandon that role when the need arises is to abandon our communities, our nation, and our civilization to savagery and lawlessness. Contrary to Sir Thomas More’s brilliant speech in A Man For All Seasons about man’s law being all that stands between us and the Devil, it is actually heroes who stand between us and the breakdown of society.
So to answer Klotz’s question, “Why is it up to me?”: it was up to him because he saw a fellow human being set upon by a feral gang, who were emboldened by their numbers (as bullies always are) to victimize someone weaker, and there were no law enforcement officers around. Someone had to say something or step in, and no one else did. Klotz, not a superhero but an ordinary guy – a weatherman, no less; and they’re not known for their martial arts lethality –had the moral backbone and chivalrous courage to be the one to speak out.
As one Twitterer wrote afterward, “Not too many decent ppl step in and help anymore. They just record with their phones. Lots of props to him. Courage is scarce.”