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Notes -
The thing I find most interesting about that is the desire to generate this framing of a villainous white-vengeance seeker on the subways. It seems to me that this is a way of both coping with the observed reality being inconsistent with the underlying beliefs of the vagrant-friendly as well as propagandizing to generate the impression that the only thing dangerous on the subways are white people just shooting innocent black bodies. Taking a look at the Wiki for the episode that @The_Nybbler references, it's just comical:
...
Ah yes, surely we all remember the good ol' days when white women were just shooting up subways, killing innocent black men for no reason at all, then things were being covered up by the police. Well, I guess I don't remember it, but that's probably because the police were covering it up!
In the modern version, just telling the truth about the case might make quite a few people sympathetic to the "murderer". If the full story is basically that some belligerent vagrant was acting like a lunatic, ranting about how he wasn't afraid to die today, and continued escalating to the point where people felt genuinely threatened, there are probably quite a few people that would be glad to have someone step in and choke that guy out, and if it turns out that the belligerent lunatic got hurt in the process, oh well. Others would feel differently and could certainly articulate an opposing case. But no, that wouldn't suffice, it's important to eliminate any ambiguity about who's the bad guy and who's the victim - Penny didn't just overreact according to some standards, he must have been a racist that wanted to hurt a black guy for no real reason. Importantly, this also conveys the message that if you're ever thinking about reacting against the latest screaming hobo on your train, it's probably because you're a Nazi or something.
I find the whole thing all so tiresome.
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