DEBLASIO NAILS IT

JOE COCKER R.I.P.

I never met him, but wish I had. Here's my take in this old post about how great his singing was only a few years ago. And here's what first got to me:

PS TO LAST POST (ANOTHER LATE NIGHT RESPONSE TO EVENTS)

The decision, whether ordered by a superior or spontaneous, for the cops to turn their backs on the mayor when he went to offer his and the city's condolences to the families of the officers who were shot and killed while on duty, further demonstrates why the cops's defensiveness is self defeating.

The police union chief, Lynch, and the ex-mayor Giuliani and ex Police Commissioner Ray Kelly et. al. do a disservice to good cops by making statements blaming the president and the attorney general and mayor Deblasio for the assassination of the two New York policemen in Brooklyn yesterday.

It could just as easily be claimed that the deaths of those policemen are a direct result of the bad policing by the officer who choked Eric Garner to death and was defended and justified by his fellow officers, or many of them, and certainly by the same spokesmen for the police.

It's the old trick of the right that the cops have fallen for just as the military seems to have, that because the job is dangerous at times and is purported to be one of protecting the innocent, anything done on the job is to be defended no matter what, by any means, including planting fake evidence, corroborating known lies, supporting bad cops who can't control their fear when it runs into violence, etc.

The blame for the death of those two policemen is to be laid at the feet of their obviously unbalanced assassin. If we are to blame protesters because the assassin left messages saying he would take the lives of two cops for the one life of Eric Garner that was taken by a cop, it ignores the exact supposed evidence (in the eyes of the police union leader and others in the police establishment) of his message.

He didn't say I'm going to kill two cops because protesters said I should, he said he was going to kill two cops because it was a cop who took Eric Garner's life. If we are going to speculate on what was in his mind, I would posit it was the video of Garner unarmed and saying over and over that he couldn't breathe because he was being choked to death.

MY TWO CENTS

My grandfather was a cop. One of my brothers became a cop when I was a boy and he was still living at home. He moved away after he married the daughter of a cop.  One of my sisters married a cop. One of my cousins next door became a cop and so did his son. One of my nephews and godsons is a cop. Etc.

So, I feel deeply for the families of the two cops who were assassinated yesterday in Brooklyn. They sounded like dedicated cops, the kind that are there to help. Their killer got off too easy.

That said, I am embarrassed by the police union spokesman who immediately blamed it on the mayor and the U.S. Attorney General because they have expressed sympathy for the victims of police violence and their families and those who are protesting that scourge.

Yes police officers who aren't behind a desk generally face danger pretty regularly. But so do a lot of other people in a lot of other professions.  Do tax drivers act as if they have a more special right than anyone else to be honored and never criticized etc. because there are periods when more taxi drivers are assassinated than any other profession?

I noticed that NBC doctor/reporter who broke her quarantine because she'd been exposed to Ebola was criticized righteously especially by right-wingers, as was the nurse who Christie confined despite her showing no signs of the disease. Let's see, have any doctors and nurses and reporters died from trying to help with and expose the Ebloa epidemic? Have they acted all righteous about deserving special treatment and demand never being criticized for mistakes they make?

Rather than saying that others have "blood on their hands" and will be "held accountable" for the assassination of those two police officers, that police union spokesman and any of his fellows who threaten a work slowdown and other illegal actions to protest police behavior or procedures being criticized, should put the spotlight on himself and his fellow officers who don't work to expose and expel the few bad cops who give the rest of them a bad name.

TCM REMEMBERS (MORE COMPLETELY THAN THE OSCARS USUALLY DO AND MORE WEIRDLY)

PS TO LAST POST

In response to critics of my last post (suggesting Sony should have released the film for free on the Internet) who think the comedy film that was pulled should never be seen because it might incite someone to actually attempt to assassinate the North Korean dictator...I said in a comment that by that logic there should be no cartoons of Muhammed and we all should fight back against those who have declared war on Xmas and et.endlessly cetera...I don't like most violent flicks and I think there's way too much violence in way too many of them...and I don't think violence is the answer to almost any question...but I support the attempts to assassinate Hitler and wish they had succeeded and if someone got the idea from a movie to assassinate him I wouldn't have objected....but if we're talking media that moves people to violence there have been assassinations committed by people influenced by Fox News and other rightwing propaganda outlets, and attempts on our president's life. I don't hear any liberals calling for Fox News and Rush and others to be censored or taken off the air forever etc. [well, maybe calls for the latter]...but in the case of a dictator responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of thousands etc. we don't want to show a movie that might incite someone to assassinate him?...like I said, a dumb idea to have green lighted but I still say release it online for free so everyone can see and other evil characters won't think that all they have to do now is threaten to hack networks or bomb theaters or etc. and people will back down...not a good precedent at all...

ANOTHER LATE NIGHT MINI-RANT (THIS TIME ABOUT SONY'S STRATEGY)

If I were running Sony, when I learned AMC and other theater chains were refusing to carry the movie, instead of saying we'd never release it, I'd let the world know we were releasing it free for streaming on the Internet. (I know I know people would be afraid if they downloaded it they'd be hacked by the same flunkies that hacked Sony, but a lot of people would do it anyway and eventually enough would that they'd have to shut down the worldwide web to prevent people from seeing it...but as it is Sony, for now, and the theater chains, just surrendered to a third rate dictator's chump demands....)