What would Americans think if two examples of police involved shooting occurred almost simultaneously and if one involved a victim who was not likely to generate much public sympathy and the other involved circumstances that precipitated a snap judgment that the case was bound to cost Los Angeles tax payers a massive amount of settlement money because of widespread compassion for the victim?
What would a rookie pundit think if, additionally, the mainstream media (mostly owned by conservatives) accorded massive amounts of coverage to the case that seemed destined to make the victim seem to be a modern disciple of Tupac Shakur and stonewalled the other case that involved a victim who was described as “mentally challenged”?
A week after Michael Brown was shot on August 9, in Ferguson Missouri, we became aware of one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories we have ever encountered. According to this new theory (which we discovered on a visit to the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory campus in the San Francisco Bay Area), every time America’s best ally in the Middle East becomes embroiled in military action with one particular neighbor, incidents in the USA of police shootings increase dramatically.
While doing a Google News search to try to do some fact checking about this bizarre new topic, we learned that on Monday August 11, 2014, (two days after the Michael Brown shooting) Ezell Ford had been killed in a police involved shooting in Los Angeles. We did not hear (to the best of our limited ability to check) any national news reports about this latest police involved shooting in Southern California. It happened 49 years after Marquette Frye got a ticket and all hell broke loose in the form of the Watts Riots.
On Monday, August 19, 2014, we learned that a rally and march to protest the shooting of Michael Brown, was going to be held in downtown Oakland. We went there to provide coverage of the event.
A dramatic confrontation between marching protesters and police in riot gear produced a temporary stand-off. Rather than trying to proceed South through the police cordon, the march abruptly changed directions and started walking West.
When the protesters returned to the starting location (Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland [one of the most famous protest sites in the world?]) the contingent of journalists covering the event had dwindled considerably. There were no police officers visible when the protesters started to block traffic at the intersection of Broadway and 14th St. A local woman confronted the demonstrators and, pointing to the adjacent sidewalk, urged them to “take your protest over there so that (as she put it) I can get my f*****g bus!” A short while later the demonstrators were complying with her order.
In her broadcast for Tuesday, August 19, 2014, Rachel Maddow pointed out that the air space over Ferguson MO had been declared a “no fly zone” and TV helicopters were unable to provide aerial views of the nightly demonstrations. That was a feat that was not achieved by the authorities in Los Angeles during the coverage of the events following the announcement of the verdicts in the Rodney King beating cases. We couldn’t find a way to send a news tip to Ms. Maddow about the Ezell Ford case.
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, we called a news tip about Ezell Ford in to the Getty and Armstrong radio show. They subsequently didn’t seem interested in the least about that case and continued to obsess on the Ferguson shooting.
Later that day, we searched for the Ezell Ford case on the New York Times website. After earlier searches had produced a link to a New York Times story, suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, the searches asked “did you mean ‘Edsell Ford’?” and the previous links to the Ezell Ford story were not eadily available. Isn’t that adorable?
Readers of this column are invited to do Google News searches for Ezell Ford and also do Google New searches for Dyllon Taylor, John Crawford (of Beaver Creek Ohio), Michelle Cusseaux (in the Phoenix area), and Darius Cole-Garrit of Chicago. While you are at it do a Google News search for University of California’s “Deciding Force Project.”
On Friday, August 22, 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle carried an AP story about the beating last week of L. A. Sheriff Deputy Brandon Love. A good Samaritan intervened and was credited with saving the officer’s life.
While doing some Google News searches about Ezell Ford, we learned that a site called Deadspin asserts that there is no centralized data base with statistics for and about police involved shootings and they seem to be determined to start such a data base.
Did any of the main stream media point out that the shooting of Michael Brown on August 9 was two days short of the 49th anniversary of the day in 1965 when Marquette Frye got a traffic ticket and all hell broke loose? Thirty four people died in the concomitant results of what is often called the Watts Riots. Which means that the shooting in L. A. of Ezell Ford happened 49 years, to the day, after the incident that spawned the Watts Riots.
If the highly praised American Free Press chooses to obsess on the Michael Brown case and completely ignore a case that allegedly involved a kid who was either: laying on the ground and was shot in the back or he was trying to grab a cop’s gun; there is not much that the World’s Laziest Journalist can do to rectify the situation. You will get the stories that the conservative owners of main stream media want you to get and after that; you’re on your own. We might just as well write about other more innocuous topics such as the recent accordion festival in Cotati. (Google hint cotatifest dot com)
The Pacific Film Archive has announced their September and October schedule and they will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement with some special showings of movies such as “Berkeley in the Sixties” and “KPFA on the Air.” They will simultaneously be presenting Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard retrospectives. (Google Hint: Pacific Film Archive.)
This is an auspicious opportunity for us to mention that we are reading “American Fun,” by John Beckman, and will be referring to its underlying premise in future columns. If we understand the author correctly, he is making the assertion that participating in political protests adds zest and spice to a young couple’s courting ritual and sometimes brings about change.
Speaking of books, we missed our chance over the weekend to get photos of John Waters doing a promotional appearance at the Beat Museum on Saturday for the movie director/writer’s new book titled: “Carsick.”
Here is the homework assignment: Since one case got massive coverage and the Ezell Ford case was ignored; write a thousand word essay on why that discrepancy occurred and what you think is the meaning of the disparity in coverage that is usually touted as being “fair and balanced.” Post the results on some social networking site and grade your own efforts.
Forty nine years ago, the media was covering the Watts Riots, the possibility of mission creep for the boots on the ground in South Vietnam, and whatnot.
[Note from the photo editor: Believing St. Ronald Reagan’s philosophy regarding redwood trees (If you seen one; you’ve seen ‘em all.) applies to protests of Police brutality; we went to a protest in Oakland on Monday, August 18, 2014, and got some adequate images to use with to illustrate this week’s column.]
On page 225 of “The Armies of the Night,” Norman Mailer wrote: “He (Jerry Rubin) had also run for Mayor of Berkeley on a platform opposing war and supporting black power and the legalization of pot, collecting in the process 7,385 ballots or 22 percent of the vote.”
George Carlin said: “I put some money in a machine that said: ‘change.’ Nothing changed.” If we can summon the energy we’ll be back next week, same bat time, same bat channel with more of the usual.
Now the disk jockey will play Eric Clapton’s “I shot the sheriff,” Cher’s “Bang Bang,” and the soundtrack album for “A Clockwork Orange.” We have to go see “Sin City.” Have a “Hands up! Don’t Shoot!” type week.
War Crimes for Peace
A political protest in Oakland on the evening of Friday, September 5, 2014, produced substantiating evidence for reaching a sad paradoxical conclusion for political activists: the more that police involved shooting occur, the harder it is to make a cohesive, coherent generic protest.
When Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, MO, the national media focused on that specific story but at the protest in Oakland, there were so many diverse examples of dead young people that some confusion and a lack of a centralized focus was bound to be generated.
Oakland held a protest rally when Trayvon Martin was killed by a vigilante. The Northern California case of Andy Lopez was of regional interest for Oakland residents. Residents in the Eastern Time Zone will be unaware of the particulars of his death. The case of Ezell Ford, who was shot in Los Angeles two days after Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, was virtually ignored during the Oakland event.
The September 5 protest was also used to draw attention to the militarization of the nation’s police departments and also to protest the Project Shield Program.
An enterprising writer could almost devote a book length project to all the police involved shooting in August. It would be a major task to chronicle all the police involved shootings in the USA for 2014. [Nick Wing and Matt Ferner did a round-up (for the Huffington Post) of the police involved shootings that have occurred since the shooting last month in Ferguson MO. It is worth the effort to find and read.]
The task of focusing the public’s attention and outrage begins to become defused.
Focusing outrage and indignation on one noteworthy example of police involved shootings is a manageable assignment but when the number of police shooting increases geometrically, the goal of protesting all of them becomes unmanageable. Thus the more that happen the harder it is to protest them. A cynic (channeling the ghost of Lenny Bruce?) might be tempted to urge the conclusion that increasing the number of examples of such tragedies (and accompanying protests) would be a way to make the problem disappear completely. [Bartlett’s attributes a relevant quote to Joseph Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”]
Will the drone strikes on ISIS help Obama to become the first person to win two Nobel Peace Prizes? Will the Ministry of Propaganda give the proposed drone strikes inside Syria a cutesy label, such as: “War Crimes for Peace!”? Colonel Kurtz’s quote comes to mind: “We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!” Ya gotta draw the line somewhere, eh?
The President said that Syrian Rebels will be given training by Americans and we immediately wondered if that means that the CIA’s crack JMWAVE team will come out of retirement.
If George Miller (the Australian movie director with an office on Orwell Street) reads this, we’d like a chance to pitch him on a movie about a story that combines the life or an Australian nurse with elements of Steve McQueen’s classic movie, “The Great Escape.” (What ever became of Kate Blanchett?) Speaking of WWII, has anyone ever filmed the story of Hanna Reitsch?
After picking up a bargain bin copy of Vol. II of the Gonzo Papers, we hatched the idea of doing a column devoted to Litquake in Rocktober in Frisco and using the title: “Is Litquake Decadant and Depraved?” and making it a parody of Hunter S. Thompson ‘s report on the Kentucky Derby.
We’ve been told by a reliable source that Berkeley is scheduling some events to mark the fact that the Free Speech Movement will turn 50 this fall. We should get some acceptable quality photos and a column or two if we get a chance to cover those events.
As we were re-reading Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” our wanderlust was rekindled by this passage: “At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there.”
Did you know that (according to maritime legend) more sailors jump ship in New Zealand than in any other country in the world? Hmmm.
Whilst we were doing our walkabout in Australia, we wrote a column that whimsically suggested that Qantas should provide Netroots Nation attendees free transportation if they would decide to hold one of their annual conventions in the land down under. A year later we were surprised to learn that Oprah and Qantas were taking her audience down where they would have a chance to experience the W. A. (AKA Western Australia). Hmmm. Should Air New Zealand make Netroots Nation an offer they’d be stupid to ignore?
If President Obama wants the World’s Laziest Journalist to now switch gears and support George W. Bush’s war in Iraq; does that also mean he wants us to support the stealth JEB for President Movement? Now that we are obliged to follow Obama’s lead and endorse Dubya’s philosophy for War in Iraq, we wish that Obama could cater to the nostalgia fans and for just once, replace one of the drone strikes with one last call to duty for the Stukas.
Do the bad guys in the Middle East get a new name every two or three years as a way to prevent the Forever War from becoming routine and mundane?
Is it true that when the post 9-11 investigation into finding who had profited by selling airline stocks short began to lead towards two high profile Republican Senators, the funds for the effort disappeared?
The SLA (Scotland Liberation Army) will take their battle for a free and independent land to the voting booths next week. Good luck!
After hearing the President address the nation on Wednesday night, we were tempted to make an effort to find the text for Robert Jackson’s opening statement at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trial (it’s available online) but then we realized that if we found some passages in that bit of oratory that condemned the actions President Obama announced, most Americans wouldn’t give a f-f-f-arthing. Who was it said: “My country, right or wrong, my country!”?
[Homework assignment: Find (Google hint: “Robert Jackson Nuremberg opening”) and read the lead American prosecutor’s opening statement at the War Crimes Trial and then, after making a determination if bombing ISIS in Syria would fit the criteria for a crime against peace found there, write a 1000 word essay agreeing or not, post it on a social media site, and then give yourself a B+ grade for following orders unquestioningly.]
Some folks who read our column regularly (or even sporadically) wonder if the World’s Laziest Journalist feels disappointed that after many moons of criticizing the Bush war in Iraq, President Obama now wants us to fully endorse it. Our philosophy of life was encountered early in life when we saw “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in its initial release. Our life was given a guiding philosophy because of this line: “Oh laugh, Curtin, old boy. It’s a great joke played on us by the Lord, or fate, or nature, whatever you prefer. But whoever or whatever played it certainly had a sense of humor!”
Our challenge to the disk jockey was to find songs that fit the qualification “If you haven’t heard this song done live by the band, then you have never really heard this song at all!” He will now play the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and the Rolling Stones “Honky-tonk Woman.” We have to go help a friend by throwing a radio into their bath tub when we hear the appropriate musical note. Have a “call in an airstrike” type week.