12/3/11: Coffee, Salt, Sugar, Prayer, Going Undercover

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I ordered a fast food coffee this morning, which I never do. They gave me four creamers and six creamers with the McDonald's-Crotch-Hot 20oz cup of Joe, but filled it all the way to the brim so I couldn't possibly add anything to it without letting it cool and drinking a bit first. I know it's a stupid thing to complain about, but I guess I'm just a Glass Too Full kinda guy.

By the way, anyone even thinking of suggesting that I could have simply poured a little bit of coffee onto the ground to make room for the additions has no true respect for the sanctity and integrity of morning coffee. So keep it to yourself, philistines.

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I've been seeing headlines about the Los Angeles Police reportedly going "Undercover" at the Occupy Wall Street Encampment before the massive police-state violation of civil rights raid. Can we really justify using the term "Going Undercover" in this instance?

Usually, when we hear that law enforcement has gone undercover, we visualize brave detectives spending months and months subtly insinuating themselves into the midst of highly exclusive organizations, risking their very lives as they infiltrate organized crime syndicates, foreign terror cells, armed separatist groups, or volatile religious cults, often in secretive or heavily fortified locations, all in an effort to glean valuable inside information that might possibly help authorities prevent catastrophe or corruption on a massive, even global scale.

In this instance, what we are talking about is some cops wandering into a completely exposed outdoor crowd, striking up some conversation with random people, and ultimately discovering that a few protesters were contemplating fashioning crude spears from bamboo poles in the event of a late night massive police-state violation of civil rights raid. Considering that there were no feverish reports of confiscated spear arsenals resulting from the raid, and taking into account the how plentiful bamboo must be in the middle of City Hall Park, I am inclined to assume that the person who revealed this particular nugget of clandestine information recognized the "New Shoes" for what they were and decided to just make shit it up to mess with them.

It appears that the LAPD agrees with my assessment, seeing as how they reportedly "downplayed the significance of the undercover work since Occupy meetings were public and easily tracked." It's probably the same reason that they've been declining to comment on these reports. I'm guessing it might be a little embarrassing for them to try and explain why they felt the need to assign undercover agents to openly public and exceedingly easily monitored protest meetings.

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The same fast food chain that overfilled my coffee also gave me seven packets of salt with my single order of bite-sized hash-browns. Exactly how much salt am I expected to consume with my speedy breakfast meal? Do you really need to dole out a fist-full of salt to every individual customer? The owners would probably see a sharp increase in annual revenues if their servers weren't so generous with the salt packets. Of course, they probably such a ludicrous amount out as overall policy. I can easily imagine how many customers must of angrily approached the counter during the one-or-two-per-customer salt packet days, loudly complaining that they weren't given enough salt. So now, because of these taste-bud-deficient heathens, I now find myself possessing seven packets of salt that I am presumably expected to ration equally among the dozen or so hash-brown-tater-tots that came with my sad breakfast burrito. And they wonder why other countries view us as a wasteful, gluttonous nation.

Of course, those paying attention have by now noticed that I did not level the same complaint against the six sugar packets that accompanied my coffee, Which is probably why we are also perceived by many as a nation of hypocrites.

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A friend posted on their Facebook page the other morning that they had to take their child to the ER after discovering an unwisely placed play bead in the child's ear. Turns out the bead is wedged pretty tightly, so they're going to have to perform a small surgical procedure later in the week to remove it.

I posted a simple "Hope she okay" to be supportive and polite, but then someone after me posted "Praying for her." Now, I understand how seriously some people take child illnesses and the like, and the mere suggestion of a friend's child going into surgery can seem scary and dangerous. Also, I hate to knock anyone who is acting with the best intentions. However...

Is Prayer really necessary in this instant? Yes, the child will technically be 'going under the knife'. But it isn't as if we are talking tumor removal or joint reconstruction, or anything involving organ donors and blood transfusions. It's a toy lodged in the kid's ear. If this kind of minor procedure warrants prayer, then where is the cut-off line? Should I, for example, expect those close to me to offer me their prayers the next time I go to the dentist? If so, will they be praying for me only for root canals and extractions, or can I count on them praying for me during a routine cleaning?

I'm not saying that people shouldn't pray for the safety and well being of their friends and loved ones, and the children of those people. All I'm saying is, if I make a Facebook post next week about having a filling replaced next Tuesday, and I get less holy promotion than the kid with the toy stuck in her ear, I'm going to be slightly annoyed. I'm just saying.

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Did I mention that the fast-food restaurant also gave me two after dinner mints with my single breakfast meal? Either the people assembling the meals are just lazy, or my breath was noticeably pungent over the drive-through speaker.

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• Fast Food You Can't Find in America (thedailymeal.com)

White Pride? Officer Who Arrested Gates Refuses to Apologize

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Everyone's heard the story by now. Renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. gets a visit from police officers after someone reports a someone trying to break into Gates' home. The perp, as it turns out, is Gates himself, who locked himself out of his home. On the off chance that the well-dressed sixty year old man that answered the door for police might still be some kind of burglar, Gates was asked to prove his residency. At the end of the debacle, during which the noted literary critic and intellectual demanded the police officer's name and badge number, he was arrested for "Disorderly Conduct."

Of course, when I first heard the news, I immediately thought of the Dave Chapelle routine about black homeowners and their reluctance to call for police in major cities like New York or Los Angeles. "Open and shut case, Johnson! Apparently this black guy broke in and hung up pictures of his family everywhere!"



There's been a lot of debate over the whole thing, of course. Whenever a minority is victimized or singled out in some fashion, whether initially justified or not, there is going to be a heated debate. One side will insist it is indicative of institutionalized racism and unfair treatment of minorities by racist cops, whether the person was guilt or not. The other side will rabidly defend the innocence of the police despite any evidence to the contrary, and complain about political correctness and affirmative action. Even the President of the United States of America weighed in on this one, calling the arrest "stupid" and taking the institutionalized racism side. Of course, since Obama is America's first Black President, it makes sense that he would have to give his opinion on the major news story.

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But of course, the part of this story that surprises me the least is that the arresting officer, James Crowley, refuses to apologize.

I've known police officers, both directly and through family members, and one major gripe they've always had is the negative attitude that the general public feels towards them. Its a justified complaint; spending your life in service of the public, only to have that public constantly dismissive and suspicious of you, can be a major emotional drain. But no matter how many positive and even outright pro-police propaganda television shows and films are cranked out, public opinion of the police in general is on the negative side. For the men and women in law enforcement, that kind of publicity can make you wonder if the job is worth it.



So who do you blame for negative public opinion of the police? For a start, idiots like James Crowley. Of course, that's a little unfair to Crowley; he isn't the first cop to refuse any civil response to an awkward situation, and it isn't just individual officers spreading that kind of pig-headed stubbornness around. When Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo was shot forty-one times by NYPD officers because they claimed his wallet looked like a gun, there was no humility on display in their public statements to the press. Granted, no one expected them to throw their own officers under the bus. But not only did they continuously defend shooting an unarmed man forty-one times as a reasonable response and well within the line of duty, they (meaning the

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NYPD as a whole) also never showed any real remorse for Diallo's death. And they sure as hell never apologized for accidentally killing the man.

Is this kind of bully-boy arrogance really necessary? I'm not saying that cops should run around saying Please and Thank You and asking permission for every little inconvenience. But when someone like James Crowley pulls an obviously ego-driven bonehead move like arresting someone in their own home for being 'belligerent', especially when the racial ramifications of the misunderstanding are painfully obvious, would it really be damaging to police department's public image to shout out a quick "Oops, my bad?"

Sadly, that's not an isolated incident, and not nearly the worst example to be made. I could spend pages listing children and elderly people being tasered to death and being placed in fatal choke-holds, unwarranted brutality and abuse at the hands of chest-thumping 'roid gorillas with badges, gross mishandling of innocent people by the system at a bureaucratic level, and an endless stream of harassment of private citizens for purely personal, political, or ethically unsound reasons. Not all of these examples take place in New York, California, and Texas, either. Honest.

Many will argue that cops shouldn't have to say "I'm sorry." My response is that nobody has to say "I'm sorry," but they tend to do so diplomatically when mistakes have been made. And my warning is that, if you are going to fight the occasional act of grace and courtesy so vehemently, then I don't want to hear you asking why so many people distrust, fear, or outright hate the police. You know why.



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