Letters to the Editor
LeCastor
Published Letters: 1916 Editor's Choice: 86
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Hey, maybe that guy's girlfriend could have benefitted from a throwdown.
[Read the article: Shocking incident]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]some people really could benefit by a good old-fashioned throwdown just to clear the air.
I'm assuming by "some people" that you mean only men, because your last post implied that hitting women is not only very wrong, but the hitter deserves to have the fuck beat out of him by strangers.
Your examples of girlfriend beaters: maybe they were just having a beneficial good old fashioned throwdown.
Or am i wrong?
I've never engaged in open defiance of the police, but if I did I don't think I'd be too surprised when they reacted negatively.
They're officers of the law. They are held to standards, like you yourself said, and though i would expect to not be treated like i'm at a spa, i would not expect to be tazed after being handcuffed.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Tossing around racism as a concept is pretty much a discussion-killer, though. I can tell you that Kate Smith -- blonde or not -- wouldn't even have gotten into my college library without ID, she would have been turned away at the door.
what a strange world you live in, friend. First, you advocate that some people (and most likely, by which you only mean men) would actualy benefit from violence. Intersting. then you advocate a no-exceptions rule about IDs, and not at Los Alamos, or the White House, but a frickin college library. I'm glad that most people in this world are willing to cut others some slack than just living according to silly rules that aren't even laws.
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The roots of the disagreement come out: "He's the mollycoddled, over-entitled fool I couldn't stand in college."
[Read the article: Shocking incident]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Entitlement. It's precisely what i said. The cops went to cop school, maybe Upstairs Criminal Justice College. The occupants of the library are some of this country's best and brightest, many of them very entitled, from perfect little suburbs and private schools. Maybe even Mostafa himself.
The cops may have been waiting to finally find a way to give it to one of the studnets, and they found a good one. A terrorist-looking one, a man, and he's clearly violating some stupid ID rule. So they tazed him AFTER THEY ALREADY HANDCUFFED HIM.
And so those of us who always resented those more entitled them ourselves, we take the side of the cops. The rich spoiled rights-obsessed brat got a dose of reality, got what's coming to him for being so frickin smartassed, and actually knowing his rights.
And the others, we either don't have a raging inferiority complex vis-a-vis entitled college kids, or we were entitled college kids, so we resent the police for clearly overstepping the line with someone who was already handcuffed.
Mostafa got what many non-entitled-college kids what to do to entitled college kids.
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Michael Matthew Kaylor
[Read the article: Shocking incident]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're acting like you live in Xanedu, but police brutality exists all over the world, including the Czech Republic:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR710022001?open&of=ENG-CZE
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The Police State Mentality Permeates Everywhere, It Seems
[Read the article: Anorexia claims another model]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Regulate? Let's regulate who gets to run the fashion, music, television and other pop culture industries. Boot out the drug-addled white guys who apparently are a bunch of latent boy-loving necrophiliacs (since their ideal female is apparently, in fact, a nearly dead pre-pubescent male). This whole society could use the fresh blood from other livelier, psychologically healthier demographic groups deciding what is beautiful.
-- Karen
you want to regulate who runs the arts? Wow. I hope you enjoy those songs about how wonderful Mao is, because if we let the government regulate who runs the arts, there will be no disseting art. It'll all be about as edgy as the songs on American Idol. Yes, yes, let's do that. And let's allow the police to taser iranian americans for not having a library ID card. It's all good, just trust the government. :)
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Was there a point to this article?
[Read the article: Reproduction of the rich and famous]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think i may have missed it.
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I have an idea
[Read the article: Shocking incident]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Next, let's discuss videos of police groping a woman during an arrest. Then maybe one of them raping her. Let's discuss a video of some terrorist suspect being tortured. Maybe we could watch a video of Jose Padilla being interrogated while high on LSD he was probably forced to take. I guess we kind of already did that with the Abu Ghraib photos.
My point is, it's scary and incredibly surprising how much deference Salon's readership is willing to give to the police (or other state authority figure). Even faced wtih repreated screaming, the sound of the taser tasering, the officer threatening an onlooker, a surprisingly large amount of people say that the police acted correctly. So my question is, how many people would stand behind the police raping a terror suspect? Punching him or her while he or she is tied to a chair? At what point would you say the police is oversteoping the line, or can the police do whatever they want?
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Thankful to whom?
[Read the article: That's how the light gets in]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who are we thankful to? Luck? Fate? Being born in affluent america rather than a prostitute-factory-worker in Thailand, in a Rawlsian sort of way?
Maybe people are compelled to be thankful for those things that they don't really control -- that you and your family didn't get cancer this year, that a hurricane didn't hit your city, etc. But the more of your life you control, the less you have to be thankful for, since you're more responsible for your current state, right?
I don't know...
Anyway, i think if aliens showed up to America tomorrow, they would think that we are polytheists, and Thursday is the day we worship the Turkey God (as opposed to the Bunny God on Easter, and the Camel God on Christmas).