Letters to the Editor
-
Not too impressed by this guy
Im honestly not that impressed. If you bully your way to the front of a line, wont give up the mike when asked, then tell the cops to fuck off, then refuse to cooperate. Well, they cant do anything they want to you, but a taser seems like a reasonable response. If he was cuffed when they tasered him, they may have gone over the line, but they certainly would have been justified in wrestling him to a prone position.
-
tasered student
Some advice for all, both Left/Right, Dem/Rep and the indifferent: If a police officer is standing over you, taser in hand, and telling you to stop resisting etc etc---stop resisting.You'll get an opportunity to say your piece later. You'll be warned that you'll be tasered. And you will be if you keep kicking, fighting and resisting. Was this guy on a pre-planned mission? Don't know about that but he was on a sure-fire path to an electrical connection and subsequently lots of ink. At least he won't have to worry about paying college tuition now,a nice settlement from the zap-happy PD will set him up nicely.
-
security of a public official
Why isn't anyone discussing that there is a out of control person within range of a personal attack on a public official. Like it or not, John Kerry IS a Senator and is very much a target for wacko's.
Obviously, this guy has an agenda, and it has been a phenomenal success. He sought to put egg on Kerry's face; and to Kerry's credit I thought he handled the situation as best he could. Since Kerry didn't provide the fodder he was searching for, the taseing more than made up for it, this has launched a media frenzy. Did he seek to be tasered? Probably not, although it is suspicious that he mentioned tasers long before the police came near him. But now the media has something to sink it's teeth onto and get Sen Kerry caught in the crossfire. This was a moment designed by the YouTube generation for the Youtube generation.
I think the police acted appropriately, I don't know if anyone noticed but he is a pretty big guy, was apparently agitated (although now we know that was an act) and he was most certainly resisting the police. From the police perspective, they can not allow a person like that near a public official. Since he was not cooperating I think they took appropriate measures.
Having accidentally caught some over spray from Mace while walking down the street; I can tell you that taseing is better for bystanders and more effective for the police.
-
Amazing that, in America, this even be a question.
But since it's been posed, I'll answer it:
No, the student was not "asking" to be Tasered.
I'm so fucking sick of the police brutality in this country, and the weird reluctance of people across the political spectrum to criticize police officers and insist that these public servants use force with the greatest reluctance. Policemen, apparently, are "heroes," and, like generals and Rudy Giuliani, are to be treated with the greatest reverence.
After spending time in Europe and Asia, I have to say: the contrast between our police culture and the police culture of most of the rest of the developed world is really stunning.
Amazingly, police in most of the countries I've lived in don't seem to think that they're entitled to menace, terrorize, and silence civilians (or flirt w/strangers in public bathrooms in order to arrest and humiliate them). And none of the countries where police brutality is commonplace are ones that we should be striving to emulate. (Indeed, the cops are corrupt and violent in Russia and Zimbabwe . . . and criminal punishments are severe in Singapore. Uh . . . what's the point?)
Cops shouldn't even be allowed to carry Tasers. It's ridiculous.
After the Seattle police riots, the NYC Republican Convention, and the spate of "Tasings" we've seen in recent months, I don't know how anyone could seriously doubt that the police have too much power in this country. In Denver, the cops gassed innocuous crowds of celebrants when the Broncos won the Super Bowl; they were like kids with new toys they couldn't wait to try out. When is this going to be a legitimate political issue?
If this is what the cops are doing to spoiled white kids, just imagine how they're treating people of color.
And I'm on this kid's side, by the way. There's way too much "civility" in our political discourse. Bring in the ranters and the troublemakers! Pierce the bubbles these drowsy hacks live in!
And the "crazy" kid is right: Kerry may have won Ohio. Why aren't these other kids up in arms, then?
-
It's incredible that Manjoo - or anyone - is making this "argument" against this guy
I don't give a shit how obnoxious he was. There was nothing in his words that gives me the impression he was there as just some flake - he had a point to make, did he not? He was challenging Kerry on his giving up the fight on 2004 TOO SOON. I didn't see any terrible grandstanding there - yeah, the guy's got an ego, and so what? At least he's using it to get in Kerry's face instead of doing some jackass bullshit you see kids doing these days. He's engaged in the political dialogue, and thank the gods for that. GOOD FOR HIM.
The cops blew it, BIGTIME, they were more Leibstandarte SS than campus security guards, and the crowd AND KERRY were a bunch of passive sheep in the face of this outrageous use of excessive force. SHAME ON THEM.
Plus, all I can say is: You Dems (and Repubs for that matter) better get used to sputtering, indignant, angry, insistent, obnoxious inquisitors who aren't gonna give up till they A. have their say and B. get some decent answers, Nancy and Harry be damned. Thank god the kid had the balls to get in Kerry's face about his folding in 2004 - I only wish he'd had the time to work his way up through today and his anger (which if he does have it I fully share) over the Dems bending over and taking it up the ass again and again and again on Iraq and FISA and any number of other issues he could and should have taken up.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: not one more thin dime from me, Dems. Not one.
Maybe y'all will see me tazed next. I can only hope I get the chance. And fuck y'all who sit there and gape, if not applaud, AND titter nervously at sick fucks who joke about it from the stage.