Letters to the Editor
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[sic] Amazing that, in America, this would even be a question.
My bad.
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What is wrong with some of you people?
Did you ever hear of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement
Do you really think we ended the Vietnam War simply by getting Congress to withhold money for funding? There was an entire public impetus that began when student radicals questioned, protested, and even died to change the world.
Ever hear of Kent State?
Jesus! I am so fucking sickened by some of the comments in this thread.
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I'll remember this the next time I'm at UC Davis
Ground zero for the pro Islamic pro Palestinian genocidal campus movement. As soon as someone starts shouting 'death to America death to Israel' I'll remember to pepper spray and taser them and then bury a framing hammer in their face. What's good for the assholes is good to the assholes, I say.
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Manjoo is Asking For It
This guy wasn't committing a crime, or harming anyone. Those facts alone make tasering wrong in this circumstance. As others have pointed out, tasers can kill.
So what if the guy was a show off? He wasn't breaking any laws. He was asking Kerry questions that needed answering. The only thing more disgraceful than the police assault was Kerry's timid response.
No wonder he is a Senator and not the President.
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Right on, AKA!!
Up against the wall!!
Here are pictures of other kids who went the extra step to get fifteen minutes on YouTube. Too bad there wasn't any YouTube back then:
http://www.wcc.hawaii.edu/facstaff/nuckols-j/KentState.jpg
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0005/images/hr12.jpg
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Farhad
Please. Your argument is too nuanced. Try this:
"Kid good, cops bad."
That's about all your readers are capable of understanding.
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You know what Anonymous 7:09?
It's our government! Ours! It belongs to every single American and we have an absolute right to question our elected officials without fear of sustaining bodily injury. This wasn't a criminal who burglarized a liquor store. This young man is a citizen of the United States and you can just bet that if he'd been a gray haired 65 year old woman, he wouldn't have been treated that way. Campuses are sustained by in part by federal money paid for by our taxes, and students -- not just professors and administration -- have certain free speech rights.
Try reading the First Amendment. If you don't understand that the right to speak freely is part of what many Americans have fought and died for, as my Dad fought in World War II, then you just don't "get" America.
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Sadly, the joke is on you.
You parrot the phrase "history of stunts" as if there is some evidence, and then you imply the evidence must have been hidden.
This is a disservice to your readers, because the clip you refer to is not a stunt on some poor unsuspecting woman.
It is a comic sketch involving only actors in an otherwise empty bar. The "woman" is a burly man with a platinum blond wig taped to his head. The video is still posted at Meyer's website:
http://www.theandrewmeyer.com/sketches.asp
There is no way that this could have been misinterpreted as a prank being pulled on a victim. Instead the prank is that someone planted this misinformation (that this video shows Meyer playing candid camera on someone) and, just like dozens of others who didn't take time to check the facts, you fell for it and published it in your column.
This supposed history of pulling such (heinous!) pranks is now one of the most frequently offered justifications for why we should have no empathy for the guy getting tasered.
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so?
So let's assume he was trying to be provocative. Cops sure walked right into that one, didn't they? They should be fired for being too dumb to serve the public, not just for excessive force.
Oh look, there's a guy trying to provoke us into using excessive force! Let's taser him, shall we?
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John Kerry's Speech
Yes, most definitively they over-reacted.
Unarmed, only using speech, does not mean use of violent tactic.
The cops focus SHOULD have been on getting him out of the public eye, to a private room, to press questions, not adopt force to make him shut up.
I can understand someone who strikes at a cop, taunts them to no end with threat(s) or physically stiking in protest, or creating an act of violence, such as attempting to grab a weapon and so on, but here is a person who is pleading with them to no end, asking why are you planning to taser me?
And not getting any answer, other than the cops use of force that should have NOT been needed.
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Resisting arrest is never a good idea.
I am not here to address the kid's "comments" or "questions". That's fodder for other discussions.
What most of us who live in the real world know is this: Resisting arrest, in addition to being another charge once you hit the police station for booking, is liable to get you decked, and maybe tasered. Police training for such things is about them taking control of a situation, quickly, without necessarily having the time to ascertain whether the "offender" is just some loudmouth nitwit or an unstable guy about to produce a handgun from a pocket or belt. Those are niceties that wait until later. An escalation of force to enforce compliance with lawful orders is SOP.
I hesitate to bring this up, mostly because it's obvious: Had this guy been a poor black (or white) kid on some nondescript street corner, and been tasered while resisting arrest, it would have received no notice whatsoever in the press. He's a white college student, so it's news.
And yes, he did set out to create an incident. Citing him as an exemplar of "civil disobedience" misses one very important point: Civil disobedience is not simply about raising a ruckus, it is about accepting the consequences of your actions. Sit-in participants were carted off to jail. They went, having gone limp and requiring three and four officers to carry (and sometimes drag) them. They did not shout and struggle and then proceed with planned media campaigns to gain notoriety. And they generally did it for a cause far more worthy than self-aggrandizement.