Adventures in Overreacting

[from 12/30/09]

The recent rash of shootings of police officers has everyone understandably concerned. I want to stand behind that and express my deepest condolences to the families of the fallen officers.

On the other hand, there are the not so understandably concerned. For instance state Representative Troy Kelley of Tacoma, has introduced legislation that would deny bail to anyone who is "potentially dangerous" and who has ever been pardoned by any governor. "Potentially dangerous" includes, but is not limited to, people with cars, people with matches, large people, tiny people (groin bites!), smart people, stupid people, people with hands, and legislators. As for governors pardoning, do we really have anything to fear from people pardoned by any Texas governor? I'd say any Texan that's never been executed has got to be pretty decent folk.

I want to pause to commend Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs, who said that cuts to things like mental health treatment and community services could hinder any measures meant to protect the police. That's seeing the big picture.

But back to the little picture, where this column belongs. "What other proposals are on the table to protect the police from the criminally insane, Wes?" I'll tell you, anonymous imaginary reader!

At the heart of the new legislation is a bipartisan effort to expand hate-crime laws to include the police as a protected minority. As Rep. Pat Backus, R-Pissatchoo, one of the sponsors, put it, "For far too long we have looked the other way as a society as the police have been maligned and oppressed. Even acts of verbal abuse serve to incite violence."

The law would not only increase the penalties for physically injuring a police officer, but also make it a hate-crime to malign them as a class. It would continue to be legal to say "police officer Billy is a pig," but it would not be legal to say so of police officers in general, as in the sentence, "Police officers in general are pigs."

Police officers will no longer be required to wear identification or mandatory uniforms. "It's demeaning to us to have to wear a star on our chest, everywhere we go in public," said one Seattle officer who didn't want his name used, for fear of persecution. "It's like we were all Jews in Nazi Germany or something. I, for one, am not a Jew."

Other legislation addresses the flip side of that issue. "Police who have 'come-out' as police, who choose to wear their police-ness proudly, should not be discriminated against," said State Senator William Wohnte, D-Sunnyside. He has introduced a law that would provide fines and civil damages for specific acts of police discrimination, such as refusing to rent to an openly policing person, or refusing service at a restaurant or night club, or even (ironically!) refusing to sell illegal substances to a uniformed policeman. These measures would apply even if the police dress were non-standard. "It's not up to anyone but the policeman to say how he or she should dress. To suggest otherwise is to make the police an underclass."

Under study is a law that would address the criminal profiling of police officers. Unfortunately, no one's been able to figure out how to get that up and going; the concern is that the lack of profiling invites class retaliation. One suggestion is to have two police forces, the Blues and the Purples, say, and try to get them to profile each other, by telling them each horror stories about the others. Like, you'd tell the Purples that the Blues are always getting high on their drug confiscations and beating people unnecessarily. The Purples wouldn't care if anyone said that about themselves, even if it was true, but saying it about someone else might have an impact.

Still a long way off, but something advocates are hoping for, would be legislation providing police officers with decent permanent housing. I may have that confused.

OJ And Me in the Lonely Crowd

Ever try to imagine the internal conversations of people who turn up in the news?

Did Michael “Kramer” Richards think to himself, “I’m a great comedic actor, but I’m having trouble getting roles these days. Hey, why don’t I try stand-up for a while? That’s got to be easy.”

Maybe the Pope thought, “I know what will show Muslims I’m cool. I’ll go to a predominantly Muslim country and let my people drive me around in the Pope-mobile and show them all how cute and harmless I am. They’ll love me for sure!”

I’m not going to try to guess exactly what OJ was thinking when he came up with that book idea of his. I’m afraid that if I ever got myself to think that way my brain would get stuck in that state and I’d never be able to fake normal again. But I’ll guess part of what he was thinking was “Hmm, money.”

Let me risk seeming to change the subject entirely. I’ve been noticing a pattern in the news lately. A lot is coming down to conflicts, real and imagined, between individual and group rights.

Example: Why should we have hate-crime legislation? Doesn’t that give rights to groups that individuals can’t share in? Why should it be worse to beat up someone because you don’t like the group they belong to, than to beat the same person up because you just don’t like their looks?

Come on, people, that one’s simple. The hate-crime beating is worse to the extent that, in addition to the immediate harm done to the immediate victim, other people are also threatened with future violence. Such threats amount to terrorism.

Here’s an example where the conflict appears genuine: Recently in Montreal the police had a brief internal discussion over whether it might not be good, when engaging with certain extremely patriarchal ethnic communities within that diverse city, to leave the police women in the back seat of the police car, so to speak. Apparently the discussion lasted just long enough for someone to write a memo about it, and then the decision was: no way that’s going to happen. I learned about this from an editorial I found that framed it as a case of women’s individual rights vs a minority group’s rights. But is it?

Wasn’t the decision really to go with offending the tiny minority groups rather than offending the one huge majority group of women? I’m betting the Montreal police department wasn’t looking out for any one woman’s individual rights.

If I’m wrong about that, then what do we make of the veil controversy in France? Veils are losing out there. Why? Because the majority of French women don’t care if they wear veils, that’s why.

Getting back to the questions that started this, the news says that the hecklers that Richards spewed racist language toward are interested in receiving monetary compensation. That puts the whole Michael Richards’ career-in-flames story in a whole different light, one that swings the focus radically from group to individuals.

Suddenly it becomes an issue not of how racist Richards is, or how offended African-Americans everywhere are by the man’s language, but how hurt were these two guys in the audience, and how much would it take to make it better. What we have here is a triumph of the individual-right perspective over the group-right perspective. The hecklers are individualizing the common demand for reparations.

I’m warming to the idea slowly. I’m seeing possibilities, as my individual sensibilities are pummeled wherever I go.

Just the other day, a motorist gave me the finger for delaying him while I used a crosswalk. I’m thinking, that could be $5, right there.

If Benedict XVI sets off World War III by stirring up trouble in Istanbul, I am personally holding him responsible, and I will sue him and the Vatican $100 for each day I am made miserable by the consequent global conflagration. After all, I can’t leave for another planet.

Hmm, money.

Step Up to the Hate

“Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a humor column about hate crimes out of my hat!” “That’s not a humor column, Bullwinkle!”

OK, hate crimes aren’t remotely funny. I think that’s a given. But hate can be amusing. For example, I have come to realize over the years that my hatred for Steven G., who was my next-door neighbor when I was 11, has assumed comic proportions. That’s because, in the 45 years since he got two buddies to hold me down so he could punch me in the face without getting punched back, Steven G. has become my personal metaphor for all that is evil in the world. While others denounce Satan, I denounce Steven G.

Some days I spend hours thinking up delicious revenges upon Steven G. I imagine Steven G. coming to my building to see me, to ask if I could come out to play, just like he always used to do. And I would say no just like I always did, because even before the punching incident I hated him, because all he wanted me to do was come outside and worship him, and be dazzled by the cool way he dressed, and be awed by how many girls he promised he would have in the coming years, once he had managed to have any; that was his idea of “playing,” and I despise being that bored.

So in my fantasies I would say no, but Steven G. wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, just like every day 45 years ago. But, unlike 45 years ago, this time I would get all Quentin Tarantino on his ass. Oh, yes, I’d come out to play all right. “Bring it on, Stevie G., I’m coming out to play! Look, Stevie G., I have a pound of peeled garlic, a vice, a couple of crowbars, and a tube of Super Glue! Guess what game were going to play!”

My point is that hate can be amusing because it’s just an emotion. It’s not whether you hate; it’s whether and how you act on it. Since I haven’t yet really stuffed a pound of peeled garlic up Steven G.’s nostrils, or done the other things with the vice, etc., thinking about it can still be entertaining.

Here’s a purely rhetorical question: If hate crimes are bad because they involve hate, does that mean that stalking, a “love crime,” is good?

Seriously, no, it doesn’t. But the question might help explain why the general public is confused about the issue. People are constantly writing to tell editors of newspapers, “We don’t need hate crime legislation; all violent crimes are hate crimes, therefore all violent crimes should be treated the same.”

Here’s the difference: if I Super Glue Steven G.’s face to the front of his tight, purple, package-revealing, hip-huggers, I will have committed an act of violence against one Steven G., but I will not have terrorized all Steven G.s everywhere in the process.

If I had my way, advocates for hate crime legislation would stop using the term “hate crime” and start talking about terrorism. The reason the crimes call for more severe penalties is that they are acts of terrorism against groups. The immediate victim is intended to represent the rest of the group and the crime meant to terrorize the whole group.

Until I get my way, It would really help the debate if opponents of hate crime legislation would stop attacking the misnomer, and deal with the real purpose of the proposed laws. “Why make hate a crime?” makes as much sense as “Why do we have anti-trust laws? Isn’t trusting good?”

Here’s an unfunny factoid: Right now, in this country, homeless people are being murdered, for being homeless, at a rate (per their total numbers, per year) comparable to the rate at which Blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1968. America commits its pogroms on a personal scale, one at a time, up close.