House of Eratosthenes

Neal Boortz is being tough on this guy, a visitor to our shores with a tale of police brutality he’d like to tell. I don’t exactly agree with Neal’s reasoning. I simply don’t know enough about it to sign on to what he’s going. Boortz is a radio guy, and evidently he went on air and made some comments in the professor’s favor, to later retract them and apologize after reading the professor’s take on things (link requires registration when it gets in some funky mood that the web page programmer himself probably doesn’t understand). What was the infraction committed within the professor’s remarks?

He’s blaming the questionable behavior of the Atlanta Police on…aw, well who the hell do ya think?

I found that in Atlanta the civilization of the jail and the courts contrasted with the savagery of the police and the streets. This is a typical American contrast. The executive arm of government tends to be dumb, insensitive, violent and dangerous. The judiciary is the citizen’s vital guarantee of peace and liberty. I became a sort of exemplar in miniature of a classic American dilemma: the “balance of the Constitution,” as Americans call it, between executive power and judicial oversight.

I have long known, as any reasonable person must, that the courts are the citizen’s only protection against a rogue executive and rationally uncontrolled security forces. Though my own misadventure was trivial – and in perspective laughable – it resembles what is happening to the world in the era of George W. Bush. The planet is policed by a violent, arbitary, stupid and dangerous force. Within the USA, the courts struggle to maintain individual rights under the bludgeons of the “war on terror,” defending Guantanamo victims and striving to curb the excesses of the system. We need global institutions of justice, and judges of Judge Jackson’s level of humanity and wisdom, to help protect the world.

I dunno, man. It’s clear from reading the comments in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that there’s some vast untapped repository of information about this, that is outside of my reach. But a lot of the people in the Professor’s camp on this one, have a disturbing tendency to confuse “having a degree” with “being right.” Um, excuse me. At issue is whether or not America is retaining its original ideals, and chief among these ideals is the idea that you get your fair day in court here — even if the dispute in which you are engaged, concerns another party with a much higher social status. We don’t think you’re in the wrong here, just because you’re a pauper and your plaintiff is a Lord. We don’t fine you a sixpence if you’re the son of an Earl, and a half-crown or a jail sentence, for doing the same thing if you’re not so well connected.

Things just don’t fly that way here. That is what America is all about.

And here these chuckleheads are, deciding the professor must be in the right, simply because he is one.

And as Boortz points out, quite correctly, not a very good one at that. He thinks rough police handling in Atlanta has something to do with our President. I don’t know why he thinks this because he feels very little need to establish why this connection exists. But it’s gotta be messed up, whatever it is.

I’m just not willing to decide the handling against him was within-bounds, just because he’s got some screwy ideas.

But having said that, this makes more sense:

I think that we all know that a simple “I’m sorry, officer, I’ll be more careful the next time” would have been more than sufficient. Clearly it escalated beyond that. Is it possible that the good professor used some of his “George Bush is Stupid, America is violent, dangerous and arbitrary” nonsense on the cop?

Why, that would reqiure a heck of an attitude problem. Looks to me like the prof has exactly that.

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The Jaywalking ProfessorSaturday, January 13th, 2007

The Jaywalking Professor
Saturday, January 13th, 2007