Droid Trek: An Android Primer
I love smart phones. I have used smart phones since their fledgling, rudimentary stages when compared to the smart phones of today. The arrival of Android has changed everything. It wasn’t first but it is still a game changer even in comparison with the iPhone. Why?
When I heard that Apple was planning to make one I thought that they would make a beautiful, elegant device that would be limited in what it could do or more importantly, would be limited in terms of what Apple would let customers do with it. I expressed that opinion long before the original iPhone was released. When it finally arrived, I was actually surprised at how much they allowed it to do. It’s features were quite liberal…for Apple. When compared to phones available outside the U.S. however, the multi-touch features and large button interface were really the only things that were new—and even then, only new with phones. Nevertheless, it sounded interesting until I heard the restrictions Apple placed on it. They made you pledge everything but your first-born child for the privilege of being allowed to buy one.
Obviously, the iPhone was a closed door to anyone who thinks like I do. I’m convinced that when I buy a device, I should treat it like it’s mine. Call me crazy. So I stuck with my Nokia 3870, then my Nokia N-95, followed by my Sony-Ericsson Xperia. Now that I have outgrown both Symbian and Windows Mobile, I wanted to go with a top of the line smart phone. Since I am unable to even consider an iPhone for obvious reasons, an Android phone was the obvious choice. This was a no-brainer especially because I make heavy use of Google and its most popular products every single day.
I watched the Google phones enter the market starting with the G-1, slightly more than a year ago. The Nexus One was the first one that made me drool. I really had a soft spot for that one. It was the one I planned to buy but others have also looked good from a feature standpoint, like the Droid, the EVO, and the Droid X. Eventually I decided to go to a local store to hold the devices in my hand to see how my ideas, which are based on articles I’ve read, matched the reality of the actual devices. When I got around to the HTC Desire, which is essentially the Nexus One without a front-facing camera, it seemed to call my name. I could not bear to put the phone down, so I bought it.
I got the phone home. I followed the simple instruction sheet, which involved essentially opening the rear cover, inserting my Sim card, swapping-in my 16GB micro-SD card for the 4GB card that came with the phone, inserting the battery, closing the cover, plugging in the power cord to charge the battery, and turning it on. This all took about 3 minutes since I had to be careful the first time so as not to damage the fragile cover. The phone takes longer to boot than Symbian or WinMo. Then again, it is a full-fledged Linux operating system.
On the first start, a wizard starts that gives you a couple of tips to help you navigate, followed by a prompt for your Google account credentials. If you do not have an account you can create one during this step. I put in my credentials and then it asked if I would like to sign into Twitter as well. I typed in my Twitter credentials and off I went. After I got to the home screen, I was quite impressed. The resolution was great and the graphics were beautiful and very fast. What was even more impressive was how quickly Android pulled in all my contacts and other info.
I had previously synchronized my outlook contacts list with my phone contacts from an older Nokia. Then probably a couple of years ago, I imported those contacts to my Gmail account. Previously, I had to manually import those contacts on every phone that I had prior to this one. Not this time. Just by signing into my Google account all of my contacts, calendar events, and tasks (integrated into my calendar) were there. When the phone rang, I saw the caller id immediately without having to import anything. That was awesome. One of my 7 home desktops had my Twitter feed running already. The interface of the Twitter client is nice and has the functionality you need.
[Side note: For anyone unfamiliar, a home desktop---and I'm not certain that's the proper term---is the main interface where icons, widgets, and shortcuts can be placed. It is what you see when people are scrolling left and right past rows of icons. There are essentially 7 desktop screens placed side by side and you navigate them by scrolling right or left. Except for the first, default screen they are empty until you place your frequently used items there. Each desktop can have 4x4 rows of icons or 16 per screen. Widgets, like a live weather app or the Google search box usually take several spaces, which of course decreases the number of icons that can be displayed on that particular screen.]
I continue to be surprised about the Google account integration. Some of it may actually be unsettling if you are not aware of how well Google knows you. When I used the Google Maps app the first time, it remembered the last destinations I had searched for on my last phone and my laptop. Since I was going somewhere near one of these points, I just selected the nearest one with the intention of modifying the address if needed when I got near the destination. Also, when using the “mini-Chrome” included with the system, it knows my browsing history already. Even without importing bookmarks, after I type the first few characters of a URL, it correctly fills in the rest most of the time. Auto-fill has been around a while but what is different about this is that while you are typing, a drop down list with matching URLs opens under the address bar. Listed for me were not just matching URLs—but only URLs that I had visited before. An interesting trick on a device I’ve only had for 20 minutes. Later on, I configured my Google Apps domain and 2 other non-Google, IMAP email accounts. I can customize each account individually so that each downloads as often or as seldom as required.
I love this phone. I’ve even slept with the phone (ok, ok, for listening to media, you know what I mean). But how enlightening are the pros without any of the cons? I immediately ran into some brick walls that made me pull my hair out. The most frustrating were the things I’ve seen demonstrated on other phones, so I know Android has the capability but which have been removed by the provider—in this case HTC. I will give a quick run through of the problems and missing things I had to tackle and tell you how I overcame them. That way, if you get an Android-based phone you can consider using the same solutions. No sense in re-inventing the wheel.
The first thing I did on my trek to configuring my new Android phone was to learn how to use the Android Market. While this was not at all difficult, it was also not quite as intuitive as I had hoped. This would be a nice addition to the default icons on the desktop but on this particular phone, HTC lets you dig through the menu to find it. Since it’s how you will install most of the other apps you will need, I recommend adding the icon to the home screen immediately. Getting to know it is a top priority. Finding it is the easy part. Knowing what apps to install with it is where the research will come in. After you’ve located it, hold your finger down on an empty area of the home screen for 2 seconds (a long press). Choose Program from the resulting dialog and select Market. Done.
The second thing that will be helpful is a barcode scanner app. Most Android friendly websites will put barcode links called QR codes on their sites for things you should visit from your phone. You will definitely want an app that can read these QR codes as well as the normal product barcodes. I read many articles about Android’s adroitness (try saying that 3 times) with barcodes. It is spoken of so matter-of-factly that I was surprised to find the phone missing this capability out of the box. In order to use it, one must first download a barcode app. The most popular apps for that are Barcode Scanner and ShopSavvy. Both work well. One difference is that Barcode Scanner goes directly to scan mode and ShopSavvy goes to a menu first (press Search for a Product, the top button). I like ShopSavvy because it seems to know what to do with each code and just does it whereas BC waits for you to choose an action. Try them both. Search the Android Market for one of these by tapping the search button in the upper right hand corner of the Market app, then install the app and use it to scan the other for practice.
Barcode Scanner
ShopSavvy
After learning that barcode reading had to be added manually, the other deficiencies began to add up. Here is a list of gripes:
- Cannot reverse tether. In other words, I can tether my laptop to the phone’s Internet but not the phone to the laptop’s for example, to avoid roaming charges while staying in a hotel that provides a connection. Microsoft’s Active-sync provides this functionality but not Android. Bummer.
- No Ad Hoc networking at all, neither secure nor otherwise. There are supposedly some hacks but I haven’t gotten any of them to work yet.
- No built-in management of to do lists. I’d like to see and manage tasks on my desktop. My task list was imported into my Calendar but aside from that, there is nothing included to manage my tasks.
- Power options allow you to specify a sleep mode and can lock the phone. I see no way to separate the two. Once locking is enabled, sleep mode always requires the phone to be unlocked. Very often I press the power button to shut off the screen, then remember something I needed to do. I have to unlock the screen again even though I have not reached the timeout I set for locking. This is an annoyance.
- No integrated Google Docs support. At all! This flabbergasted me. This was one of the main things I hoped to use a “Google phone” for. I have all these documents imported on my micro-SD card but can do nothing with them.
- Can’t read .rtf (rich text) files. Before I said goodbye to MS Word 5 or 6 years ago, I started using .rtf format instead of .doc because in addition to being virus-proof, every word processor in the universe can read this format…except Google’s. There isn’t a single app on this phone that can read .rtf files and I can’t find one in the Android Market. That sucks big time because I have tons of these which will need to be converted.
- Cannot create documents on the phone. At all! The included QuickOffice is worthless. It renders MS Office documents horribly and can’t create so much as a simple text file.
- No built-in file manager.
- No way to attach files to emails except for photos.
- No way to pause audio after shutting off the screen. Would be nice if you could pause or skip songs without having to unlock the phone. If you shut off the screen to save power, you’ve lost control. See number 4 for explanation.
- The much touted voice input and speech recognition functionality is notably absent. Why on Earth would HTC remove this???
- No Amazon apps installed and won’t appear in Market (because I’m outside the U.S.). This is annoying since I do have a U.S.-based account I’d like to use. If you research this problem you find this to be a hot issue abroad. In some markets like parts of India, the Android Market has been blocked entirely. This must infuriate lots of people who don’t understand why their phones are crippled.
- I noticed that a visible streak revealing the unlock pattern can be obvious when viewed at an angle in the sunlight, unless you wipe down your screen every time you use it. An obvious security issue.
- The built-in location awareness can be used by websites to provide you more detailed service. It can also be used to deny you service, particularly if you are outside the United States. Even if you use a proxy, the phone “narcs” on you by giving the website your location directly. This makes it harder to specify language preferences. Even my Google pages keep switching me to Dutch though I specify English over and over. If I cross into Germany, the language of my pages changes. How does that make sense? I still have the same brain no matter which border I cross and I’m still signed in. I know what you are thinking—but this problem is far worse than IP-based location awareness because the problem took on new life after switching to this phone.
Wow. Looking at the list above, you can see that my gripes are more extensive than I thought. I overcame most of the problems. I will go through the status/solution one at a time in the order of the previous list. For any of the apps that are not in the Market, you will have to enable “Unknown Sources” by selecting Menu->Settings->Applications->Unknown Sources, otherwise you will get an error.
- There is currently no solution for the reverse tethering deficiency. According to what I have read, it will be addressed in the next version of Android. This is inconvenient but acceptable considering how young the platform is in its development.
- There is a website that claims to have a fix for the Ad Hoc networking. It readily pops up when you search this topic but I find no way view the topic. It acts like a honey trap. Makes you sign up to view the page but never delivers the info. Wait for the next version, which should also address this or search it out yourself if you can’t wait.
- To address my to do list issue. I installed gtasx. It has all the functionality I need but is a bit bloated for managing tasks. It seems to want to manage all your Google tools including Buzz and others. For a more streamlined app, try GTasks by Dato. It has become necessary to be very specific on which app you mean because variants of the name GTask is being thrown around by several developers. Try as many as you like but these 2 will give you an idea what to expect. I recommend GTasks. It’s simpler and has widgets that you can pin to your desktop.
- Haven’t found a solution for the sleep mode hassles yet. Maybe a developer will fill that niche at some point.
- The lack of Google Docs support is unacceptable. There is a tool that makes using Google Docs bearable for the time being. It’s called GDocs. It has 2 massive Achilles heels. First, it’s allows little more than basic text editing. You can edit and sync with your cloud docs, but you will lose ALL of your formatting!
- Obviously Google has something against the .rtf format. I don’t know what. But they won’t support it on Docs or Android. There is a tool that claims to support it that I won’t mention. It requires you to upload the file to a remote server where it is rendered and sent back to your browser. The very thought of doing that makes my skin crawl. If you are interested you can search for rtf and you will probably find it but I prefer to wait for a real program rather than a gimmick that wants me to send my documents to their server. Who do they think they are? Google?
- In addition to #6, you can’t create any documents at all on this thing without 3rd party apps. I sincerely hope Google will address this. You should never ship a product that can’t do “hello world” at least to itself. Unless you count email, you can’t write any documents.
- The file manager is not only important for familiarizing oneself with the file system but is also solves #9 as well. After installing the file manager Astro, it became a browse target that I can choose after I select Attachment in Gmail. I can now select and attach any file after browsing with Astro. There are limitations to Astro. It will not show you hidden files or folders and cannot modify permissions like Root Explorer can on a rooted phone.
- Install Astro File Manager:
- The only workaround that I know of is to not lock your screen. Hopefully I will find another way to resolve this.
- Voice input and speech recognition are some of the coolest features of Android. Someone at HTC was on some serious drugs when they removed it from the Desire. The good news is, you can reinstall it. If you have 2.1, you will need the voice search package and the microphone keyboard if want a mic button on your keyboard. It will work with your original keyboard however. Here I will list the QR codes for the Desire/Legend. Scan and install the Voice Search code on the left for the basic apparatus. Get the mic-enabled keyboard with the code on the right or follow this guide for other configs or more detailed info about switching keyboards after install. After this step, your phone is now officially cool!
- Some Amazon links seem to only appear in US versions of Android. The Market is observing location to choose results for app searches. That works in most cases. But what about servicemen and DoD civilians overseas who are entitled to use U.S. accounts? You can get results tailored to a region by installing the miraculous Market Enabler. It lets you emulate a carrier in the desired region. This will let you list the apps but they may still refuse to work (like Amazon MP3 did) because of an incorrect system region setting. You can change this setting with LocaleSwitch(QR code below). Using these 2 apps I was able to download and configure Amazon MP3. Of course Amazon’s policy states that you must use an account that bills to a U.S. address to download mp3′s so if you don’t have one, don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work.
- What’s the fix for streaks that reveal your lock code? Kleenex. Not actually a defect but it’s worth pointing out lest one feel too confident.
- After installing the apps mentioned in #12 and disabling location the settings, this problem went away. If you are U.S. bound, you should not encounter the language issues in any case. Just be aware that your IP address is not the only method a website has of establishing your location. They can get a pretty accurate position by interrogating the browser. You do not even need the gps enabled.
GTasx
GTasks
GDocs
This is acceptable for editing lists and notes. Actual word processing is out of the question. The second irritant is that it gives you no way to upload a document that isn’t already in the cloud. Want to create a new document and upload it to your Google Docs? Or maybe to upload some of those imported docs from your transferred SD card? FORGET IT! (Update: A recent update has remedied this situation. Through a menu option you can now create and upload documents. However, you will still lose your formatting.) Anything more than simple text operations and you will need a laptop (or heaven forbid, go back to WinMo because it can do word processing).
Astro File Manager
Add Voice Search
Add Voice Search enabled keyboard
Market Enabler
LocaleSwitch
Amazon MP3
Now what?
Now that the problems that can be solved have been solved, it’s time for some more advanced things, which will only become available once you root your phone. Why would you want to do that? If you are not the kind of person who knows what all the Windows Control Panel items do and don’t know a few of the shortcuts to get to them without having to navigate the menu, then you probably won’t want to go any farther. A rooted phone is for geeks. Not normal geeks though. Rooting your phone is for the kind of geek who is prepared to buy a new phone tomorrow if anything goes wrong. I used a simple, 1-click tool to root my phone. You can do the same. But before starting, I resolved in my mind that I was prepared to buy a new phone and that the possibility of having to do so was worth the risk. I cannot over emphasize this. The authors of this tool have said very clearly that they do not want any frantic emails or pleas for help because such pleas will fall on deaf ears. If that does not deter you, then proceed. No shortcut. Read it first. I found it to be pretty straight forward.
Busybox
Audible Player
After you are rooted, check this page out. It lists some tools that will make any geek happy. You definitely need Root Explorer if you want full access to your file system. It’s well worth the cash. Busybox is great for anyone who is familiar with the Unix command line (The market app says Busybox does not work with the Desire yet but the version that comes with Titanium Backup does. Sit tight for an update.). If you shell into the phone you won’t have most basic commands like ‘ls’ unless you install Busybox. I also included a link for the Audible Player for those who like audio-books. This player was actually the last thing I had been waiting for before diving into Android. They’ve done a great job with it.
If you have any questions about my adventures with the things on this page, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments or on Twitter. Enjoy.
CNN: Gay Sensitivity Training
Sometimes it can be downright frustrating to watch people skirt around the major points of an issue. People who do not feel a need to consider the feelings of others often complain about things like diversity training and political correctness. Such things can be just as annoying when taken to an extreme, as the kinds of negativity they are meant to combat. Unfortunately, there will always be people who see no problem with trying to swat a gnat with a grenade launcher.
If you look at the case presented in this CNN piece, Jennifer Keeton seems to reasonably want to protect her religious and speaking freedoms. It is hard to argue with her assertion that the university has no right to force her to change her beliefs. However on just a cursory glance, it is obvious that no university wants to graduate a person with a psychology credential who lacks the professional discipline to shelve their personal beliefs in order to give a patient the full benefit of their academic training, without bias against the individual due to the psychologists religious beliefs. If the university allows such a person to graduate and thus represent its alumni, it could irreparably damage the institution’s reputation. A damaged reputation could have all kinds of negative ripple effects such as decreased desirability by businesses to employ its graduates, reduced funding, or fewer high quality applicants.
The university curriculum requires a student to receive training designed to provide exposure to walks of life that many of its students will never have encountered. However it does not require them to feel any particular way about gays as a condition of completing the class. For this reason, Ms. Keeton’s objections are baseless. If she could demonstrate that she was being forced to change her beliefs prior to being allowed to graduate, I would agree with her but as of now, I’d say she’s probably just trying to unseat 2009′s Fox News favorite Carrie Prejean as the new evangelical paragon of virtue. Can’t we just skip to the inevitable nude pictures and sex tapes, which should appear right about the time she runs out of bleach and her roots begin to show? Come on. You know that will happen right?
Great news for the modern Net Parent
Today’s “Net Parent”—a term for parents raising kids who will grow up in an electronically connected world—got a great potential boost after the announcement of the “.XXX” top level domain (TLD). While it remains true that those new to the web are most familiar with the dot com domain, recent additions like .biz and .tv have become nearly as well-known as the venerable .net, .edu, and .org TLD’s. The majority of today’s Internet users most likely do not remember the .xxx fight during the last round of TLD additions.
After .xxx was proposed, religious fanatics of all ilks came out in droves to oppose it. After all, it was associated with the word “porn” and therefore had to be bad, right? Religious organizations and tele-evangelists all said it would cause us to be inundated with porn online. Yea, we wouldn’t want to have a situation where our junk mail folders are full of porn would we? Oh, wait… So. Due to overwhelming organized opposition by religious zealots and let’s not forget—opportunistic politicians, who were equally outraged I can assure you—the greatest opportunity to filter adult-based content from home networks was lost to families around the world for the time being.
When the debate first took place, the adult industry was seeking to have its own corner of the web where they could be easily found and operate without scrutiny. This was in the day when there was still some concern that the forces of online censorship would eventually stifle adult content providers. Since then, all efforts to police the Internet have all but failed. Adult content providers are now a bit more skiddish about getting corralled and many no longer see a benefit to having its own corner of the web. This last fact may be because everyone knows how to use “the Google.” Finding Playboy and all of its offshoots is no more difficult than Googling “Playboy.”
Ultimately, the effectiveness of the .xxx domain as a filter will depend on getting the lion’s share of adult content providers to use it. This raises the question of whether or not to make its use mandatory. For example, if all adult content was on a .xxx TLD, it would be no more difficult than adding a single line to the hosts file an a given machine or configuring the typical network router that provides connectivity to most homes and businesses to block all outgoing requests with addresses ending with .xxx. Making such a modification would be trivial and take only seconds. It could not only prevent the loading of adult based web pages but also prevent sexually explicit images from appearing in email. Of course, I can think of a handful of ways off the top of my head to circumvent this kind of filtering but one would have to deliberately do so and once done, those cards have been irrevocably shown.
That said, it will probably be easier to get cooperation from mainstream content providers who actually do not want to serve content to minors because it is not in their interests to offend parents, many of whom are customers of these same companies whether they want to admit it or not. The problem will be getting the illicit, fly-by-night operators and spammers, who are at this point used to circumventing content filters out of habit if for no other reason. This means that the rate of adoption may now be a problem as eluded to in this NYT article. Even with this potential hole in the dam, it will still be significantly beneficial to have the majority of “mainstream porn” operating BEHIND an easily filterable TLD . (pun intended)
At this point, it seems enough of a done deal that religious zealots and politicians won’t be able to shoot themselves in the foot this time, no matter how determined they may be to do so. Unfortunately, having missed a golden opportunity to make this move when it would have done the most good, only time will tell if the rate of adoption by the porn industry will allow the new TLD to be effective for parents trying to protect their kids from unwanted sexual materials online.
Woman Punched By Policeman
Unless you enjoy controversial topics, you may want to skip this one.
This clip was brought to my attention yesterday by my racist colleague Jeramie (he loves it when I say that 
). Okay, he’s not really a racist but he plays one on TV. He was so interested to get my take that he was sort of chomping at the bit. I said, “Well…” at which point he jumped in to say the policeman has a right to do his job unobstructed. I said, “Ok…” at which point he jumped in again to say that the woman who was punched had shoved the cop and thus subject to arrest herself. Every time I opened my mouth he jumped in with reasons that this may not be as open-and-shut as one might think and why this cop might not be a racist. Then I shocked him by saying that I provisionally agree with everything that he had said. He responded, *gulp*. I didn’t say I agreed. I said, “PROVISIONALLY.” As always, the devil is in the details.
There are two reasons that might lead one to assume that I would dump on the cop. One: I’m black. Two: chivalry. A third little known reason is that I also have a history with the police. Then again, most black males in America have a history of SOME kind with the police, regardless the kind of life they have led. More on that later.
In order to assess the appropriateness of the officer’s conduct in this video, it is necessary to know why he was grappling with her. The second woman, who was punched was obviously coming to the rescue of the first because she was being manhandled. We still need a bit of back information though. Obviously, the whole thing came about because the officer wanted to cite someone for J-walking. This is usually a weak charge unless they had endangered drivers on the road by weaving and bobbing through traffic. I think this is the only time people should ever be cited for this. I’ve seen policemen stop people for cutting out of a crosswalk 5 or 10 feet from the curb because they were hurrying to a bus stop or something like that. In most of these cases, the cop is just being a dick (pardon my French) and was probably looking for an excuse to check the person out anyway.
My friend Jeramie admitted that his background is such that he has no frame of reference to understand why so many blacks have adversarial relationships with policemen. Allow me to elucidate as I did for him.
In my preteens, I wanted to be a policeman when I grew up. I was the boring kid who raised his hand in class and answered questions correctly, which made me one of the “teacher’s pets” in most of my classes. I was a typical, bright-eyed kid who waved at police cars as they went by because policemen were our friends whose jobs it was to protect us and our families. One day this changed for me.
I was leaving one of our family restaurants with food for my lunch. I had a double cheeseburger, some french fries, and a strawberry milkshake. I was walking through the parking lot when 3 police cars rapidly converged on me from different directions. Out piled 6 cops who ordered me to put my hands on the hood of one of the cars and “spread em.” Keep in mind, I was 13 years old. They kicked my legs apart because no matter how wide you spread ‘em, it never seems to be wide enough.
One cop asked me, “What’s in the bag kid?” I said, “My lunch.” The cop said, “Mind if I take a look?” I shrugged affirmatively (as if I had a choice). He opened the brown paper bag, took out my burger and my french fries and flattened the bag on the hood of his car. Then he flipped the burger over and unwrapped it. He sifted through the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions with his fingers and after satisfying himself that there were no cellophane bags hidden therein, put the top bun with the attached patty and melted cheese back on the now ruined bottom bun with vegetables, then he balled them up within the wrapping paper and then put the burger back in the bag. His partner, who had picked up my french fries, tore the little paper pouch open and made like he was sifting through the fries looking for something as well. Then he grabbed a handful of fries and stuffed them into his mouth. “Say, these are great!” he said. “Mike, you really should try these fries. I may have to come back and eat here again. Or maybe I’ll just look for this kid coming out with food again and just take his.” The other cops chuckled at this. The first officer said, “Okay guys, he’s clean. Let’s go.”
The smart mouth jerk who ate my fries had not had enough fun yet. He looked at me cruelly and said, “Sorry about your lunch kid, but we have to keep our eye on little niggers like you.” The other said, “That’s enough. Let’s go.” They got in their cars and left. I could not help noticing the evil grin on the jerk. He was laughing it up. This was an encounter he had thoroughly enjoyed.
Understand that this shattered my perception of America as a fundamentally just place. The list of people, good or bad, who have experienced a change in attitude like this is probably larger in L.A. than anywhere in the country. It goes back to the hated (in my neck of the woods) and despised former L.A.P.D. Chief Daryl Gates, who made it known quite regularly that he enthusiastically embraced this kind of behavior with his us-against-them policy.
The next day I got a double-whammy at school. My favorite teacher—who was white—noticed that I had not answered any questions that day and was not paying attention. She was the kind of teacher who would notice these things, which probably explains why she was my favorite. After the bell rang, she asked me to stay behind for a minute. She said she was concerned about the look of sadness I had and assured me that if I needed to talk, she was all ears. I began recounting the event from the day before. While I was speaking, tears began to flow freely. I thought it would be cathartic because she would know how to fix it.
When I was finished, she looked at me incredulously. Then she said, “John, that was a very…interesting story. Do you expect me to believe that 6 policemen had nothing better to do than to harass a child for no reason? Tell me the truth. What were YOU doing at the time?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I already told you, I was doing nothing but trying to eat lunch.”
“I’m sorry John, I don’t believe you,” she said. I was shocked beyond belief.
“But you know me,” I said. “When have you ever known me to be a troublemaker?”
“Well…” she said, “…if you weren’t doing anything this time, I’m sure there were other times when you DID do something and the police weren’t around. Maybe this is payback for that.”
My heart sank at these words. For the rest of the semester, I could not look this teacher in the eye. If she called on me, I said nothing. My disappointment at her was evident but it accounted for just a small portion of my frustration. For this was the day that I stopped being a bright-eyed, optimistic child and became A BLACK MALE along with all that entails. An experience like this can be the difference between life as an empathetic, open-minded soul and someone apathetic to individual rights like a Clarence Thomas—a man who clearly has no problem with abuses of power or position.
I cannot comment on a story like the video above without being impacted by my own experiences with the police. After joining the military, I was stationed for 5 years in California. During this period, I was stopped 11 times while driving my car. I will exclude my time growing up in L.A. and only address the times I was stopped while on home leave or traveling on pleasure trips. I was pulled over once near Stockton for speeding (boy, was I ever). No problem there, I had it coming. This incidentally, was the only stop where I was cited.
I was stopped once in Oakland for “rolling through a stop sign,” which was most definitely a lie. No citation was given. They just wanted to “warn me” while shining their flashlights throughout my car. This is a typical tactic for checking out some black or Hispanic dude. It is not a cop favorite though.
I was stopped 4 times in the Los Angeles area (3 times by LAPD and once by LA Co Sheriff) for, “Recent burglaries in the area…suspect fitting your description.” I was also stopped twice for this excuse’s twin brother, “Recent burglaries in the area…suspect VEHICLE fitting this description.” These are both typical excuses that are used when they want to check you out and rifle through your car, but the latter seems more plausible. I mean, how can I fit ANY description by the back of my head alone?
I was stopped 3 times for the policeman’s new favorite bogus excuse. “You appeared to not be wearing a seat belt so I stopped you to make sure you are aware of our seat belt law.” (Spoken even as I look down at my securely fastened seat belt.) “In any case, I see you are wearing it now so I will let you off with a warning.” They say this while shining a light throughout your car. If their mental questions are not answered, they will ask for ID and maybe to look in your trunk. Though this technique was not the most frequently used, it was the last 3 consecutive excuses I got before leaving for Europe.
The reason I explain all of this is because when I discussed this with my friend, he could not even relate to my distrust of policemen. He thought what my teacher thought. That people get themselves into trouble and then blame policemen for doing their jobs. What gave him pause in this case, is that he knows ME. I served honorably in the military, have never been in trouble, and take matters of integrity very seriously. People who know me well, know that I am not given to self-aggrandizing exaggeration. So when I relate these experiences, they are usually more willing to consider them objectively than the teacher who broke my heart those many years ago—the day after my innocence was stolen from me by bad cops.
If you are white and have never been in trouble, then you are unlikely to have had these kinds of experiences. If you are black and from a metropolitan area, you have likely had these kinds of experiences or know someone who has (and I discount troublemakers from this as well). Before you can understand why black people are so “paranoid” about “the Man“, you must at least attempt to place yourself in these shoes. Imagine your 12 year-old being traumatized as I was. How would you respond to that? How would you feel about the perpetrators? If you filed a complaint and they treated you like you were wasting their time, would your feelings toward this police department change? Would you be less quick to simply give policemen the benefit of the doubt or to automatically dismiss any and all complaints against them without a fair hearing?
Okay. That exhausts the racial component of the story.
Let’s look at gender. My parents are from Mississippi. They raised me in the way of the southern gentleman. As most Southerners will relate, this made me value chivalry very highly. Three things have killed my chivalrous nature utterly. First, women demand absolute equality. I will not elaborate as the implications of this are obvious.
Second, I once saw a woman attempt to toss a drink into a man’s face at a nightclub (you know…like in the movies). Her coordination was a bit off. The glass struck his face. It shattered and sliced his cheek open to the jawbone severing a cluster of nerves and a little-known but major artery. The amount of blood that spurted from his face shocked everyone. She didn’t mean to kill him despite having come close, she just assumed like many that a female expressing her frustration against a man in a physical way is socially acceptable. She was wrong, sort of. The victim was hospitalized for a week but eventually dropped the charges against her since she had only “lost her temper.”
Third, was when a military comrade from years ago got into trouble. I will try to be brief. He had broken up with a girlfriend several weeks earlier. She followed him to a bar and tried to make him jealous by flirting with guys in front of him. He pointedly ignored her. This so enraged her that she walked by several times bumping him roughly, stepping on his feet, and then she finally knocked a drink out of his hands. The only response this got came when he asked the doorman to ask her to leave. The doorman’s response was, “What’s the matter, can’t handle your women?” Having struck out with rationality, he left and headed for his car. The woman followed him to the parking lot and got in his face calling him a “bitch” and saying that he wasn’t a real man and so forth. As he opened his car door, she kicked it shut, punched him, then went for the groin kick. He grabbed her foot before it connected but he dropped his keys in the process. She quickly picked them up. He held out his hand to ask for the keys and she dug one of the keys into his forearm (this required surgery to repair) and she threw the keys halfway across the lot. While he was walking to retrieve them, she rushed to her own car, jumped in and came after him. After missing him once, she came around for another pass. She hit him with the car and then ran into a tree. As she backed up and positioned her car to finish him off, he ducked behind the tree and she rammed it again at which point the engine died. He hobbled his way back to his car but she beat him there. At this point there was no doubt she was trying to kill him. Since she was blocking the door, he punched her, got into the car and went to the hospital.
How do you think this was resolved? SHE filed a police report accusing him of domestic violence for punching her (which was embellished in excruciating detail). Since at least a dozen people had followed them to the parking lot, there was no shortage of witnesses. At least 10 people gave accounts exonerating him. The women who observed this were especially appalled at her behavior. BUT. Isn’t there always a but? BUT, one person said in his report (yes, a man did this) that no matter what she had done, a man is never justified to hit a woman (apparently, not even to save his life). Therefore, he felt that excessive force was used against the female. The military used this one statement to bring a case for domestic abuse against the individual. Because of the zero tolerance policy, he was fined, reduced in rank, and processed for dishonorable discharge. Fortunately for him, his Congressman intervened and the discharge was eventually upgraded to “general.”
So the problem with chivalry is that people are often too biased to apply rules fairly because they become too focused on gender. When a woman can behave as in the previous two examples and then still claim to be the victim, there is a problem with chivalry. You can value it just fine until you see it being used to deprive a good man of his career, his good name, and nearly earning him a life-altering and very bogus federal conviction. It clearly has no place in a society that claims to value equality because at the end of the day, you either do or you don’t.
So, as it relates to the woman in the video and as I explained to my friend, I don’t care that she was a woman. I want to know why the cop was grappling with them. What had she done besides J-walking? I do make exceptions to my anti-chivalry stance from time to time based on the situation. I mean, I’m no jerk. But here is the thing: I know that a man has to uphold certain values in order to feel like a man. I know that if I say certain specific things to even my best friend, a fight will ensue. As a man, there is a certain line of disrespect and emasculation that I will never cross with another man unless I want a fight to the death. But today, some women routinely cross that same line and then dare the man to do something about it because they know most men will not cross that line and because the legal system stands ready to take their side almost automatically. So these women feel safe to do this and will threaten to call a cop if you seem ready to defend your honor. However, an increasing number of men are doing a Snookie.
In an episode of Jersey Shore, Snookie felt entitled to toss a drink in a some guy’s face and was shocked when he slugged her. You hear the same statement being made on the show, “There is never a reason to hit a woman.” But consider, it is precisely the knowledge that throwing a drink in another man’s face will DEFINITELY cause a potentially life-ending altercation that prevents a man from crossing that line 99% of the time. NO ONE—male or female—has the right to express their frustration in this way. NO ONE. As I pointed out above, this can have unforeseen consequences. Now that Snookie knows that some men won’t make an allowance for her to act out, you can be sure she is in no hurry to do that again.
Case in point, do you think the woman in the video would have tussled with this cop if it even occurred to her that he would punch her in the face? Would a black male even have survived such an encounter with the police? Or would he not have received some new lead-lined ventilation for the summer? So viewed in this light, being a woman actually got her off rather easy didn’t it? Nevertheless, the fact the the cop threw the punch so quickly and without trepidation is troublesome since there is little doubt that there are many other policemen that could have managed the situation more professionally than this officer did.
Daisy Duke Leaves Airport
Some times Karma knows what we need better than we do. As I was squirming in my seat uncomfortably after reading a story about a British woman who ripped a man’s testicles clean off with her bare hands—literally (I wonder if she said first, “this will hurt me more than it hurts you sugar”), as if on cue, I came across a video of a woman in a hurry. It’s a woman leaving an airport like a bat out of hell who does a Dukes of Hazzard jump. Her name MUST be Daisy.
So I can’t help but wonder if Daisy Duke in the video was escaping a crime scene and if said crime involved one or more testicles? Oh never mind. Who would imagine someone could do that and that it would take 5 years for her to go to jail?
