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.
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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.
Comments
from → Commentary, Politics