*NOTE: Class Required Post Incoming. "What I Struggle With Despite My Perfection"

When it comes to writing, I'd like to believe that I have a reasonable grasp upon the rules and regulations. However, despite being in an Honors English program from my 7th grade year until my junior year (I chose to drop down to the regular English class my senior because, well, I was a senior and I didn't feel I needed to be thinking that hard any longer), I know I have much left to learn.

I think one of my biggest mistakes in writing comes in the form of comma splices. I tend to type the way I would speak. It's actually why I enjoy writing; it allows me to say what's on my mind without the likelihood of a slip of the tongue or misquote or inaccuracy. Unfortunately, that also means that I tend to instinctively place commas in just about any and all places where I would briefly pause whilst speaking. It's something of which I've become aware in the last couple of years and something that I still need much work on.

I don't really think it's an issue with which I cannot deal, but consider this a spoiler-alert...

*NOTE: This post is class-required, so those tuning in for a political rant I apologize.

It occurs to me upon listening to the story of Adrian Schoolcraft that he is the exact type of man (or woman) whom I would want working as a police officer in my neighborhood. It is the duty of all officers of the law to protect and serve the ordinary citizens of their specified jurisdiction. Officer Schoolcraft did precisely that. In fact, not only did he serve his community, but he also risked his own reputation and his career in the ultimate Catch-22; by serving those within his precinct and protecting them from broader police negligence and abuse, he found himself suspended from the very job he was performing. 

It's rather shocking, downright frightening, to hear the audio recordings presented by Officer Schoolcraft as they prove that justice for the citizens of Brooklyn's 81st Precinct was not being upheld by those with whom that very responsibility had been entrusted. The accounts of people being ticketed or arrested for open container violations when they were merely drinking from clearly-marked water or Gatorade bottles would sound entirely unreal and unbelievable if it weren't for the proof of corruption provided by Schoolcraft's secret tapes.

Some might argue that what he did was in and of itself a violation of the law and, thus, makes him just as much a part of the problem that he was attempting to fix. However, some quick internet research shows that what Schoolcraft did was not likely a violation of any privacy laws as the recordings he made of his superiors were principally of conversations to a group of other officers or in any other situation where the parties involved should not have had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

That having been said, I would hope that those who were reasonably well versed in this story felt that sometimes two wrongs can make a right. Perhaps it was wrong of Officer Schoolcraft to surreptitiously record the conversations that he did, but it was certainly more wrong for the commanders of the 81st Precinct to try to operate in the vile way in which they did. At the end of the day, Schoolcraft did the one thing he felt he had to do in order to try to restore honor and integrity to his precinct, not for himself, but for the citizens of Bed-Stuy's 81st. 

It's certainly one thing for the commanders of the Precinct to order their subordinates to increase the number of citations and arrests they made in a given time period (though as made clear in the story it's illegal to punish officers for not meeting such arbitrary quotas), but when the threats of repercussions against officers not meeting their numbers for the month enter the equation there is a serious issue at hand. 

Sadly, the unwarranted arrests of ordinary people weren't the only symptoms of a corrupt police department. I think the most chilling revelation of Officer Schoolcraft's recordings was that officers of the 81st were at times writing up criminals for lesser charges than they'd actually been arrested for and, most chillingly, sometimes outright ignoring criminal complaints in the name of making the Precinct look better. The story of a serial rapist being utterly ignored for the sake of saving face within the precinct is the most devastating piece of this borderline-macabre puzzle. To think that the citizens of Bed-Stuy's 81st had been living under the assumption that their police department was keeping them safe when, in reality, it had allowed a serial rapist to prowl the streets of Brooklyn is disgusting at best and horrifying at worst.

Officer Schoolcraft did the right thing. That's all there is to it. The fact that his superiors persecuted him only goes to show why he had to do what he did. Sure, he could have gone to the papers and told some intrepid reporter his story, but without the proof that his recordings provided, who's to say he'd have been believed? There's no reason to even doubt that had Schoolcraft gone to the media with the story and without his tapes that the precinct wouldn't have simply swept the whole thing under the rug and allowed the extreme corruption to continue unabated. 

No. Schoolcraft did the only thing he could do despite the risks to his reputation and career and for that I think he should be commemorated.

We all have rights as Americans and what the command of the 81st effectively did had the consequence of restricting and/or outright violating those rights. It's not unreasonable for the everyday person to expect to be able to walk down the street peaceably and not be hassled by the police. 

So, when you are in a position to expose the police for corruption, for arresting, ticketing, stopping and frisking people without probable cause, or for endangering an entire neighborhood by simply ignoring those crimes which would have reflected poorly upon the precinct, then I feel that you have a responsibility to do precisely that: Expose them.

My First Rant...

“Truth” is defined as “the quality or state of being true”. That’s pretty obvious. More specifically, the truth is further defined as “that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.” As a political science major and a total politics nut, the truth is very close to my heart. America has seen the consequences of its elected officials and its media personalities when they deviate from the truth, for whatever reason, and it’s typically not been pretty.

            In my opinion, the truth is essential to our democracy and the long-term survival of our nation. What value have we as a people if we decide that facts are negotiable and should only be paid any attention when it serves to further a certain agenda? The truth is really all we have as a people, American or otherwise. The truth is fact. It’s all the things we’ve learned and know without a doubt to be. It’s a rock upon which we can all rest.

            Of course, the truth can sometimes be subjective but nevertheless still remain truth. A classic example is from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi when the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi explains himself in regards to his having hidden, from Luke’s perspective, the knowledge that Darth Vader was actually Luke’s father. In Episode IV: A New Hope, Obi-Wan told Luke that “a young Jedi by the name of Darth Vader betrayed and murdered [Luke’s] father [Anakin Skywalker].” In that instance, the views of the Jedi religion did support Obi-Wan’s later explanation that what he’d told Luke “was true…from a certain point of view” insofar as the Jedi believed that when one fell to the Dark Side that they ceased to be the person they were and become someone new entirely. And that’s the crux of this thing we call “truth”; it’s both abstract and concrete at the same time depending upon the context in which it is delivered.

            However, for the sake of this particular discussion, I’m going to address the more concrete aspects of truth vis-à-vis American media and politics. 

           While many would disagree, when I think of a modern-day truth-teller, I think of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. As I said, there are those who would disagree but I would submit that those people refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that while Keith may be an outspoken liberal and will interject his opinion into his news hour, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t basing his beliefs upon factual sources. More importantly, he strives to report that which is provable and, by definition, true. Simply disagreeing with his ideology doesn’t refute the facts he uses in putting together his show each night. Yes, sometimes his passion takes him over the line of truth into the realm of speculation but it speaks volumes that he almost always corrects the record and has frequently accepted blame for blurring the line between truth and opinion, apologizing, and working to prevent a repeat of that mistake.

            Meanwhile, and this is especially relevant in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, there are those who are considered Olbermann’s counterparts who consistently report opinion, conjecture, and speculation as fact. They utilize fear and anger to elicit a knee-jerk reaction from their audience, a concept known as “reaction over cognition.” The goal is precisely as the phrase implies: to say things that override the otherwise logical impulses of a person with a purely emotional reaction. For my money, no one media figure is as well versed in knee-jerk-reactionism than Fox News host Glenn Beck.

            There are too many examples of Beck either skating on the very thin ice of misinformation or outright plunging headlong into the icy waters of lying his ass off in order to terrify his viewers into subscribing to his political ideologies and the overall narrative of conservatives are far better than liberals…well, more “accurately”, liberals are far worse than conservatives. A brief example of Beck using fear and misinformation to stir up controversy is often implying that violence “is coming from the left.” Perhaps that’s the genius behind his efforts in that he rarely calls for his viewers to be violent (and he’s often implored them not to resort to violence), but it’s hard to imagine that he’s unaware of the fear-stoking that his constant warnings of a wave of impending “left-wing violence” could provoke right-wing pre-emptive violence.

            Yet, that doesn’t mean Beck hasn’t advocated violence, alluded to violence, or implicitly called for violence against those with whom he doesn’t agree.

-   On his Fox News program on 8/6/2009, Beck joked about putting poison in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s wine during an absurd segment in which a woman is sitting with him wearing a Pelosi mask.

-   On his radio program on 5/14/2010, Beck claimed that there will be “rivers of blood if we don’t have values and principles.” He was referencing a quote by Thomas Jefferson with the “rivers of blood” bit, and continued on in his own words with the implication that violence will be the right’s solution to the actions of the current administration.

-   Shockingly, during a May 15^th, 2010 commencement speech at Liberty University, Beck actually advised the graduates to “shoot to kill” in regards to the need for them to speak out. I guess that was easier for him to say than to suggest that the graduates be ready to fire word bullets from their mouth rifles.

            Those are just a microscopic sampling of Beck’s deluded ramblings in which he claims to know the future, a dystopian future in which the liberals/progressives/democrats have begun a civil war, placed dissenters into prison camps, enslaved the masses, or created some ill-defined global government that, too, is vaguely evil and delivered on air with a tone of voice that exudes Beck’s supposed fear and anger over his own delirious predictions. Of course, Mr. Beck is not the only public figure guilty of this recent bout of fearmongering, nor is the left-wing innocent of similarly dangerous rhetoric, but there will be plenty of time to explore this in the near-future.

            The point here is that the concepts of truth-telling and troublemaking are more complex than one would assume upon first glance as both can be forces for good or forces for evil depending upon who wields them and how they choose to wield them. The other point is that Glenn Beck's hold on reality is tentative at best...




NOTE: In case anyone reading this is confused, let me clear up a small contradiction that Beck and others like him constantly make in their fearmongering.
He lumps communists and fascists together often, and the president is typically accused of subscribing to both ideologies by his crazier opponents. The problem, and it's truly a minor one, is that fascism and communism are diametrically opposed to one other in the political spectrum.
I shall explore this further in a future post.