First Draft

Erm:

Via Metaquotes.

A.

Richard Pryor once noted that when a black man deals with the criminal justice system and is looking for justice, that’s what he finds: just us.Ryan Moats found that out on Thursday.

Moats, a back up running back for the Houston Texans, blew through a red light on the way to Baylor Medical Center. Athletes speeding and disobeying traffic signals is par for the course, but Moats was trying to get his wife to the hospital to say goodbye to her mother, who was dying. Officer Robert Powell followed Moats into the parking lot and detained him on a traffic violation. Moats’ wife, Tamishia, managed to make it into the hospital while Powell continued to process Moats’ ticket.

Despite pleas from a nurse, who confirmed that Moats’ mother-in-law was in fact dying, and a Plano police officer, who came upon the scene, Powell plodded along with the ticket. At one point, he told Moats “I can screw you over.” Charming.

The Dallas Police Department has placed Mr. Congeniality on administrative leave, ripped up the ticket and formally apologized to Moats, none of which will give him back that moment in time. What is likely to follow is what always follows: never-ending analysis of the moment, a series of stories in which people come out of the woodwork saying this guy was an asshole to them too and several columns by prominent columnists loading up against this guy. He’s an easy target, but he’s beside the point.

What happened when he saw Moats step out of the car was less about the rule of law and more about establishing dominance. In order to function in a jobin which people die by completing simple traffic stops, police must maintain a sense of discipline, order and strength. Failure to retain control of a situation can lead to an officer being a cautionary tale of another kind.

Still, there’s a fine line between control and a power trip and Powell clearly crossed it. Even more, his actions cast police once again in the morality play of black vs. blue. Whilecolumnistsandeditorial writers have noted that the smoking gun of racism hasn’t been located, it’s on everyone’s minds. As stupid as Powell was in the 17-minute exchange, the one saving grace he has is that he managed not to use the “n” word while threatening Moats.

If there is a modicum of importance to athletics, it’s that it often provides people with an escape from every day life. If there’s a modicum of value to athletics, it’s that it focuses a microscope on specific social ills that might not otherwise garner the proper level of attention. Moats rushed for 94 yards last season, a paltry sum by NFL standards. And yet thanks to those 94 yards, millions of citizens were able to see an injustice that might otherwise have been ignored. This exchange is likely to get at least one bad cop off the street, reinforce the notion that we don’t tolerate crap like this as a society and perhaps get us to take one more look at the issue of race, even if it’s just for an instant.

For Moats, however, that must be small consolation as he woke up this morning, screwed over.

Talk! Er, post.

A.

Gather round folks, it’s the QTBS, ’80s theme week edition (don’t know how this happened, but I apologize in advance…)

– I know it’s not funny, but every time I seethis companyin the news I think of this. It’s the product of too much MTV as a kid in the ‘80s.

– Speaking of which, thank God I only listen to shitty ‘80s music.

– The people who wrotethis study need to spend a Saturday in Wal-Mart watching parents interact with kids. I think they’d reverse their position really quickly. In the interest of full disclosure, I was a kid who got spanked by my parents on occasion. The few times they had to resort to this measure, they would take me to a private place (usually a bathroom) and do the deed. My attitude was quickly readjusted, but until the time I was 12, every time my folks asked if I needed to go to the bathroom, I had a twitch and a “Why? What did I do?” response at the ready. My kid is still in the formative stage, but my wife and I have talked about this a bit (we’re believers in the “count to three” thing, but if you get to three, you’d better be ready to deliver on the threat).

Question of the day: What are your thoughts on the spanking thing?

– It’s not bad enough that some celebs are arrogant enough to believe we need to know about what they’re doing every second of the day via Twitter, but now we’re told that most of them aren’t actually doing the Twittering themselves. I guess this is what I’ll be training kids for in the future: “Hey, if you can pass advanced reporting and graduate, maybe you can get a job Tweeting for 50 Cent!”

– Who says a snappy headline can’t attract a casual reader?

–Yet another instance of the people who should be defending the law defending their own interests instead. Hey, Barney Fife and friends, theft is theft. If you don’t like it when people write something negative about you, don’t break the law. It’s not like they picked on you for illegally parking your squad. You were arrested on suspicion of DRUG TRAFFICKING. Embrace the horror of your own stupidity, or at least allow others to read about. What makes this even dumber is that the paper still has a WEBSITE, which is likely getting tons more traffic now that people are reporting on your theft of their newspapers.

– Finally, I find myself in anxious anticipationof this.Jay McInerney is one of my favorite authors and part of a great ‘80s nihilism movement. As the 1990s and beyond crept in, some of his stuff wandered but at least he didn’t goBretEastonEllis on us. If you ever want to read a great book, pick up almost anything Jay’s written. Model Behavior is still one of my favorites.

Thanks for letting me share your air. Be back next week.

Doc

This is what morning looks like in our house, every single day:

A.

Bobby Jindal repeated the ‘hope he fails’ mantra earlier this week at a $2500 dollar a plate fundraiser.Fred Thompson awoke from his nap long enough to gum on a cigar and add his own amen. Somewhere, Rush Limbaugh snickered…

Meanwhile, across the country, tent cities have sprouted like weeds, the definitive legacy of the last administration, which DID fail–uterly, totally, completely. An administration supported by people like…Jindal…Thompson…andLimbaugh.

You’d think the degree of failure might shame these people into a measure of silence (to their credit, Bush himself and Condolleezza Rice have taken that route)…but you’d think wrong. And I guess it helps to have amedia that’s been carrying GOP water for so long that they rush to the defense of…Dick Cheney.

You know, maybe it’s just me, but when I see Dick Cheney smugly preening about how he and George managed to “keep the country safe” after 9/11–perhaps THE most ghoulishmulligan ever, and of course there are the anthrax attacks so conveniently swept under the rug–I think about the shipwrecked economy, or the trashed Constitution…or 8/29 (i.e., the flood–the closest thing we’d get to a dress rehearsal of some sort of attack)…or the open-ended wars daily costing us lives and money…and I wonder:

Why do they need to attack us again? Bush-Cheney did a bang up job all by themselves.

And the people who supported them–Jindal, Thompson, Limbaugh, et al, should be treated with the disdain they deserve. Their leader, and his system were DISCREDITED…completely. They’ve had enough chances to try again. They failed.

Why do they get treated with any measure of respect?

A survivor of HiroshimaAND Nagasaki:

TOKYO
— A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a
survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II,
officials said Tuesday.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certifiedhibakusha,
or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki,
but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three
days earlier as well, city officials said.