To Protect And Serve

You all know how much I love Falguni Sheth; she's really the perfect Salon contributor, seemingly engineered in a lab somewhere in the darkest recesses of Glenn Greenwald's Brazilian compound. Over the weekend she published a piece both at Salon and at some blog called "Translation Exercises" about how the "surveillance state" boogeyman that terrifies the shit out of professional liberals didn't work in preventing the Boston Marathon bombings. It was one of those rare occasions where even the basic premise of a column had me shaking my head because I couldn't quite fathom how the need to make hay out of a pet issue could so blatantly override basic logic and reason, that being: No, the various cameras and social networking tools that occasionally seem to indeed put us on the wrong side of the glass in Bentham's panopticon didn't prevent the bombing in Boston, but it damn sure helped lead to the very swift killing and capture of the guys who did it. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of the political point you need to score.

In addition to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the scary surveillance state, there were of course the requisite complaints leveled at the press and the general populace, who, in the opinion of Sheth, allowed themselves to be herded like sheep by the commands of the police and the feds. See, in the world of pissy far-left liberals, the dreaded "state" isn't made up of actual people and is therefore always to be eyed with suspicion; when the police instruct you to do something during a crisis situation in the name of trying to keep your ass out of the line of fire, you should immediately stand your ground and shout, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, man!" Of course nobody's saying that you should blindly follow every order you're given for as long as you've given them, but it's stupid as hell to assume that everything the police tell you is part of their secret cabal aimed at keeping you imprisoned in your home indefinitely so that the state can institute martial law. That's Alex Jones territory, proof that the political spectrum isn't a line but a circle and the far ends of the left and right most certainly meet.

Anyway, all of that brings me to the picture above. It's of a Boston police officer named John Bradley taking milk to a family during the citywide "shelter in place" request last Friday. I'm not saying that every cop is a doll, but by the same token, not every cop is some dangerous thug -- in fact, the vast majority of them really are fine men and women committed to public service. They don't issue requests or commands just for the hell of it, particularly not in crisis situations; they're actually interested in keeping you safe. There's no shame in not being a contrarian asshole and just listening to what the cops and feds have to say instead of proudly boasting about how you're not one of the "sheeple" and will do whatever you want because you don't trust the man. In other words, there's no shame in not being an asshole like Falguni Sheth -- far from it.

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"Why were two bombs set yesterday? Why did they hurt so many people who were just out to enjoy the beautiful day and take refuge in beauty of the human body’s endurance and athletic prowess? Why were they set up to hurt -- not just physically but psychically -- so many people who were visiting Boston from around the world? Time may give us some answers to those questions, but it may also withhold them until we are ready -- finally -- to see what those answers are. I fear that what we will find is that the hate reflected in the destruction of so many lives is nothing but a mirror of our own -- of hate reflected in American domestic and foreign policies that have engendered so much destruction -- for (GITMO prisoners) Samir Naji, Shaker Amir and their fellow prisoners and families, and the destruction of so many innocent families around the world."

-- Falguni A. Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College and a self-described writer about politics, race, and feminism, writing for Salon today

Well, I have to give Salon credit: It managed to make it through 24 whole hours before publishing a piece that conflates the Boston Marathon bombing with U.S. foreign policy and essentially blames us for it. That's progress, I suppose.

Incidentally, if you're unfamiliar with the work of Falguni, she was behind this gem from a couple of months ago. In other words, she was practically engineered in a lab somewhere to be the perfect Salon contributor.

Quote of the Day

"It’s a blaring example of how casually racism and misogyny, even about young children, can be accepted and even celebrated by some percentage of the public — especially when it is couched in the form of humor. So many kinds of hostility — racial, sexual, homo- and trans-phobic humor — gain an easy acceptability, precisely because it plays into the ironic hipster self-aware racism of 'being so cool that we know it’s racist that it’s ok to participate in it. We’re above it.'"

-- Salon contributor Falguni A. Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College and a self-described writer about politics, race, and feminism, on The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet

I won't lie, I was eagerly awaiting the entertainment sure to be had when Salon decided to step up and dispense the liberal intelligentsia's view from Olympus on this whole Onion thing -- and God knows, Falguni A. Sheth didn't disappoint.

Right off the bat in her piece, she talks about how she turned off the Oscars immediately after MacFarlane's "We Saw Your Boobs" song, echoing what she amusingly believes is the off-put sentiment expressed by the actresses cut to in the audience during the skit (and completely unaware of the fact that Naomi Watts and Charlize Theron's disgusted looks were, in fact, part of the skit).

She then goes on to hit all the touchstones of any good humorless screed from the hyper-sanctimonious contingent of the left in the wake of something like this: accusing The Onion of both racism and misogyny; bringing up a thirty-year-old dissertation on race relations and language from a law professor; mentioning Eve Ensler and her "One Billion Rocking" event and an address from Ravi Shankar's daughter, who recently admitted to being sexually abused, that the author insists should be viewed by the people at The Onion; declaring that what The Onion and MacFarlane do amounts to actual psychic harm against women. You get the picture.

The piece is so flawless in its depiction of pompous, politically correct indignation that it reads like satire itself. I'm wondering whether it was actually written by the staff of The Onion.

Again for the cheap seats: Quvenzhané Wallis is an incredibly talented young girl who was used in an admittedly tasteless and ill-advised joke to make a point about how our culture, often through social media, attacks celebrities. Wallis wasn't the one the joke was aimed at. It was aimed at us.