Rent-a-cop Follies and PlayDough Dollies

pjdillon@attglobal.net
Much will be written about this story in the days and weeks to come, analysts sifting through the chaff looking for “Capitol M” meaning, critics of contemporary American society will hang windy drafts off it and college campus radio will spoof it again and again. For those unfamiliar with events in rural New York last week, here’s the text as stripped from Saturday’s Times:

Shooting the messenger: lawyer arrested over anti-war T-shirt
FROM ELAINE MONAGHAN IN WASHINGTON
POLICE have arrested a 60-year-old lawyer wearing a T-shirt saying “Give Peace A Chance”. A judge charged Stephen Downs with trespassing after he politely declined to leave the Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, New York State, on Monday evening, or remove his top, which he had had printed there. Mr Downs pleaded not guilty and cited his right to free speech. He could face up to a year in prison. His son, Roger, 31, avoided arrest by removing a T-shirt saying “No War With Iraq” on one side and “Let Inspections Work” on the other. His father’s second offending message was: “Peace On Earth.” “We weren’t talking to people or handing out leaflets,” Mr Downs Jr told a local newspaper. “My point was I’m not trying to convert anybody,” his father said. Most Americans support President Bush’s war plans, but many Democrat voters oppose them. James Murley, the local police chief, told The Times that his office had been inundated with complaints since the arrest. “We’re getting all kinds of e-mails, some of them rather nasty,” he said. Chief Murley said that one of his officers had tried for an hour to persuade Mr Downs to end a stand-off with two security guards who stopped him and his son after a shopper reported a confrontation with passers-by that she thought might turn nasty. But, as one guard pointed out three times in his deposition to police, he did so “in a nice way”. The other guard took a tougher line, alleging that the men were “bothering” shoppers by telling them why they opposed the “pending war with Iraq”. Chief Murley said that the shopping centre had signs advising customers that the “wearing of apparel likely to provoke disturbances” was banned. Paul A. Clyne, the District Attorney, also said that it was up to the mall to choose its clients. However, Mr Downs may have an ace up his sleeve when he appears in court on March 17, with no jury. He is the director of the local office of a state commission that investigates complaints against judges and imposes punishments. END

What can you say about that? Okay, if the guy is wearing a giant red swastika on his chest then you might expect that people would take issue and perhaps he’d end up with his head caved in or in cuffs for creating a public disturbance. But a lick from a John Lennon song? Ummm, perhaps not.
If the cops had any courage they would have arrested the mall manager for wasting their time and bitch slapped the two rent-a-cops so’s they don’t ring up with frivolous crap like this again. The really frightening thing is that given the extent of proliferating privately funded, legally sanctioned militias in the U.S. – mall walkers, armed security patrolling gated communities and businesses, transit cops with search and seizure powers and their own SWAT teams (as in NYC and LA) – and you realize that lawyer is lucky he didn’t end up pepper-sprayed at the least or tazered – 50,000 volts administered via cattle prod – by some doughnut-eating wannabe Soldier of Fortune.
You wonder what kind of world Tim and Aji’s little snapper Imaji is inheriting. Jihan and I attended her third birthday party today. Funny little girl who’ll blather your ear off one day and won’t open her mouth the next. I think she’ll be okay though. Don and Tuti (and 13-month-old Harry) gave her a New Generation Barbie dressed in some sort of opulent emerald colored wrap over an ankle length kilt. The anorexic strip of flesh-hued plastic wasn’t out of the box five minutes and she’d stripped it naked (by the way, nothing gets between Barbie and her kilt) and taken it to the bathroom for a thorough bath.
She spent quite some time and care drying her Barbie before laying it out on the couch and carefully, painstakingly ‘dressing’ her in purple playdough, even trying to knead it into Barbie’s kinky blond hair. Who knows what’s goes on in a kid’s head but if today is any indication, that little girl is going to settle in just fine.