[NYTr] Body-Snatched Nation: Lessons of the Taser

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[It's all just another TeeVee show... As Cooney says here, John Kerry
was once a breathing, talking, thinking human being. He kept his
humanity after his famous testimony before Congress. And after his
famous medal-throwing gesture (performance art, perhaps, but very
effective propaganda).  He went on to the Senate and actually did
something effective against the Reagan imperialist secret war on
Nicaragua, spoke out about El Salvador. Some time since the 1990s he
got his brain transplanted into a cabbage patch somewhere. Thank
goodness he allowed the Cheney/Bush regime to deny him the Presidency.
Naked greed and aggression shouldn't be dressed up Boston-style.
The third world needs to have THEIR illusions wipe away, too.
Nicey-nice rich and pretty John Kerry would only have dressed up the
evil, making it all last a bit longer than it will otherwise. -NYTr]

Counterpunch - Sep 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/cooney09202007.html

Body-Snatched Nation: Lessons of the Taser

By BRENDAN COONEY

As scary as it is to watch someone electrocuted [a bit of an
overstatement -NYTr] for speaking his mind, the most horrifying parts
of the Andrew Meyer incident at the University of Florida are the things
happening on the periphery. (The video can be seen here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HgrFSHZfD1o)

There is the face of the woman on the right of the aisle, staring
obediently ahead to Sen. John Kerry as Meyer is pinned to the ground
just behind her. Or the man on the left smiling as the action comes
right past him like actors tearing down the fourth wall.

The only person with the power to stop the assault was the man with the
microphone, and his affect never rose above flat. Shortly before the
cops pressed the volts into Meyer's chest, Kerry can be heard droning,
"Folks, I think if we all just calm down." The folks he is addressing,
of course, are not the police but the few audience members who have
risen from their seats.

It's as if one is watching the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers,"
with Meyer coming out as the last human who has not been struck by the
pods that replace people with emotionless doubles.

Perhaps half the comments of Youtube viewers support the Tasing as an
apt treatment for someone so disruptive. Meyer may have been loud,
attention-hungry and an awkward presence in the room, but the
awkwardness is nothing compared with that of people trying to work out
the concept of free speech in their online comments.

"The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone the right to make a
public ass of oneself at the expense of others..." writes Russ Thayer.
Joseph (comment 87 on the New York Times site) agrees: "I hate to tell
you, but the meaning of Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you can scream
and shout at people. To exercise your right to Freedom of Speech you
need to remain calm." Says Dusty Bottoms, also on the Times site:
"Freaking idiot deserved it.... [H]ow many times does one have to be
warned? I'm all for free speech, but do it in an intelligent way."

The proportion of voices sympathetic to Meyer was altogether different
among readers of the Times of London. Thirty-three thought the Tasing
was wrong, and only three supported it. Should it be any surprise that
readers of the foreign press are less authoritarian than readers of our
mainstream media?

Duncan Roy, a United Kingdom resident, posts this comment on the New
York Times site: "If shouting and agitation were the criteria for
tasing then our entire british parliament would be tazed! What is it
with you Americans that you have become so frightened of free and
passionate speech?"

Police tasing students and others without cause is nothing new. A video
of an even scarier incident at UCLA last fall can be watched on youtube
at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs

Police Tased this student because he didn't have his student ID in the
library. The cell-phone video shows an eerily passive group of zombies,
inching slowly forward as the victim cries for help. Only after the
student is hauled out of the library, still being tased, do a couple
students start asking for badge numbers, to which the reply is: "Back
up or you'll get Tased too."

The alien pods haven't gotten us all, however. Based on the volume of
comments people posted on the Meyer incident, watching the video
clearly hit many Americans a lot harder than it did mainstream
journalists.

Mike Bellman of Columbia, Missouri, wrote, "I am ten times ashamed for
the spectators who watched this debacle slack-jawed and motionless like
they were watching the you-tube video online. Shame on citizens who
idly watch this kind of abuse and not recognize it. Shame on all of
them including John Kerry who didn't relieve the police of their
duties. And finally shame on anyone who doesn't have the courage to
question authority or believe that another American has the right to
speak freely in an open forum. I am ashamed to live in this America and
I weep for the US Constitution."

And an "ECartman" wrote that a "lot worse happened in Berkeley in late
60's and early 70's.... Wish these students could get more incensed
with what we are doing in Iraq everyday.... Don't expect this to happen
though as these kids really got no soul."

There's a whole racially charged aspect to the question of police
authority that I can't begin to unpack here, but "Jargon" says on the
Times site: "I am so sick of this blind, unquestionable trust that
whites hold for police."

On the spectrum of eeriness, watching Jimmy Kimmel laugh about the
incident on late-night TV was strange, but not as bad as reading
dismissive accounts of it in the mainstream press.

Shameful ad hominem reporting appeared in The New York Times,
Washington Post, and Salon.com. It's as if these reporters can't keep
these two concepts separate: "he was annoying" and "he deserved to be
arrested and assaulted." This confusion reminds me of people I
sometimes meet overseas who can't treat me as an individual because I
come from the loathsome United States. The fact that Meyer's website
features pranks and skits, notably that he carried a "Harry Dies" sign
after the release of the last Harry Potter book, seems to have
persuaded many people that he deserved what he got.

Someone who exudes such a reclining air that he will probably never be
on the receiving end of a Taser is The Washington Post's Emil Steiner,
who writes, "Kerry's voice, however, was no match for Meyer's, who
despite not having a mic continued to hog the audience's attention with
such glib catch phrases as: Help me! Help!'..."

This smug tone is jolted awake by the first comment below the piece, by
a "Mark" from Rhode Island: "One word: FASCISM! Be afraid to ask vital
questions in our free republic."

Steiner refers to the "mysterious" yellow book Meyer recommended for
Kerry. The book was Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast. Meyer identified the
author as a top investigative journalist; the senator said he'd already
read it. What's the mystery, aside from the stunning disconnect between
body-snatched reporters and the citizenry they putatively inform?

In observing the cultural milieu in which this incident took place,
from the blank reaction of students and Kerry to online comments to
press reports, there was an atavistic smack of the taste of what it was
to be living in the United States in 2002 and 2003. It was the most
haunting time I have known, when story after story in the mainstream
press sold the war, and when friends of mine with college and law and
medical and doctoral degrees jumped on the bandwagon, and I looked all
around me and saw only pods.

The question is when does it happen; when do the pods take over our
souls in this land? Is it in adolescence, when we have individuality
pounded out of us by the mob so eager to squelch any deviant thought or
behavior? Is it in classrooms or in front of televisions? What is the
pod?

Surely Kerry was alive in Vietnam, when he saved his fellow soldiers,
and when he came home to protest the war; but somewhere in 37 years of
public life he got the lobotomy needed to win elections here.
(Politicians with a pulse, such as Ralph Nader and Jessie Jackson,
don't stand a chance.) Even after he had time to reflect, Kerry offered
the Associated Press this safe pablum: "Whatever happened, the police
had a reason, had made their decision that there was something they
needed to do. Then it's a law enforcement issue, not mine."

Lost in the melee was one of Meyer's questions: "Why not impeach Bush
before he has a chance to invade Iran?" It's a question that, if
seriously considered, would Tase the brains of zombies everywhere.

[Brendan Cooney is an anthropologist living in New York City. He can be
reached at: itmighthavehappened at yahoo.com ]