Tasered by the Light

The student getting tasered at the Kerry forum the other day makes me uneasy about our relationship with cops from here on out. While the police surely over-reacted, I’ve got a feeling this kid knew what he was doing, and was being a bit of a baiting jackoff, knowing he’d be immortalized on YouTube forever. Today's folk hero - I promise you that as "victimized" as this kid is, this video is all over his MySpace page. Between the accessibility to the mass media via cell phone cameras/videocameras/Youtube and our now insatiable thirst to be on tv/the internet no matter what it takes, no matter who we hurt or how stupid we look for our 15 minutes of fame these incidents are gonna increase exponentially. Which means that’s a few more seconds from now on that cops have to hesitate, thinking “Is this kid for real, or is he bullshitting for attention?” And now cops know that at any moment anything they do they can be filmed – obviously sometimes that works in the public’s favor, but it may backfire also. A cop may think why bother jumping in, I’m gonna get hosed on videotape, I’ll look the other way. A double-edged billy club, I reckon.