Dear Editor:
Does art imitate life or is it the other way around?
"The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder," Mayor Richard J. Daley
"A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper," Derrick Jensen
"(NYC police) officers rob banks. They collude with drug dealers. They pilfer credit cards from prisoners to buy groceries, and they take payoffs from street peddlers as protection money. Sex is often at the center of their sins ... .While it has been years since the last major scandal, there is no shortage of individual misconduct cases," NYT March 28, 2010
I have been enjoying "Blue Bloods" on CBS. It details the lives and times of four generations of a NYC police family. It follows the requisite MSM premise that the police are wholly good and only occasionally, marginally sullied by a bad apple or two (who are delivered their just desserts by the end of the episode). "Blue Bloods" is of course an Orwellian piece of propaganda that celebrates and exonerates a police force with arguably the most egregious, longest standing tradition of corruption in the nation. (Hey, can't I have my guilty pleasures?)
My favorite character is Detective Danny Reagan (played by Marky Mark's big brother, Donny Wahlberg). He is the character with the most dramatic promise because he comes closest to embodying the mindset of most real cops: the conflict between the requirement to operate within the law and the desire to go rogue and just crack heads with impunity. Of course every time Danny yields to his rogue impulses, he is fully justified by circumstances and applauded as in, "Don't we wish cops were allowed more forgiving leniency when they break the law in the name of order?"
I couldn't avoid thinking of last Friday's episode in light of the Occupy Wall Street events. In it, crusty Police Commissioner, Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) is faced with the need to clear out a nest of militant black church members from a building where someone "suspects" a crime has occurred.
Is it a coincidence that Mayor Bloomberg last week complained of unpunished crimes, taking place in Zuccotti Park, which needed to be addressed?
Am I cynical enough to believe the good people at CBS are in cahoots with the mayor in establishing an excuse to limit free speech?
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Grade: grade here
Cast: cast here
Director: director here
Rating: rating here
Running time: minutes
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