Sympathy For The Devil
How scared do you want to be this AM? Plenty scared? Okay, Click on over to the weblog, Second City Cop. It’s an anonymous clearinghouse for the opinions, beliefs, and rants of some Chicago police officers.
Natch, since no one’s name is attached, the true and unadulterated feelings of the blog’s author as well as commenters come through loud and clear.
Not Much Has Changed In 45 Years
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What do we learn by reading Second City Cop? A significant number of sworn officers of the law in the nation’s third largest city:
- Are chronically aggrieved
- Exist in a state of permanent rage
- Consider themselves persecuted
- Are contemptuous and insulting of those they disagree with
- Despise protesters
- Deny or minimize the existence of police misbehavior
- Are homophobic
- Are misogynist
- Are adept at concealing their racism with weasel words and code
- Are xenophobic
- Disdain everything from simple altruism to government programs designed to help the less fortunate among us
- Are four-square against minimum wage
- Hate the NFL as a result of five St. Louis Rams players protesting the decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson
- Believe that FEMA concentration camps will be established soon
I can go on and on but I won’t. Read for yourself and weep. Chicago has a total of some 13,000 police officers. They carry deadly weapons. They are authorized to take your freedom away for probable cause or on a true bill of indictment. They work hand in hand with prosecutors and the courts against the accused in our adversarial system of justice. Under these simple, basic criteria they can be described as the most powerful members of our society.
If a mere eight percent or so of those 13,000 hold any fraction of the above-mentioned feelings, then a thousand of them are F-U’d and dangerous bastards whom you’d be loath to want to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. But they have guns and badges.
Now, try to breathe.
[h/t to Neil Steinberg.]
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Art Sells
A huge slap on the back for the son of one of Bloomington’s most beloved citizens, Jack Dopp.
Jack’s been delivering newspapers in our town for decades now through his Bloomington News operation. He’s the guy who makes sure the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Indy Star get to your doorstep or your neighborhood merchant every single day, regardless of the weather. Pushing 70 but still wiry and quick on his feet, he continues to play for several local slow-pitch softball teams.
His son Michael is an artist based in the Los Angeles area. Michael teaches art at Chapman University in the town of Orange. He also produces scads of paintings and is represented by LA’s Roberts & Tilton Gallery.
Dopp Art
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Jack tells The Pencil that Michael’s work was exhibited in the big-time Art/Basel show in Miami Beach last week. Art/Basel is an annual series of international contemporary and Modern Art exhibits held in south Florida, Hong Kong, and Basel, Switzerland. This year, the Miami Beach exhibit featured several hundred artists from our hemisphere.
The big news is Michael sold a painting on the first day of the show. Jack whispered a figure in my ear; suffice it to say loads of folks in this holy land would be able to live for a year on the check Michael pocketed.
Who sez all artists are starving?
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Smart Kid
Have you been worrying about kids today not reading?
Stop.
Working at the Book Corner, I know that countless imps are gobbling up books even in this age of smartphones and dumbing down. For instance, Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Christiana Ochoa tows her three sons into the Book Corner with some regularity. She tells me if it were up to the boys, they’d park themselves at the shop twice or three times as much as they do already.
The lads dig the BC so much that one of them, Jackson, the oldest at 12, created a video love letter the other day. Watch:
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My fave line: “From the outside, it may look small. But inside, it opens up entirely new universes.”
And this kid is only 12?
The future, babies, is in good hands.
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