Sheer dumbassery.
Of course Fox News stands with Officer Pepper Spray.
From Gawker:
“I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police,” Bill O’Reilly said tonight, discussing the appalling use of pepper spray by UC Davis police on Friday. No, God forbid we Monday-morning quarterback the police, especially, as O’Reilly continued, “at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.”
Indeed: what right do we have to think that Lt. John Pike should probably not have indifferently dusted peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away? And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn’t we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O’Reilly, that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially”?
What’s the big deal? It’s just food. And besides, when it comes to policing librulz, anything goes!
Fox News is a parody of Fox News.
By the way? Casually Pepper Spray Everything is a meme now, because of course it is.
gnomedad
It’s a vegetable! Like pizza!
TooManyJens
In that case, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind eating some carelessly prepared fugu. Food can’t be harmful, right? Maybe some cyanide — that comes from apple seeds and almonds!
Do they really believe the shit they spew on Fox? Would it be better or worse if they did?
BGinCHI
Shorter Fox: fuck yeah cops! Except for salary and benefits.
Fox Economics: Cops, your benefits and salary will be reduced, but you will be compensated by being encouraged to brutalize the population who make less than 500K per year.
AA+ Bonds
O’Reilly knows his audience. Violence is necessary – after all, they’re liberals.
The average O’Reilly viewer drifts to sleep at night dreaming of bashing some poor kid’s mouth in with a truncheon.
AA+ Bonds
@BGinCHI:
Note his quick train of thought: cops are going to have to use violence on campus because these kids are liberals and, inevitably, the state must hurt and kill liberals
piratedan
well no REAL people were affected, just a bunch of know nothing hippie students, so what’s the fuss about? Geez you’d think that they had just been waterboarded or something.
The Dangerman
Saw it live; after collecting my jaw from the floor, all I could picture was an old SNL sketch about the non-dairy floor wax.
BGinCHI
@AA+ Bonds: When you’ve conformed your whole life and whored it out for the man, you are not going to put up with any uppity shit from students or dark people who drive their own cars and know how to peel a carrot.
Genocides are built one O’Reilly/Limbaugh unit at a time.
John Weiss
Don’t the bulls realizing that they’re pepper spraying children? They could be theirs or ours. This sucks. Come pepper spray me but not my kids!
BGinCHI
@piratedan: Next on Fox: Liberals afraid of water and pepper! What’s next, capers??!! Rolling wheels of brie??
I’d really hate for some random person to pepper spray Fox personalities in their everyday lives.
Just tragic.
Dustin
@BGinCHI: Yes… tragic.
gnomedad
So when are they going to start talking about this guy as vice-presidential material?
piratedan
@BGinCHI: if only those kids knew true suffering, like living under the Clinton Presidency…..
AnotherBruce
Off topic, but I just watched a Wolf Blitzer interview with Bernie Sanders (Via Hulaballoo). It got me wondering how much of a moron one would have to make oneself into to be Wolf Blitzer. I wonder how many smart people CNN interviewed before they said: “Here is the simpleton we are looking for.”
Mike in NC
Every Sunday the local rag runs an O’Reilly article that makes me want to puke. What a maggot.
The Dangerman
Also (didn’t watch clip; again, saw live), Ms. Kelly said the color of the spray indicated it was diluted, so not all that bad.
Given some of the students ended up in the Hospital, sure glad it wasn’t full strength.
BGinCHI
@AnotherBruce: Even Buffalo people hate him, and they never eat their own. Except for Jim Kelly, who was a complete and total douchebag. Hey Jim, when did you stop beating your wife? Oh yeah, never.
Redshift
Then I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if someone arranged for it to be “served” in the Fox cafeteria, right?
TooManyJens
@The Dangerman:
But what are its countertops made of?
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@The Dangerman: When that kid started coughing up blood after having pepper spray shot directly down his throat, it was just because he was a pussy who can’t handle his spicy foods.
Goddam these people are miserable.
These are, of course, the same assholes who can’t imagine a worse torture than a top marginal rate of 39%, but getting blasted in the face multiple times with torture spray ain’t no thang. Sociopaths one and all.
Ed in NJ
I’m not a Kelly fan, but in this clip I think she defended the students rights to protest, and only mentioned the pepper spray as a food product when assessing the legality of using it against protesters.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Let’s try that again…
@The Dangerman: When that kid started coughing up blood after having pepper spray shot directly down his throat, it was just because he was a wuss who can’t handle his spicy foods.
Goddam these people are miserable.
These are, of course, the same assholes who can’t imagine a worse torture than a top marginal rate of 39%, but getting blasted in the face multiple times with torture spray ain’t no thang. Sociopaths one and all.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Ed in NJ: Corn is also a food product, but that doesn’t make it legal to cram a cob down someone’s throat.
Unless it’s a cop doing it to a hippie or a black person, naturally.
JWL
Here’s the deal: Corporate statists deem everyone not on board with their agenda as domestic enemies. In turn, I unhesitatingly, reflexively, reciprocate their hatred a hundredfold. They are my enemies. The notion that we are all simply patriotic Americans, whatever our political leanings, is worse than hogwash. It’s a bromide for the simple minded. By my lights, the GOP is simply the American fascist party. I will never turn a blind eye, or my back, upon its criminal assaults on my liberty. In that sense, it is my mortal enemy.
Spaghetti Lee
I guess the meme thing is an overall plus, keep it visible and all, but can’t anything create genuine emotion and action without being manhandled, picked apart, and pinned to a corkboard by the internet’s meta-bullshit machine?
Or maybe that is how people express genuine outrage these days (I’m often behind the times when it comes to stuff like that) but to me it’s coming off as “Oh right, the pepper spray thing, let’s photoshop it onto some album covers and famous photographs, oh, how witty.”
Billo, Kelly, and the rest are of course mendacious shitheads. That goes without saying.
Cluttered Mind
I wonder if the bitch thinks mustard gas is a “food product” too.
BGinCHI
@Cluttered Mind: Um, it’s a condiment gas, genius. It only hurts you on the side.
Redshift
@Ed in NJ:
How does that make it any less of a lie? Is there any police department in the country that doesn’t consider it a nonlethal weapon, and (at least theoretically) train their personnel accordingly?
gocart mozart
@gnomedad:
They still use it on Godfather’s Pizza. This is why it still tastes like shit.
gocart mozart
@BGinCHI: I’m stealing your line. hope you don’t mind.
trollhattan
@Cluttered Mind:
The idea of French mustard gas as a librul condiment has possibilities. Davis officer Pepper’s gigantic tank ‘o spray seemed odd to me, but not if he was threatened by grizzly bears.
http://counterassault.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=11
Just gets better and better.
BGinCHI
@gocart mozart: Put a quarter in the jar. Someday we hope to own a one bedroom on our two professors’ salaries.
celticdragonchick
Actually, Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic has writtern one of the best pieces on pepper spray cop I have read yet.
Joseph Nobles
Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon mustard gas?
MacKenna
Officer Pepper Spray Pike has a blog and a meme.
Enjoy.
John T
If the protests take a turn for the violent, I mean if the protesters start fighting back against the violent cops with violence, they can use the excuse that their molotov cocktails were filled with grain alcohol everclear, which is just a food product, essentially.
sharl
Pepper Spraying Cop gets the Tumblr treatment.
(Via long-time itinerant intertubes commenter pseudonymousinnc over in TBogg’s comments.)
Odie Hugh Manatee
If pepper spray is a food product I can’t wait until Republicans pass a bill that approves it as a food for school lunches.
I’m sure that parents across the nation will make sure that their kids get their daily serving.
celticdragonchick
@AA+ Bonds:
The folks at Fox Nation and RedState have been fapping over the possibility of Kent State meets My Lai for weeks now. They don’t want billy clubs…they want 150 grain .30 cal FMJ rounds at 750 rpm cyclic into a crowd of protestors.
Speedy
@gocart mozart:
Are you sure they don’t use actual shit on a Godfather’s Pizza?
BGinCHI
@celticdragonchick: They are truly the Foghorn Leghorn to the chickenhawks who spray and beat defenseless protesters.
What would the Founders do?
Joseph Nobles
@celticdragonchick: Yes, he’s right on. “Shooting an Elephant” is a rather apt piece to read right about now.
celticdragonchick
@Joseph Nobles:
This last Veterans Day at Guilford Courthouse Battlefield I was doing volunteer work as a Rev War militia soldier, and there were re-enactors from all across American hisotry with weapon and clothing displays for the public. A retired Army major was in full WW I doughboy regalia and had a bunch of WW I artifacts, including gas masks. Somebody had tried one of the masks on (he showed me which one) and the mustard gas residue reacted with his sweat and burned the shit out of his neck…
I can’t imagine trying to explain that one at the Cone Hospital ER.
“I got mustard gas chemical burns from a 90 year old mask that was used in WW I….”
celticdragonchick
@Joseph Nobles:
Yeah. I thought it was the most interesting bit I have read yet about the matter.
Bethanyanne
Thinking about the meme… I may have to fire up Photoshop tomorrow to make a pic of Pike spraying Boehner in the orange face, making him cry.
Cris (without an H)
[email protected] “Sgt. Pepperspray”
gocart mozart
@sharl:
I like the Where is Waldo Being Pepper Srayed.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv1gf21YZO1r6m1z5o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1322030473&Signature=%2FVOd1WucODgMPGFbyg3KT97Bmng%3D
Jenny
I drink Dr. Pepperspray and I’m proud.
I’m part of an original crowd.
I’m a pepper, you’re a pepper, wouldn’t you like to be peppersprayed, too.
Comrade Luke
Pregnant Woman Blasted with Pepper Spray by SPD Says She Miscarried.
It’s a food product.
Martin
@Redshift:
Maddow had a really nice segment on that, arguing that had it not existed, the police wouldn’t have shot the protestors, so the nonlethality of pepper spray didn’t introduce a safer element, but a more dangerous one – and in most use cases, that’s generally true.
But I’m reasonably certain that UC will ban the use of pepper spray and other nonlethal options for the purpose of crowd control due to this. I suspect they’ll only be usable when a demonstrated physical threat is presented either to the officer or another individual (I think this might be policy on some campuses due to how the campus police often serve as a substation of the city police). The student at UCLA being tazered 2 years ago isn’t exactly forgotten (plus it cost the university a quarter million dollars to settle).
Martin
@Comrade Luke: So, if that Mississippi law had passed, who would have been charged with murder in this case?
Martin
@Bethanyanne: You need to adjust the color in Boehners face, making him look less tan. The pepper spray is roughly Boehners color now, so that Pike is painting him orange.
willard
Ricin is made from the castor bean and therefore practically a food product. Maybe the police should switch to spraying that? /snark
Triassic Sands
A common phenomenon for long-running television programs is self-parody. Typical prime time dramas may begin with reasonably plausible plots and characters, but after a few years these programs seem to double back on themselves, straining plausibility to the breaking point.
Fox (more of a sit-com than drama, I suppose) seems to be following the same pattern. The disappearance of Glenn Beck from Fox may have been a major setback, as his show was probably the most ridiculous of all, but Roger Ailes seems more than able to keep escalating the absurdity, apparently in an effort to satisfy the widely held belief among TV executives that long-running shows need to enter the world of pure fantasy to remain interesting. Reminding Ailes that Fox News is supposed to be “news” would obviously be pointless, since reporting real news in a “fair and balanced” way has never been a goal of Fox.
I am pleased to say that I have never watched even a single Fox News program in its entirety. My exposure to their poisonous product has been limited to video clips provided by political blogs on-line. That has been more than adequate, thank you.
Ruckus
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
That’s Fucking Asshole Sociopaths
GOP=FAS
Comrade Luke
@Martin: Nah, I’m sure the cops felt they were in danger.
MikeJ
@Martin:
The “mother” for endangering the “life” of her fetus.
Yutsano
OT: Oh for fuck’s sake Willard.
(warning: Hufflepuff link)
Xenos
The point about Fox being self-parody is pretty telling. Like the GOP lunacy it helps generate, look for it to get more extreme as it continues to fail. Unfortunately that failure could take a while. Once Murdoch passes, someone is going to liquidate the empire, as it really does not make long-term financial sense.
Eventually we will see a farcical repeat of the Hearst/Patty Hearst dynamic. And a new generation will ask ‘WTF was that about?”
pete mack
O’ReillyLt. Pike was sitting in a bar and he goes to the bar tender“You see that church over there? I built it with my bare hands but do they call me Pike the church builder? Nooo!
You see that school over there? I taught there for 30 years but do they call me Pike the educator? Nooo!
But you
fuck one goatpepper spray ten students….”The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
A “food product”. That’s like calling Fox News “journalism”.
Also, fuck, 6 am flight running on a shot of 5 hour energy. Why do i do this to myself?
JGabriel
@celticdragonchick: Thanks for linking that. I’m not a Conor fan, per se, but Friedersdorf has his good moments and that’s one of them. It was worth reading.
.
JGabriel
@Martin:
UC doesn’t need to take any special measures to do that. California already bans the use of pepper spray against non-violent protesters.
Every one of those pepper-sprayed students has grounds for a legitimate civil suit complaint, and probably a legitimate criminal complaint as well — though I’m not as certain about the latter as I am about the civil grounds.
.
Rick Taylor
Davis is a liberal campus? Not when I last went there, not in comparison with the other UC campuses.
JoeShabadoo
I think the Pepperspray Everything meme is good.
This sends a message to cops that when they do something they will not only be remembered but be FAMOUS for it. I can’t imagine Pike is having a good time since all his neighbors can see him doing something horrible.
Pretty soon regular beat cops are going to start hesitating to do this shit because while they may not feel particularly bad about it, they won’t want to be the face that is beating some kids head in or casually pepperspraying kids all over the internet.
Triassic Sands
@Rick Taylor:
The standard is “moderate” Regence U. and by that standard Davis is probably Stalinist.
Note: there may be no universities in “godless” America today that qualify as truly conservative. That is a standard that could only be met if the Baby Jeebus were the school’s president. And we know that isn’t likely, since the Baby J is too busy making a killing on Wall Street. After all, he is part of the 0.0000000000000000000000001%.
RSA
@BGinCHI:
Liberals have been afraid of water since it was sprayed at protestors in the civil rights marches. You know, the way kids stay cool in the summer!
And attack dogs? They’re probably someone’s pets.
Baud
Pretty soon, Sean Hannity will claim that being pepper sprayed is no big deal and volunteer to get pepper sprayed for charity…and then will never follow through.
xian
@JGabriel: I don’t think that’s true. are you talking about the redwoods/q-tip case?
harlana
that nice cop was just “feeding” hungry kids!
WereBear
What’s wrong with “Pepper Spray Cop” turning into a meme? How long can we look at such cruelty directly? It’s like staring into the sun.
What memes do, is travel. People who have no clue about Marxist theories of property or fascist tactics will get a nerve thrum from seeing it… and then understand it on a visceral level.
That is a meme weakness… and its beauty.
SensesFail
This.
I wonder if Keith Olbermann still reminds Hannity about the waterboarding-for-charity thing.
El Cid
__
And it’s a Platonic ideal, and it’s also a parody, and for its inhabitants and visitors it’s also a cherished land of refuge from the modern world, and it’s also a dessert topping.
magurakurin
@JoeShabadoo: I agree. It’s a modern day version of the stocks.
magurakurin
@JoeShabadoo: I agree. It’s a modern day version of the stocks.
Jay in Oregon
@Bethanyanne:
Someone already beat you to it; there are at least two pictures like that in the Casually Pepper Spray Everything article ABL linked to.
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/204039-casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop
chopper
then i’m sure kelly wouldn’t mind eating a big spoonful of botulism toxin, which after all is only a ‘food product’.
SenyorDave
I truly am starting to wonder whether the Fox crew are human beings. Were they created in a laboratory?
PIGL
@celticdragonchick: Absolutely, this. I have been spatting with very confused “Liberals” over at GOS who claim to believe there is some magical line between the pepper spray incidents we have seen, and simply shooting kids in cold blood with automatic weapons. Why is there a line? Apparently the reason is “USA!!! USA!!”.
He who would pepper spray like that would kill without hesitation, and the same people would be cheering it.
Seitz
One squirt and your south of the border! Mmmm. Incapacitating.
gnomedad
So is ricin.
@chopper:
Also, too.
bjacques
That George Orwell essay certainly explains how a cop might behave, as a representative of the Law, in front of an audience of civilians (or colonial subjects).
But as justification, I’m not buying it. On that day, in that place, he was the Empire (and had a gun), and could have done whatever he liked. He could have declared he would not kill the elephant as it was no longer a danger, ordered someone from the crowd to go fetch its owner to lead it away. (The owner’s liability might have extended to killing the elephant anyway, but that’s not mentioned.)
Lt. Pike, as a cop, even a “campo,” has the full force of state law at his or her back and a range of options up to and including deadly force. Time was on his side as well, and the protesters would be dealt with in due time.
Pike should be fired. If his actions were in line with school policy, those who made or implemented the policy should be fired, because something like this is inevitable. QED. whatever the case, the University administration must make sure this can’t happen again.
To paraphrase the great Stan Lee, the one with the greater power has the greater responsibility, for both the use *and misuse* of that power.
Bullsmith
Personally I hope that “only a food product” line haunts Ms. Kelley for many years. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how to dehumanize the suffering of others. Which is, after all, Fox’s main reason for being.
slippy
Pepper Spray, according to our military:
It sounds like “non-lethal” alternatives to violence, which are themselves violent, are no real alternative.
Pepper spray should be banned for police use. Along with tasers and rubber bullets. It seems like too many cops just have a savage streak running through them that suppsedly “non-lethal” weapons enable, rather than inhibit excessive violence and unnecessary force.
In other words, let them go back to their guns, which have real and unavoidable consequences, require them to file a report if rounds are fired, and can be traced back to them if used improperly.
Obviously if we give these irresponsible kids other noisy toys, they just abuse them and hurt people.
I despise the police in this country. They have earned it, too.
tjmn
@SenyorDave:
I truly am starting to wonder whether the Fox crew are human beings. Were they created in a laboratory?
Calling Dr. Roger Ailes Frankenstein, Abby Normal is on line One.
Joseph Nobles
@bjacques: I don’t think “Shooting the Elephant” is meant to justify either Orwell or Pike. Orwell takes one of his worst moments and dissects it ruthlessly. Time will tell if Pike possesses this level of introspection, but should he do, he would find the essay a worthy guide.
bubba
Castor beans are a food product…….essentially.
agrippa
Yes, youth should be in revolt.
I was born in 1945, graduated from college in 1968. Tuition was low and the dormitory with a 20 meal per week contarct was $450 a semester. I had no serious difficulty paying what I needed. I worked for the same ( auto) company for 30+ years.
Fot younger people it is much different and much more difficult. One of the reasons for that ( there are other reasons as well) was the philistine attititude of many in my age group.
Catsy
@JoeShabadoo:
Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his “self—interest” gives you more leverage. –Lazarus Long
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
@gnomedad: Its a vegetable, like Megyn Kelly
fitley
I think it’s hilarious that Bill O’Reilly pretends he doesn’t know what pepper spray is, like it was invented yesterday. “Kelly what is this, pepper spray?” “Well Bill you ignorant POS, it’s vegetable spray”.
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