In disturbing, yet not unexpected news, the police chief of Berkeley CA sent a uniformed police officer to a reporter’s home at 12:45 a.m. in order to have the reporter change the content of an online story he had written hours earlier. Inside Bay Area/Oakland Tribune reports:
“Minutes after reading a late-night news story online about him that he perceived to be inaccurate, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan ordered a sergeant to a reporter’s home insisting on changes, a move First Amendment experts said reeked of intimidation and attempted censorship.”
Boy, am I glad “First Amendment experts” are on the job to police this sort of thing. I think the rest of us just assume this is how things work in the Bay Area. I’m wondering if the “First Amendment experts” mentioned here actually live in the Bay Area. I can hardly wrap my brain around that. The concept of free speech by too many on the left coast seems to be the right to completely handcuff first response capability and to ignore reasonable police orders regarding the where and when of peaceful protest. But no, like a petulant little baby who cannot wrap its brain around the nuances of reasonable compromise, the Occupy movement demanded it all and demanded it now.
The Left wants the big government binky in the worst way, yet when the tyrannical police binky gets rammed into its GERBER® Organic SmartNourish™ Pureed Peas-hole, it cries foul.
It’s the same freakin’ binky.
Where is Jane Fonda? Where is Gloria Steinem? Maybe they can make some sense out of this; after all, they are First Amendment experts now, perhaps the experts in question. Maybe the reporter, Doug Oakley, should have merely thought what was actually published instead of submitting it to his editor. Fonda and Steinem seem to think it’s reasonable to reduce the First Amendment from “freedom of speech” to “freedom of thought.” Memo to Ms. Fonda: we’ve seen you get together with your fantasy-land buddies to create something this lame before: it was called “California Suite.”
Maybe it is time to increase the power of the state to enforce this new take on the First Amendment. Maybe Police Chief Meehan can head up the new federal agency to police the new, Fonda-Steinem doctrine of “STFU, We Don’t Like You, So Keep it to Yourself.” He seems like he has just enough poor judgment to be perfectly suited to enforce this monstrosity of intellect.
The essence of the Bay Area seems to be irony, at least to a Midwestern dolt like me. A cursory view of Berkeley Councilperson Jesse Arreguín’s webpage reads like a “Today in Irony” feature. In one story, non-compliance with federal officials on illegal immigration is vowed… then a few stories below, Arreguín meets with President Obama and tries to secure more federal subsidies for Berkeley. I fully expected to find exactly what I found when I clicked on the link. The Bay Area has become a caricature of itself. We all know the feds are only busting down a few doors here and there to make it look like they aren’t completely ignoring the nullification of federal laws in California… those are a lot of electoral votes out there!
Then you have the leftover radicals from the 60s and their newbie acolytes who bring things to a fever pitch, the authorities who respond in kind, and the bad things that invariably happen as a result. Of course it simply has to be ironic; it’s nullification of federal laws and the procurement of federal benefits all rolled into one. It’s bourgeois unrest with proletarian rhetoric. It’s the promise of a larger safety net with zero dollars in the bank. It’s self-sufficiency with constant pleading for more federal and state Ponzi scheme dollars. It just makes no sense. Like Sammy Hagar singing for Van Halen, I just doesn’t add up. Jamie’s not crying… she’s having a nervous freaking breakdown.
Regarding the late night visit to the reporter’s home, Police Chief Meehan defended himself as being out of sorts after a boisterous Tuesday night meeting with Berkeley residents. A meeting! Now we are getting somewhere… perhaps the people of Berkeley aren’t totally off the deep end. Maybe through that perpetual cloud of organic smoke and city deficit there is a glimmer of clarity. The meeting revolved around police conduct regarding the murder of Peter Cukor last month. The police were under fire because they did not respond to a call Cukor made to a non-emergency police line shortly before he was beaten to death with a flower pot in his own yard. Cukor called because there was an intruder in his yard, a person who eventually killed him. The police claimed they were too, um, occupied with the Occupy protest and were only sending out units on calls made to 911. Cukor’s wife eventually wife called 911, and officers were dispatched immediately.
Was this merely incompetence on the part of the Berkeley PD? Sounds like it. Could Meehan have merely made a bad choice that he wishes like hell he could take back? Yes. However, is it a stretch to think that perhaps if the Occupy Oakland movement hadn’t thrown the entire area onto a semi war footing, the response to Cukor’s dilemma would have been handled appropriately? During a crisis, weird things can happen. Bad things can happen. Freedom of speech is sacred. Royally screwing up the functioning of an entire urban area’s first response system is dangerous, and can lead to unintended consequences. The tea party made its point through responsible, peaceful gatherings, replete with lawful permits and studious clean-up afterwards. The Occupy movement told the entire world to go screw itself, left a mountain of scum pretty much everywhere it went, and caused general mayhem. Rapes, thefts, public defecation… you name it, it probably happened.
Ah, the follies of spoiled, bourgeois youth. I am not blaming the Occupy movement for Cukor’s death. What I am doing is trying to illuminate why our rights come with responsibilities. There was nothing responsible about any of this.
My final question is why Meehan assumed Oakley would not think twice about a certain police officer at his door because that officer regularly deals with reporters. That kind of thinking by Meehan is much too cozy for my taste. A free and independent press should operate in a similar way an independent judiciary is supposed to operate, which means full independence bordering on outright intellectual hostility and extreme, unrelenting suspicion toward the state. As we see too often, however, the majority of our media serves as watchdog for their partisan interests, not as the defenders of free and open government.
Republicanism, in part, hinges upon ferreting out corruption. Forget that idea; our media largely now only serves party, ideology, and self-interest. One has to wonder how many journalists out there would be thrilled, perhaps a thrill up the leg, to receive a call from a political hero rather than be offended that the call was to request the curtailing of free speech. At least Oakley felt something was wrong. His instincts were right. Will Meehan be canned, or does Berkeley, a city that boasts a green philosophy and all the egregious bloated employee overtime and benefits you would expect from a California city, feel perfectly comfortable with such profound incompetence?
I am sincerely intrigued by Berkeley’s free-wheelin’, free-swingin’ anything-goes philosophy. It’s at least as jacked up as most U.S. cities, but with its own special brand of progressive lunacy. The Bay Area in general serves as no better proof that the U.S. constitution was meant to be strictly adhered to… either that, or the Founding Fathers were total dunces to think this experiment could work as planned. Then again, they were highly suspicious of those who would not exercise their rights responsibly.