Thursday, July 21, 2011

Good cops, bad cops

Google has an exciting new thing happening. Badges! Yup, I can earn badges just for reading stuff off their news aggregator! Bring back that boy scout magic, Google! I gotta find out if I can get some retroactive badges for all the news I already read.

The cop who wrote me up as I was heading north wasn't a bad sort. He started off a little grumpy, but I must have won him over with my appropriately deferential demeanor. What could have been really expensive ended up being little more than the cost of a tank of gas. And it could have been really, really expensive. Had I not seen him hiding up the sideroad when I did, and had I not jumped on the brakes immediately, I could have suffered a Fantino forfeiture. That's where they take both your car and your driver's licence on the spot, give you a ticket for ten thousand dollars, and let you walk home.

Canadian media are choc full of tributes to Marshal McLuhan today. The old bullshitter would have been 100. I sold all my McLuhan books at a yard sale years ago, but not before having a quick scan to try to recover that old sixties magic. Didn't work.

Julian Fantino first gained national attention with his crusade to stamp out homosexuality in London in the early nineties. After that his career went from strength to strength. He was always a big-time law and order guy. Not much given to worrying about the rights of the accused and all that wimpy stuff. Not that his rise was without controversy; far from it. But, every time you thought the jig must be up, that there would finally have to be some accountability, poof! Fantino would disappear in the pixie dust of yet another promotion. During his time as Toronto's police chief we learned to re-imagine the concept of "cop". Used to be a somewhat portly guy strolling out of Timmies with a coffee and a six-pack of donuts. Approachable, sympathetic. Now "cop" means some intimidating graduate of Gold's gym kitted out like Darth Vader. But crime rates are going down, so I guess it's working.

I suppose one reason I don't get McLuhan is that I'm just not bright enough. I read a few pages and all I see is a bunch of very malleable non-sequiturs without much of a framework to hold them together. This morning I was listening to a professorly type being interviewed on CBC. He started out by assuring his audience that the iconic McLuhanism "the medium is the message" means at least twelve different things. Exactly! That's my point! When I say to my kid "don't stick the fork in the electricity plug", do I want her to have to ponder which of twelve meanings that might have? I think not. When the cop says "put your hands where I can see them",  do you sit wondering what he really means? No! Maybe if I had a few more watts upstairs I'd see it differently, but as it stands I'm afraid I still have to admit I don't get McLuhan. I had his grandson in my shop class for a couple of years though. Hell of a nice kid.

No sooner had Fantino become the top gun at the OPP than he discovered an epidemic of street-racing on the highways of the province. Hence the Fortino forfeiture. Get clocked at fifty kilometers over the posted limit, and kiss your car and your driving licence goodbye. No namby-pamby innocent until proven guilty nonsense. Pay the ten thousand dollar fine or pay a lawyer twenty and take your chances. The law and order types love it, at least till their mom gets nailed trying to make it to her hair appointment on time.

The cherry on top of Fantino's career was managing security at the G20 conference. He has since retired and reinvented himself as a member of parliament for the law and order party.

Stay tuned.

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