I Roll My Eyes

...at the latest outbreak of nonsense over at Press-Citizen.com. I think I've pinpointed my mistake though: reading the comments section. Anyone who has the time and the energy to comment on and getting into pissing matches with some of the people who troll these websites is obviously quite a few French fries short of a happy meal. (However, dear reader, let this not discourage you from commenting on this modest little endeavor of mine. I welcome all points of view and if you disagree with me, I heartily look forward to (hopefully) anyway, explaining to you in great detail how wrong you are.)

Just kidding on that last part!

Anyway, the latest kerfuffle: ICPD is purchasing new riot gear. Because if there is a riot, people apparently think cops should be going into danger with riot gear from the late 70s. Does that sound like a good idea to anyone? Makes sense to me. Seems like a routine, run of the mill updating of equipment. Departments do it all the time- and if Iowa City's squad cars have anything remotely similar to the seemingly chronic problems that the UIPD has with some of theirs, they do a lot of maintenance on equipment.

Seems reasonable to me, but the fine, fine people over at PC.com lost their collective s**t over this and why? Well, that answer is to be found at Gazetteonline.com with this little gem of an article, here.

First of all, let's consider the headline: 'Use of ICPD's new riot gear sparks emotional debate.' Gazette, Gazette, Gazette... I shake my head at you and your extremely questionable copy-editing. They haven't even purchased the damn gear yet and they certainly haven't used it! The headline alone is misleading almost to the point of irresponsibility!

But (and this is the second of all): let's be responsible consumers of media and dig a little, shall we? It seems that if you actually read the article we discover this quote:

I’m not going to be a conspiracy theorist or anything like that but I just think that they’re obviously seeing something that leads them to believe that they need this equipment,” said Matt Pfaltzgraf, campaign manager for the anti-21-only YESS group.

Ex-squeeze me? There's so much irresponsibility on display here, it's practically littering. Apparently the young people in their haste and eagerness to put their money back in the pockets of bar owners think that the Iowa City Brownshirts need riot gear so they can bust up parties on South Johnson and Lucas on weekends.

I don't even know where to start with this. First of all, South Johnson is weeny-land compared to Kinnick on game days and officers from a myriad number of agencies delve into that mess sans riot gear on a regular basis. If they don't need it to bust up parties on Melrose on a Saturday, they probably can handle South Johnson. Sorry, Pfaltzgraf, but y'all just cause the Po-Po the regular amount of trouble, nothing so irritating that they require extra equipment. Implying otherwise is stupid, hurts your cause (because yes, it is irresponsible to suggest what you did) and makes me want to think hard about my stand on 21 only in Iowa City, because overall, what you said? It was pretty dumb.

But like I said, I roll my eyes...