I expected that next week Biden might say he's forming a commission to study the problem of policing in America. But he won't need to make such a public statement. Is anybody on tv using a word like "systemic"? I really doubt it.
The cops (and surely the mayor etc) must have hired an excellent PR team to manage what they consider to be just an image problem. I hate to say it but the "This video is horrific" PR trick plus releasing it in a Friday news dump worked insanely well for them. I was shocked that it worked.
A few days ago I heard some talking head say "This is worse than Rodney King." At the time I didn't realize the unwitting talking head was reading right out of the PR playbook. The US is a very violent place but Americans prefer to believe that's not true.
This PR effort of getting in front of an issue and explaining how horrible it is before the news is allowed to break will be used over and over. It seems to me it's highly effective. Oddly enough focusing on the violence made a lot of people turn off their critical thinking skills.
I assume MSNBC will keep mentioning "reform" for a little bit longer. Tyre's murder will remain something for people to be "concerned" about until maybe - I dunno - Wednesday. But his murder will quickly be forgotten.
Imo i think it is simply that race being involved (as in white cop kills black man kind of stories) is more tantalizing to the media and MUCH more mobilizing to random people. Without that key aspect its basically just the anti cop people and tbh there just isnt a lot of us to mobilize and too small and goes against the interests of the media to promote.
White cops would make it a far bigger story. Still - one reason Rodney King's beating was powerful in the early 1990s was that video was still a novelty to most people. People couldn't forget what they saw. Now - Americans forget everything after it falls out of media object permanence spotlight. The public is numb even to a man savagely beaten to death by the police. The tired, old tropes like he was "muscular" or he was "high on drugs" couldn't be used. The pigs murdered him because they wanted to and they could.
I expected that next week Biden might say he's forming a commission to study the problem of policing in America. But he won't need to make such a public statement. Is anybody on tv using a word like "systemic"? I really doubt it.
The cops (and surely the mayor etc) must have hired an excellent PR team to manage what they consider to be just an image problem. I hate to say it but the "This video is horrific" PR trick plus releasing it in a Friday news dump worked insanely well for them. I was shocked that it worked.
A few days ago I heard some talking head say "This is worse than Rodney King." At the time I didn't realize the unwitting talking head was reading right out of the PR playbook. The US is a very violent place but Americans prefer to believe that's not true.
This PR effort of getting in front of an issue and explaining how horrible it is before the news is allowed to break will be used over and over. It seems to me it's highly effective. Oddly enough focusing on the violence made a lot of people turn off their critical thinking skills.
I assume MSNBC will keep mentioning "reform" for a little bit longer. Tyre's murder will remain something for people to be "concerned" about until maybe - I dunno - Wednesday. But his murder will quickly be forgotten.
This situation makes me sick.
Imo i think it is simply that race being involved (as in white cop kills black man kind of stories) is more tantalizing to the media and MUCH more mobilizing to random people. Without that key aspect its basically just the anti cop people and tbh there just isnt a lot of us to mobilize and too small and goes against the interests of the media to promote.
White cops would make it a far bigger story. Still - one reason Rodney King's beating was powerful in the early 1990s was that video was still a novelty to most people. People couldn't forget what they saw. Now - Americans forget everything after it falls out of media object permanence spotlight. The public is numb even to a man savagely beaten to death by the police. The tired, old tropes like he was "muscular" or he was "high on drugs" couldn't be used. The pigs murdered him because they wanted to and they could.
if the media talks about it so plainly, people feel like "it's being handled" since they are hearing so much about it from their sources.