Jack Engelhard
Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.comSome idiot on Facebook wrote me that “the raw footage” shows cops being too “trigger-happy” as per Louisiana and Minnesota.
That’s the point, Doofus! TV should not be showing raw footage the same way it does not show raw sewage.
Live coverage of heated protests and police activity is a mistake and virtually all the networks do it for ratings and for our viewing pleasure.
The cameras serve to encourage the amateur and professional agitators. They wait for the cameras. They mug for the cameras.
The cameras are their theater and TV plays into their hands.
There used to be rules against covering disturbances live and in color. First, because it does not give the full picture and half a picture is worse than none.
Mostly because it incites and encourages more disturbance and more violence.
Those rules no longer apply, and that is a pity. The nation suffers.
We know it from showtime in Israel, where reporters rush to the next flareup and with their cameras often create another flareup.
Arab agitators know how to play the game and how to use the media.
Live coverage gives us no chance to digest what’s really happening, no time to reflect, no shot for cooler heads to prevail.
From one network to the next we hear about the need for discussions to stop the hate in America, as meanwhile they broadcast images of hate.
Stay calm, they say, as they pour fuel to the fire.
What’s up with that and what’s the deal with Megyn Kelly suddenly playing Mother Teresa or Mother Oprah as she starts reasoning with some brute who is beyond reasoning? Why glorify these punks with their 15 minutes of fame? Does every hothead need to be seen and heard?
They sit home anyway waiting for the next pretext to take to the streets.
Meanwhile in the background we watch the mobs taunting the police with the vilest insults – all of it live and all of it sickening to watch.
On CNN the talk was about “reforming” and “retraining” the police…over TWO instances where we still do not know the right from the wrong.
Does anyone talk about “reforming” or “retraining” the inner city neighborhoods where most of the trouble starts – and where cops risk their lives every time they answer a call? Yet they keep rushing towards the danger as they did in Dallas at the cost of five slain fellow officers.
At whatever the risk, cops show up in those streets because black lives do matter to them.
At whatever the risk, cops show up in those streets because black lives do matter to them.
.
Who is being trigger-happy when Obama keeps pouring it on? We await his words of comfort and yet each time he gives us another argument.
The New York Times? Are you kidding? Here’s the headline: “Peaceful rally over POLICE VIOLENCE Turns Into Scene of Chaos.”
So already the police have been tried and convicted. “Police Violence” – Got that? Where is the “alleged” modifier?
But it is television that has the power and the means to rush us to instantaneous judgment by being so reckless.
We keep hearing that the hate has to stop. Good. So stop showing pictures that serve only to inflame.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New fiction from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart.” Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
