What audience does it target? I don’t think it targets any specific audience. Everyone likes to see people make asses of themselves. Anyway, anyone who is influenced by COPS to be racist, I think, is racist already.
Blinkthrice, a lot of your argument seems to be based on the belief that while those of us here are smart enough to be able to watch COPS without sustaining any damage, other people are dumber and they can’t handle it. I’m instinctively against any argument that assumes everyone else is less intelligent than we are. If you’re going to make this assertion, I’d like to see it backed up with some evidence.
Your friends?
Are they African Americans themselves of the sort who walk around everywhere looking to be offended by racial snubs that the rest of us cant see or are they simply white racists who have stereotyped AAs as not being the sort of people who become dedicated police officers?
Not specifically about the show but related and interesting.
A freind of mine works for the FOP
{Fraternal Order of Police}
They have a process they go through to endorse candidates and recently interviewed and sent a lengthy questionare to McCain and Obama. These are posted on their site under choosing a president upper right side. Her summary was that Obama was consistently more supportive of FOP issues than McCain and McCain often deferred to his staff or answered “well get back to you” when asked about specific issues.
After the questionares and interview responses were posted she was consistently flooded with heated phone calls and letters demanding that the FOP in no way support or endorse Barack Obama. Several members said they would quit the organization if Obama was endorsed. Her feeling? Even though nobody wants to say it outright, it’s because he’s black and because of his name.
I’m sorry but if your friends account is accurate about the “flood” it doesn’t mean that American policeforces are overwhelmingly made up of racists but it does suggest that probably a small but very zealous group in the McCain camp are using dirty tactics,no doubt they’ve rang around those who ARE racists and detailed them off to hit the phones to FOP.
Dirty tactics seem to be a normal part of American electioneering and even on these boards we’ve seen various attempts at character assassination on both of the candidates with misleading information and quotes which I’m not going to cite for obvious reasons.
It seems that such tactics have a long almost proud tradition in U.S. elections going back god knows how long.
Lets face it there are a hell of a lot of AA cops so many police departments probably couldn’t function without them and I couldnt help but notice that on the FOP site one of the main board pics,prominently displayed is of an AA police officer(A senior one?)which if the organisation was so heavily composed of racists would have been removed long ago due to consistent pressure from the members.
And lets face it the entire interpretation of the phone calls was based on her"Feelings" she said herself not one caller voiced any racist sentiments.
So its her "Feelings"we’re supposed to make up our minds on not factual evidence.
Seems very shaky to me.
That could be, but she’s really jumping to unwarranted conclusions without data. It could equally well be that police tend, on the whole, to be pretty conservative and voting for a liberal Democrat might stick in their craw no matter what his positions on police are.
How is this related to “Cops” and the issue of race at all? It almost smells like a turd dropped from above to tell all of us libruls (again) that Obama is unelectable because America is racist, so we might as well quit now.
I’m not denying that there are racist people in America or that there’s entertainment that feeds into that racism. I’m just saying that I don’t see COPS as part of this.
then your nose is broken. Please have it checked. I am and will continue to be an Obama supporter barring something extreme.
A valid point I’ve considered. This group is normally conservative. I have a conservative friend who won’t vote for McCain but can’t support Obama because of his own policy statements in The Blueprint for Change. From our discussion I gathered it was the emotional and extreme nature of their calls that led my friend to that conclusion. Not proof I know, but she’s a smart lady born and raised in the south.
Let me clarify a bit. I think “flooded” may have been a bad choice. What surprised her was that 99% of the calls were against Obama and the callers were so zealous in their opposition. It did occur to me that it could be a campaign ploy.
I am in no way trying to imply that the FOP is a prejudice organization as a whole. It was an anecdotal account nothing more.
See above. I wasn’t trying to imply that. “Flooded” was a bad choice. It was the overwhelming percentage of calls received against Obama and the degree of opposition that surprised her. There’s a difference between “As a conservative I support Mccain rather than Obama” and “If the FOP backs Obama I quit”
Nobody asked anyone to come to hard conclusions based on anecdotal evidence. Make of it what you will. I just had a couple of conversations with my Republican sister and I’m concerned that the “you can’t really trust him” campaign is working to well. My friends story seemed to reinforce that concept. People would rather have another term like Bush than take a chance on Obama. It blows my mind really.
I agree. They have no control over the calls they get or the jerk drivers that try to run from them. What you are seeing is a cross-section of society from the underside.
Sure they have control. They record hundreds of hours of tape and edit it into twenty minutes of program. If COPS wanted to demonize black men it could easily do so by making sure that all the footage of black cops and non-black criminals ended up on the cutting room floor. But that doesn’t happen which is why I say the evidence isn’t there of any racist agenda.
So did anyone watch Cops this weekend with pad and pencil in hand to record the races of all involved?
It seems you can watch full episodes online as well. So I may attempt this later.
You’re always going to have people who see stereotypes where they want to. Attempts to cover up reality don’t contribute to understanding.
Having watched “Cops” for a number of years, it looks to me like there’s a real effort at balance by the show’s producers in their features on various druggie losers, sleazebags and violent criminals, when it comes to demographics. The drug dealing/buying crowd is a mixed bag racially. Some shows features busts of hookers, others the arrests of their customers in sting operations. Another somewhat similar show, “America’s Most Wanted” (which I watch less because I find John Walsh obnoxious) also features similar balance.
Poor, stupid and violent people do make up a heavy percentage of criminals in this country. Pretending otherwise doesn’t solve the problem.
I suppose you could have a reality show dedicated to collaring white-collar embezzlers and corporate crooks. All that investigative paper-shuffling would make for highly dramatic television. :rolleyes:
Michael Moore’s waaaay ahead of you!
I did, but there’s no such thing as race. Plus, my pencil broke.
I did catch the end of an episode. They were getting a bookie or something. Everyone had Brooklyn accents and were pudgy, white, and oldish. They all looked like they were named Murray. I was very disappointed by the lack of black villains, personally.
So in other words, some people may form incorrect worldviews as a result of reality, and therefore reality should be altered in order to prevent morons from getting dumb ideas? That’s a pretty big task to embark upon.