{"id":61,"date":"2005-10-03T07:14:54","date_gmt":"2005-10-03T14:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2006-09-04T09:34:19","modified_gmt":"2006-09-04T16:34:19","slug":"copping-an-attitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Copping an Attitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the bus barn the other morning, some of the drivers were talking about the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Davis_of_New_Orleans\">recent police beating of Robert Davis in New Orleans<\/a>.  As in &#8220;He had it coming,&#8221; &#8220;You know he was asking for it,&#8221; &#8220;Too bad the horse didn&#8217;t stomp his ass too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Okay, so I work with racists.  Who doesn&#8217;t?<\/p>\n<p>Had Robert Davis been white, I expect my co-workers would have said something like &#8220;Well, he shouldn&#8217;t have copped an attitude.&#8221; Matter of fact, I bet that&#8217;s exactly what they&#8217;d say.<\/p>\n<p>Something I&#8217;ve been meaning to ask: when did Americans start thinking this way? That if a cop jacks you up and you&#8217;re anything other than obsequious, the cop is entitled to beat you to the ground, zap you with a taser, or break your skull with a baton?<\/p>\n<p>This way of thinking seems totally un-American to me. I&#8217;m not condoning resisting arrest (clearly, in that case you can expect retribution), but I have to ask: as an American, can&#8217;t I have any damn attitude I want?<\/p>\n<p>And isn&#8217;t Robert Davis American too?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the bus barn the other morning, some of the drivers were talking about the recent police beating of Robert Davis in New Orleans. As in &#8220;He had it coming,&#8221; &#8220;You know he was asking for it,&#8221; &#8220;Too bad the horse didn&#8217;t stomp his ass too.&#8221; Okay, so I work with racists. Who doesn&#8217;t? Had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}