There is a scripture verse that says basically where do you get off pointing out or criticizing the spec in your neighbors eye when you have a log in your own. Take your log out of your eye and
maybe you can see a little more clearly what is going on.
It is in that spirit and vein that legislators in New York City now seek to ban the "Perp Walk"-
the all too frequent parading of charged, but not convicted, arrested persons before TV cameras in the most humiliating fashion one could invent, with their arms visibly cuffed or strapped behind their backs, heads bowed in humiliated disgrace. Problem is- they didn't all do it. None of them at time of arrest are convicted of anything. The move came as the sad saga of prurient presshood gone amuck pilloried the French former IMF head DSK almost pornographically with alleged details of a rape that chances are never happened. The alleged victim who apparently lied on an asylum application and pled rape in Guinea to gain asylum status couldn't keep her story straight regarding what allegedly happened after the alleged rape. You were just raped, what did you do? Run Screaming anywhere? Hang out and clean the next bathroom? Wait in the hall for permission to go tell security? wierd. too too wierd.
So as that case unraveled so did credibility in the criminal justice system because we all saw it played out in sloppy details that didn't get the facts straight and believed someone who now appears too skanky for words with dubious new additions to her bank accounts that look like someone paid her off to lie. This is looking more airport novelish than Jean Le Carre.
The New York times wasted no time noting how embarrassed New Yorkers now feel (the ones that bothered at all to think about it) and the French are furious at our adolescent fascination with humiliation as punishment before proof. It seems our "Just The Fact Ma'am"
motif was made in and stayed in Hollywood.
So I cheer the New York legislators who want to do away with the Perp Walk, because half of it might just be the Set Up Walking.
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