Here’s the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies’ shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I’d have a tie to go on job interviews. I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years. So this idea that I’m somehow the “Hollywood elite” and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable.
That’s George Clooney on Donald Trump. The interview I took that clip from is wide-ranging, sharp, incisive, and worth reading in full.
Today has been a day of making wishes. First when I saw images of sportsmen and the owners of their teams take the knee in defiance of Donald Trump. Then when I read this.
Don’t you wish our own public figures had the courage of their convictions? Hell – don’t you wish they had some convictions?
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Yes.
On a day when you tell your readers not to expect your blog post, and I am thinking I am going to miss it, we get three!
It’s clear that you are so passionate about doing the right things, that you cannot help creating/ producing ‘that thing you do’.
Keep it up, and yes I do wish our public figures had more conviction. Wasn’t the act of award vapsi equivalent, though they weren’t LeBron James and Curry!
LOL! I was supposed to drive down to Mysore late Saturday night, spend Sunday with a friend and drive back this morning. Thanks to the rains and roads that made driving a punishment, we called off the plan. So.
I thought of the Award Vapsi movement when I read those stories about Take A Knee, but didn’t bring that in because it was politically contentious at the time, and any reference without elaboration would have dragged the conversation into a whole other thing. But yeah, at that time, when it was unfashionable to criticise Modi, those guys showed courage.
Here is something for a Monday Morning Minority Report read:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2017/sep/23/indian-police-to-be-armed-with-big-data-software-to-predict-crime-1661708.html
Alas, no Tom Cruise..
:-))) Aside magazine, now defunct, once did this story back when I was freelancing for them. A guy walked into Chetpet (Chennai) police station and complained that his wallet had been stolen. He was just returning from the bank, he said, having withdrawn some 5000 bucks. He had the withdrawal slip and passbook in his bag, all ready to show.
Within the hour, the cops had dragged in a couple of dozen notorious pickpockets, and began whaling into them, demanding to know who had done this. The reason? There was actually a colony of pickpockets in that area. They’d filch a wallet, or whatever, and promptly go to the cop shop and report on where they had done the lifting, and how much was in the wallet, and pay the cops their cut. So when a complaint came, the cops knew all about it already, and would fob you off with the usual noises.
In this case, a crime was being reported, but the cops knew nothing about a 5k robbery, and hadn’t got their cut of it. Which is why they were so incensed. (Actually, the reporter had withdrawn the money and given it to a friend, then gone to the cop shop to report the robbery to see what would happen).
Point is, most high-crime areas, cops know who the main culprits are likely to be, what they are up to, all of that. Without any Matrix-style stuff. Doing something about it though is a whole other thing.
Haha. Yeah, I know, from personal bloody experience. In Ooty, with a new bride and a wallet filled with notes. Horrible hotel and we decided to spend as little time indoors as possible. Go to the Botanical Garden and wham, wallet gone… yeah, yeah, young and cocky and brainless. But here is the thing.. we had a relative there who took us straight to the cop station and they officer promptly denies that it was anyone local. They said it was a gang from Coimbatore which had come down for the holiday season. They found my wallet a few days later, when we had returned. “Do you want the visiting cards?” the cop asked me.. yeah right..
But here is another really interesting line.. from another article.. just as minority report-ish..
http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2017/sep/25/bengaluru-i-t-raids-on-cafe-coffee-day-founder-v-g-siddhartha-reveals-over-rs-650-crore-1662278.html
“There are a number of other issues including violations of other statutes on which there is no disclosure but relevant evidence has been found… these will be pursued effectively with vigour, energy and IMAGINATION” (!!!!!!?) the statement added.
(Imaginatioon,- sic erat scriptorum actually. but edited out now).
*LOL* I literally, a minute ago, tweeted this exact same thing.
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