SchützStaffel, Life in the Ghettos

by Scott Graves
[email protected]

Special to TLE

           Imagine this thirty second spot for a new show, most likely on NBC, a sure fire ratings grabber in the current entertainment climate. "These are the stories of the Berlin SchützStaffel, brave men who patrol the ghettos to keep the Jews in their place, and the streets safe for good Germans to live their lives in peace." Images of SS troopers goose-stepping their way through the Jewish ghettos, rounding up Jews and dragging them downtown for "questioning" and processing for the camps.
           On tonight's episode of "SchützStaffel, Life in the Ghettos" Untersturmführer Karl Ubermench and his partner Oberscharführer Klaus Reiber, are looking for the murderer of Kyle Glocken, businessman and loyal Nazi Party member. Searching through the ghetto for the killer, knowing that only a filthy jew would kill such a fine upstanding German citizen. Tune in and cheer our heroes as they enforce the will of the Führer.
           The outcry would be enormous, even the ACLU would want it off the air. The station would be boycotted, their advertisers would bolt, their employees would be stalked by all sorts of angry citizens, and the writers would be strung up from the nearest lampposts. But, when we have the same type of misinformation oozing from the television about our own local SchutzStaffel we not only accept it, but watch religiously. Cop-u-dramas are all over the television, any time of day you can find some persons Constitutional Rights being violated.
           What is so bad about these shows? Perhaps the reason why we are creeping toward a totalitarian state is because people think that these cop-u-dramas are a realistic representation of the police, the cops on those shows may as well carry laser pistols so you can tell at a glance that its all fiction. After all, since we don't learn about how the government really works and what limits are in place by going to school or watching the news, all that's left to fill that void of information are dramas that have the appearance of reality.
           Of course television doesn't brainwash people, were that the case advertising would guaranty success in the market. What television does do is confirm ideas that people already have and give a flavor of respectability to certain concepts, especially when those ideas are not countered anywhere else. Given a few years of careful placement in the right sitcoms, human sacrifice could be seen as acceptable by a majority of people. So what ideas are confirmed and what concepts are flavored by cop shows?
           Well, for starters the idea of 'insta-justice', where all of the problems are solved by the selfless cops in one hour. How about finding out the guilty party? Just look for whoever doesn't cooperate with the nice policemen. The guy who cries out for a lawyer or talks about his rights as a citizen is the guy who will get executed while trying to escape. Add to this the complaints the minority groups give every time the cop shows portray their members in a poor light, the only thing left for the writers to show are white guys. This does simplify things for them, just go after militia types. Now those are some white guys who know their rights, the perfect politically correct villains.
           When "Joe Six-pack" sees the cops on TV strong arm a suspect, in absence of other evidence, he is persuaded into believing that police are able to do that legally. When the TV cops break the rules, battle the courts and oppose the lawyers to get a murderer in to jail, and then are looked into by Internal Affairs, the viewer gets the idea that cops should be left alone to get the bad guys. Especially when the concept of, "Heroic cops battle all odds to get the bad guy.", is repeated over and over again. We wonder why there is no uproar over Waco. Good old Joe Six-pack figures the cops were "gettin the bad guys" and "that silly old Constitution and Posse Whatever law got in the way."
           We can look forward to more of the same programmed indifference from the average American toward the evils of their government, as long as the only education the public receives in police procedures is from the idiot box. Now I don't favor censorship, but perhaps instead of putting all our energy into fighting the politicos and bureaucrats we should send some hate mail to the advertisers on these cop shows.
           After all, Hitler didn't order most of the "social reforms" in Germany, his propaganda machine persuaded the population to spontaneously burn books and turn in "enemies of the state". What will our own propaganda machine persuade Joe Six-pack to do?

Scott Paul Graves e-mail: [email protected]
President and CEO of Lawyers Guns and Money Ltd. http://members.home.net/lockman2/lgmindex.htm

Hyde In Plain Sight

Hyde offers gun-control compromise
Assault weapon possession by minors would be illegal
September 22, 1999
Web posted at: 12:18 a.m. EDT (0418 GMT)
From congressional correspondent Bob Franken

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top congressional aides tell CNN that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Illinois), is circulating a compromise gun-control proposal that would set up a system of background checks for sales at gun shows. ...

Under Hyde's two-tiered plan, anyone who buys a weapon at gun shows would have to wait for a 24-hour background check. If that check was not completed after 24 hours, the period would be extended to three days. Hyde describes a "gun show" as an event involving five or more gun merchants. ...

Hyde's proposal also imposes a ban on the import of large ammunition clips, and a requirement that child-safety devices be sold with handguns. It also would ban the sale of handguns to anyone convicted, as a juvenile, of a gun-related felony. Possession of assault weapons by minors would be illegal. ... Source: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/09/22/gun.control/

One Of The Butts Sisters

Tom Foreman, ABC News: "Still, with so much killing a basic question remains. Why can't gun supporters and gun opponents find any middle ground to address these problems?"

Bob Norman, gun show promoter: "Because I think history has shown that the gun grabbers want to grab the guns, all guns."

Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence: "My experience is that they are unbelievably rigid and unwilling to compromise and that they cannot be trusted."

Source: abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/transcripts/nl990916_trans.html

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