It’s not what you say but how you say it. Never be too visibly moved, committed or enraged about politics. Take it calmly and sitting down, no matter how enraging things may be. Isn;’t that the lesson sent by the University of Florida last week?
“Don’t tase me, bro” sounds like something that you would hear at a frat initiation. They were part of the desperate plea spoken by student Andrew Meyer as university campus police dragged him out of a John Kerry forum.
The whole thing of course was captured on video from several angles and quickly made the rounds on YouTube and the nightly news. Anyone can see that Meyer is a little overheated, a might zealous at the mic. His tone is abrasive, questions unrelenting and temper rising. But he did his research— his questions about how disenfranchised voters and the 2004 election are well substantiated. (Kerry concedes to have read at least one book on the matter.)
The point? Meyer had something to say and he wanted to be heard. When asked to hurry up and ask his question already instead of making a ruckus, he smartly snaps back, “[Kerry’s] been talking for two hours, I think I’ll have two minutes.”
The conversation between politicians and youth is often a one-way street— them telling us what they think we want and how they are going to “make it happen”— talking back shouldn’t be a taseable offense.
Read the campus newspaper’s account of the events here.
Tags: andrew meyer, taser, university of florida
[...] Original post by torey van oot [...]
Uh, talking back had nothing to do with the tasing. He was tased for resisting arrest, and there’s no doubt from the tape that he was resisting arrest in a manner that was NOT nonviolent. Frankly I found the tasing of Meyer repulsive, but whether the tasing was necessary or was normal protocol is another matter, and one probably better debated by law enforcement professionals. (Walk a mile in a cop’s shoes before passing judgment. That’s no easy job.)
What seems clear to me from the video was that Meyer was a jerk and an idiot. He was a jerk because people came to the meeting to hear Kerry, not a speech by Meyer to “inform” people. He was an idiot because he put his hands on the cops – and it seems to me that he did so before they ever touched him. He continued to be an idiot by not obeying the cops. Man, could you imagine what you all would be saying if Meyer were black?
Wait a second, CV… People came to the meeting to hear Kerry but also to raise questions and have them answered. It was a public forum not a congressional hearing. People go on all the time at public forums– wisemen and fools. Since when do we have security start taking people away after two or three minutes of fairly on-topic albeit intense expression. Meyer’s question was Why is Kerry for impeachment now when, despite well-founded reservations, he conceded the messy foul election of 2004. It’s admittedly less a question than a accusation but still… Why didn’t the cops or forum moderators say “five minutes” etc. Why didn’t Kerry interject? Five cops or whatever pulling the guy to the ground for talking and waving a book in the air at a university-sponsored open speech? C’mon. You say he “put his hands on” the cops? But they were all over him, determined to oust him, forcing the issue– as if they were really keeping order. Who were they protecting? Sorry but I’m not blaming the victim on this one. It was a political talk followed by a question-and-answer session. Meyer waited for the Q&A to start, got up and talked. Why is that an actionable offense except that the air is thick everywhere in the country these day with threats of violence and authority run amok in the name of our security. Have you been to the airport lately? It’s a good thing the “terrorists” haven’t “changed our way of life.”
JT, I doubt the overzealous reaction of the officers at Florida University has anything to do with heightened security because of terrorism. I think it comes down to a simple case of a college kid disrespecting the cops by ignoring their requests to ask the question and move on, then talking back to them rudely, and then doing one of the dumbest things you can ever do when confronted by a cop, which is to touch them – thereby assaulting a police officer. At that point, which seems to happened BEFORE the cops ever manhandled Meyers (look at Meyers pushing back with his hand early on after he’s told to ask his question), it doesn’t matter if Kerry told them to chill out. Meyer just committed a felony assault (at least this is what the cops are probably thinking) and he’s going to be arrested. The only question now is whether he gets arrested the easy way or the hard way. Meyers chose the hard way. Dumb kid!
Now, because this kid is white and goes to college and doesn’t seem to be a real threat to the cops or the audience many people are outraged. Hey, I’m not for this kind of rough treatment but this stuff happens all the time, usually at traffic stops and often when the suspect is drunk, so I actually have a strangely satisfying feeling that the cops didn’t give this guy special treatment because he’s white.
Cops have a tough, scary job – one that I would never want to do – but there’s no denying that many of these guys and gals have power issues, and for university cops who see spoiled, drunken college kids all the time you have to believe there’s a lot of resentment built up. Do I think the cops overreacted? Yes. Is what they did legal? I don’t know; it’s a question for the legal experts. Was Meyers stupid? Yes, beyond belief!
I do agree with you that people not only came to hear Kerry but to ask questions and get answers, and if that’s what Meyers would have done then I would not have classified him as a jerk. However, he gave a rather long commentary that was not necessary for his questions – when he finally got around to asking them. He seemed more interested in making his point to the audience then in getting an answer from Kerry. (What does he really expect Kerry to say to those questions?) In doing so he used up time that others could have used to ask real questions. In short, he’s a jerk because he’s preventing people from asking Kerry questions and getting answers from him, which, as you noted, is one of the reasons that people attended. They did not attend to hear Meyers rant on about his point of view.
If you want to know the real lesson here it is that you NEVER touch a police officer.
I’ve just looked a few more videos of the incident from different angles and it seems that Meyers did NOT put his hands on the police first. The movement I saw in the posted video turned out to be Meyers just waving the police back. For this I have to apologize to Meyers for not being the most stupid that he could be. However, he managed to do the second most stupid thing, which is to resist arrest.
What’s interesting about seeing some of the other viewing angles is that you can see the cops talking to each other and to somebody else in a suit as Meyers rambles on. When Meyers said “blowjob” they seemed to have another little conference. I’m guessing at that point they decided to escort Meyer’s out once the mic was cut off. Certainly excessive, and now questionable whether it was legal. It would be interesting to know who that guy in the suit was that seemed to be directing the cops. However, I still have to say that Meyers was stupid and a jerk.
We can probably debate Andrew Meyers’s conduct forever: his history of self aggrandizement, his motives and his method of exercising freedom of speech. Everyone seems to have a definite and divergent viewing of the video of their choice. I do think the actual questions he put to Kerry concerning the 2004 election and the impeachment of the president were valid ones, in spite of the confrontational manner of their asking. Also it looked to me that, when finished with his questioning, Andy was in the process of backing away from the mike when he was grabbed by the rent-a-cops. I thought that, if the they had just left him alone, he would have continued to move away from the mike and probably would have taken his seat.
All this is highly speculative.
One thing that I think we can agree on is that the behavior of the U of F campus police was over reactive and uncalled for. They took a situation that was, at worst, a minor disturbance and made it into a violent, disruptive example of police brutality, employing unnecessary, punishing, deadly force.
The problem in this country is not that there are two legitimate sides to the debate over burning issues such as two stolen presidential elections, the prosecution of an illegitimate war in Iraq, high crimes and misdemeanors of the executive and the bipartisan complicity in all this, aided by a biased communications industry. There is a distinct absence of real debate in this country, not because of a reluctance of our citizens to embrace an open airing of the issues but, because of a complete refusal of one party to even allow these issues to be discussed. That is why the side, with no valid points with which to counter its critics, more and more resorts to violence, the suppression of speech and the denial of other civil and human rights. Authentic people with valid reasons for their actions rarely have to use violence to validate their views. As a result of this vacuum, many feel the need to use distinctly un-Roberts Rules’ strategies to make their points. That is why demonstrators disrupt Congressional hearings, Administration speeches and Kerry forums. I have even found it necessary to grab the mike myself when, not too long ago, I found I was being unfairly excluded from a public forum that was discussing the Iraqi war and the bombing of Iran. Absent free and open debate in this country, one side will increasingly see disruption, civil disobedience and revolution as its only way to register dissent and the other side will see violence and suppression of speech as its only options.
Bob Boldt