In 35 years of police work I have witnessed prejudice. About 99 percent of it was directed at the police, instead of coming from the police. Do you know what we did when someone called us “pigs?” Nothing.
If we had cause to detain, we could run a warrant check. If the potty-mouthed detainee had no warrants, we let them go. They would say, “Thanks, pig. Nice try,” and off they’d go.
I have been following radio, television, and newspaper stories expressing outrage over the printed flyer announcing the now-infamous “Compton Cookout” held on Feb. 15 at a condo near UCSD. The flyer mentioned several stereotypes of black people in a spoof of Black History Month.
The event didn’t get publicity until someone gave the flyer, which had been around for at least 10 days, to the media.
Alerting them was all that was needed. Demonstrations, teach-ins and walkouts have been held regularly on the embattled campus since then.
Many classes were canceled so students could chant and march.
The truth is now out that the organizer of the party was not a fraternity, but an outrageous black comedian whose stage name is “Jiggaboo Jones”? who does not attend the university.
Jones’ only connection to the school is that a fraternity allowed him to host the party at a member’s condominium so that he could promote his new DVD and comedy act.
Jones has held similar parties around the country with nary an outcry.
With the fraternity essentially off the hook, UCSD students focused their outrage on the university. If you can’t be mad at your original target, find another one.
University Chancellor Marye Anne Fox has been buffeted by the media and demeaned by rude students ever since.
Demonstrators carried signs proclaiming “No Justice, No Peace.” I don’t know what “justice” and “peace” had to do with the party.
The Black Students’ Union gave “demands” to the university, like giving more money to black student groups and increasing black admissions. The protestors said there weren’t enough black students at UCSD.
I say, “Get better SAT scores. That university would love to have more black students.”
Even Assemblyman Isadore Hall in Sacramento had his face on television expressing outrage over the incident. Doesn’t Hall have other important issues to handle at the Capitol, like our state going belly up financially?
The cookout flyer described what is seen on the BET (Black Entertainment Television) network and on the news every single day. No one ever chastises the rap and hip hop “artists” who constantly demean women and extol violence in their performances, mistakenly classified as “music.”
I’ll concede that those flyers were of questionable and poor taste. Judging by my personnel file in law enforcement I sometimes had trouble recognizing “poor taste” as it related to humor. But, to bring about the hue and cry the flyer did is really, if you’ll forgive the cliché, a tempest in a teapot. To get literary and go Shakespeare on you, it is “Much ado about nothing.”
Legally, I don’t think the university has any jurisdiction over the fraternity, unless they can prove they used a UCSD copier to duplicate the flyers. It’s doubtful they did. There are almost as many Kinko’s as there are Starbucks, so making copies wouldn’t be a problem.
Next, and I love this, there is a little thing called the First Amendment that allows for free speech, even if the communication is offensive to some.
I even heard a liberal local law professor interviewed who said he hated the flyer, but he defended the right of the guys to distribute it.
Just a thought, but I wonder where the ACLU is on this free speech issue. I haven’t heard a peep from them.
Jones claimed in a radio interview that he tried to tell his story to the mainstream media, including the daily newspaper. He had no takers, although the TV stations did run his photo wearing a T-shirt with his stage name displayed, possibly because the name is inflammatory and the stations wanted to keep the fire going.
A radio interviewer asked Jones how he came up with his stage name. Jones said, “That’s what my grandfather always called me.”
Our government, our laws, and the principles upon which our nation was founded protect the distributors of the flyer.
Just because the guys on whose property the party was held attend the university, you can’t link the university to them, or to the party announcement, or hold the university responsible.
