November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Mug Shot Nation

(Page 3 of 3)

July-August 2009
by Greg Beato, from Reason 
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We tend to overlook this fact because, frankly, it spoils the mood. The presumption of guilt makes it easier to justify laughing at 23-going-on-zombie crack whores and bug-eyed misfits sporting felony-caliber mullets. They deserve the derision they get—they’re criminals! But the joke is really on us. As law enforcement agencies expand their powers of surveillance, as they encourage us to think of punishment without due process as standard operating procedure, we not only tolerate it, we click and click and ask for more. If America’s citizenry were more uniformly presentable, and its mug shots correspondingly less entertaining, we might protest these developments more strongly. Instead, we simply laugh at the latest person guilty of wearing a cow costume while being arrested, then pass along the link to our friends.

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Greg Beato writes regularly for the Smart Set, Las Vegas Weekly, and Reason, where he is a contributing editor. Excerpted from Reason(April 2009), a libertarian magazine of politics and culture; www.reason.com.

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  • William W Haywood 7/6/2009 11:50:23 PM

    It does seem to be a harmless way of embarrassing those who have been harassed, or arrested, by the local police, but it is happening because the citizen's of this country are seen, by the wealthy and powerful who control the police, as dangerous people who need to be controlled before they try to break out into some kind of real, self inflicted, democracy! The ruling oligarch's would just love to be able to do, in America, what is happening in Honduras right now....they just do not know what to expect from the people...just yet. That is why all of these little actions, like the mug shot thing, all of the police are so wonderful, protect your rights, make the streets safe... are so important to them...call it your pre-programming,(there is no such word either, it's actually reprogramming) for acceptance of advertised and open oligarchical rule here in the good ole USA. Those who control the media are putting material into your memory that you will someday be called upon to believe is the truth. Get that...believe it is the truth, because it will not be possible to prove it is true.
    After all, what you think is also the exact same material as what you are able to remember. Thinking is memory and visa versa.
    The difference is that intelligence will hold that you cannot be educated by the television at the same time as you are being programmed by it.
    Which is it?

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