CARL MONDAY-ISM IN OUR TIME: Oh, yeah: this was amusing as hell on last night's local news --
your mailman may be drinking on the job! Yes, it has hidden cameras. Yes, it has the post-tavern confrontation with the reporter saying "Please don't drive!" Oh, so good. (HT to Dan Suitor on the title.)
So Philly has a Carl Monday too?
ReplyDeleteNone of the drunk people were "having sex with themselves," which I believe was his turn of phrase.
ReplyDeleteFriend of mine in Cleveland who used to work with Mr. Monday got me a Christmas present a couple of years ago, of Carl's promo photo which Carl Monday had signed and then written, "Hey Joe, are you jacking it?"
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't want my mailman (or anyone, really) driving a large vehicle around me after drinking five 20 ounce beers and a "snifter of what appeared to be liquor" (seriously? a "snifter"? Three times?)... I usually secretly hope for the day that an "investigative reporter" is caught on tape molesting a collie in a baby pool full of cocaine and counterfeit bills.
ReplyDeleteIt was an amusing piece, but the "please don't drive, sir!" -- done clearly for dramatic effect -- was actually kind of offensive considering they had watched these guys drive off drunk several other times and done nothing but film it. Don't pretend to be some guardian of the public safety when it's obvious your sole priority is to milk the piece for all it's worth.
ReplyDeleteI will praise the reporters for not misrepresenting the scope of their story. They never made sweeping generalizations about federal employees or the Post Office as a whole, and they presented it as "This is what two or three miscreants are doing."
ReplyDeleteAs far as sensationalist local reporting goes, this was executed pretty sanely and reasonably. While "Please sir, don't drive" probably won't catch on the way Carl Monday did, it's nice to see the spirit of humiliating troubled people on regional television lives on.
Maybe the alcoholic mailmen and the public library masturbators are troubled people, and maybe there are better ways to prevent drinking and driving or public masturbation than putting those people on TV. My first question, though, is "did putting them on TV get them to stop?" If yes, then good. Because one thing I care about more than the dignity of the guy jackin' it at the computer lab in the public library is getting him to stop jackin' it at the computer lab in the public library.
ReplyDeleteJust because it's lurid and exploitative doesn't mean that it isn't the right thing to do.
You are correct in stating that, on occasion, being lurid/exploitative and good for society aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Don't get me wrong: I eat up every little drop of succulent schadenfreude that seeps from stories like this, and I will absolutely park the television on COPS if I need some amusing background chatter, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still lurid and exploitative. I'm not saying that those properties intrinsically make something bad, but they DO intrinsically glaze them with a slight layer of slime.
ReplyDeleteSo why on earth did he name two of the three, but not the third?
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