Cop Who Tasered Andrew Meyer LAUGHED, and Kerry is a Wimp

I agree completely. You nailed it, as usual. Thanks dear friend!

"Don't taze me Bro" I'm not sure but did he say a racial slur.

Thank you for saying what needed to be said.

Sure, the cops were the worst offenders, but Kerry and much of the audience (not all) sat there like sheep, made jokes and laughed like Beavis and Butthead.

This really bothered me, so I posted all over the place. And it became apparent on Tuesday and Wendesday that John Kerry's office put out the word that Andrew Meyer was to be, in a manner of speaking, swiftboated.

Most disappointing was the commentary of the Kerryites at Daily Kos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/19/94751/6844?detail=f

Check out the juvenile replies by the idiot who calls him/her self bam bam.

Repulsive.

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Your outrage is understandable, and I think you highlight an interesting point related to the actions of the audience. Don't feel too disheartened about the general response that people in that room showed. This is a well-documented phenomenon that Robert Cialdini talked about in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In the book he talks about six factors that influence the actions of individuals as well as groups. I believe that two of those factors were at play here:

1) Authority

It is well documented that the mere presence of authority figures like police officers makes if very unlikely that anyone in the crowd will question what is going on. We are programmed from childhood to take a certain sense of comfort from having an authority figure or figures present to "take charge." In this case the multiple police officers had to know what they were doing - they were in uniform, right? As ridiculous as that may sound, it is simply a conditioned social response amplified by the actions of the group.

2) Social Proof

Cialdini makes reference to the Genovese murder case which took place in 1964. During that event, 38 bystanders sat by as a killer stalked and stabbed Catherine Genovese 3 times over a 90 minute period. Not a single person even called the police. After the New York Times published an article about it, there was great outrage about how all these people could have let this happen. The point that Cialdini makes in the book is that the reason nobody acted was precisely because there were so many other people and none of them acted.

My point is that the events of the Kerry tasering incident reflect very poorly on the police in charge, and I believe on John Kerry himself for not taking charge of the situation. The actions of the crowd are exactly what most sociologists would predict in that situation. So don't feel too bad about the inaction of the crowd in that room as a commentary on the state of society. Feel heartened by the healthy sense of outrage that our modern YouTube, blogging media is capable of engendering in the days following such an incident.

Amir - interesting points. Logical too, sadly.

Nonetheless it is impossible for me to accept that complacency could be the response in this situation. Have we actually learned nothing from history?

Complacency never led to anything good.