‘Huge a**hole': People are mad at Jets coach Rex Ryan for wearing a #NYPD hat

[MADem]

66. I don't think he's in as bad shape as you might think him to be.

It's inevitable that someone like the mayor with a strong showing is going to come down over time--people vote for hope and change, and then reality intrudes. When they realize their savior does NOT have a magic wand, the voting public gets pissed and shirty, some of them. And professional whiners who are always eager to pull public figures down a peg will latch onto this "How dare a father of black kids be nuanced" poutrage that some on the right are shopping as "proof" that the Mayor isn't kissing NYPD ass. I'm not buying their gripes. They're the ones with the problem--maybe if they didn't choke people on the streets, they wouldn't be feeling afraid to do their jobs all of a sudden.

Dinkins was a freak election--not like this one. Are you forgetting that he beat incumbent KOCH in the primary? Tone-deaf Ed Koch? Corrupt, racist Ed Koch? And in an interesting look through the long lens of history, even the NYT says that the Dinkins administration was pretty damn successful on a lot of fronts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/nyregion/26dinkins.html?_r=0

Mr. Dinkins’s most lasting achievement might have been in the very area where he now fares worst in popular memory. He obtained the State Legislature’s permission to dedicate a tax to hire thousands of police officers, and he fought to preserve a portion of that anticrime money to keep schools open into the evening, an award-winning initiative that kept tens of thousands of teenagers off the street. Later he hired Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, and in the mayor’s final years in office, homicide began its now record-breaking decline.

His officials played a key role in negotiating the cleanup and revitalization of Times Square, persuading the Walt Disney Corporation to rehabilitate an old 42nd Street theater.....over all, Mr. Dinkins rebuilt more housing in a single term than Mr. Giuliani did in two terms.

Mr. Dinkins also negotiated a stadium deal that still draws applause. His administration gave the United States Tennis Association a 99-year lease on city parkland; in exchange, the tennis association built a stadium and tennis complex in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and shares the courts with the public.
....his administration made advances unmatched by succeeding administrations. He joined with Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and poured money into assisted housing for the mentally ill homeless.

As a result, the city’s shelter population fell to its lowest point in the last 20 years. The shelter population in 1991 stood at less than 20,000; today it stands near 38,000.

And who is "singling out and criticizing people who wear NYPD clothing?" When you wear a Yankees hat, people assume you root for the Yankees. When you wear a Save The Planet tee shirt, people assume you are an environmentalist. Don't wear the 'gear' if you don't desire the association--and right now, the association isn't all rosy and sweet. In this environment, with the choking, beating, homiciding police, engaged in quite a bit of gratuitous brutality of late (and two of them getting shot by a nutter in a warped 'reaction' to the homicide of Garner) battle lines WERE being drawn--and the NYPD was doing more than their share of drawing them, with their back turning and childishness and confrontational statements about their damn boss at City Hall.

My point is that I don't see anyone I hang out with wearing that shit--they wouldn't be caught dead in it--especially after Garner, and even more so after these stunts with the Mayor. It's like wearing "I'm An Asshole" gear. That kind of crap is for angry white men and Republicans, these days. It may not have been uncool back in the days when Nahn Wun Wun Changed Ever-Thang, but those days are LONG gone. The NYPD have spent all their goodwill, and they're in debt, solely owing to their boorish behavior. The FDNY doesn't have this problem--they save people from burning buildings, they don't choke them for selling loosies. We're getting to the point where we're--at long last--not hearing NAHN WUN WUN as an excuse, a reason, a deflection every five minutes. So this whole "Waaaah--don't criticize the NYPD" game isn't going to be played any more. They need to change THEIR attitudes--not expect the public to kiss their asses.

The police need to grow the hell up, stop acting like bullies and brutes, get the spirit, stop choking and shooting, and start protecting and serving, or there will be consequences--and not the "riot in the street" consequences, but the "kick out the shitty managers and get people in there who can hold these clowns to standards, rigorously enforce them, and punish failures in professionalism" consequences. Can't happen soon enough. Time for a culling--the misfits need to be fired and the slackers need to be called to account. That display of boorishness at the Memorial Service and the graduation showed the world how childish and immature they were. They're mad because people are noticing them--but not in a good way.