Mike Farnsworth was teary-eyed on Wednesday night on the 11 o'clock news in Vancouver. It was when Global television was asking people for comments on the just released video of the taser gun death of polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, at the Vancouver airport.
First a Global reporter showed the video to Vancouver lawyer, Cameron Ward. Ward looked momentarily shaken after watching the video but he went on to comment. He pointed out that police – there were four RCMP officers standing with the victim when he was tasered -- seem to be using tasers to subdue people without having to touch them.
Then a reporter turned up at the office of Mike Farnsworth, NDP public safety critic, and played the video for him. After watching it, Farnsworth was so shaken that he had difficulty commenting; he couldn't seem to get the words out. Tears were leaking out and he was trying to hold them back. The camera crew left. But they continued to point their camera through the plate glass window of his office. As Farnsworth turned away, he could be seen putting his thumb and forefinger over his tear ducts, the way people do when they are trying to stem the flow of tears and don’t want to be seen crying.
"He’s a feeling person," I thought. He had watched a man being killed in front of his eyes and it bothered him. It was then that I moved closer to the television to read his name in the caption, "Mike Farnworth, NDP Public Safety critic".
The American therapist Arthur Janov has commented on the importance of electing officials who have not lost their ability to feel. A friend of mine, who has read everything Janov's ever written, explained his view that optimal intelligence involves the intellect working in conjunction with the feeling side of the person. Operating on intellect alone, having "fled to your head", won't cut it. If a politician has lost his ability to feel, if he's making decisions but unable to feel empathy with the people affected, Janov says, we're in trouble.
First a Global reporter showed the video to Vancouver lawyer, Cameron Ward. Ward looked momentarily shaken after watching the video but he went on to comment. He pointed out that police – there were four RCMP officers standing with the victim when he was tasered -- seem to be using tasers to subdue people without having to touch them.
Then a reporter turned up at the office of Mike Farnsworth, NDP public safety critic, and played the video for him. After watching it, Farnsworth was so shaken that he had difficulty commenting; he couldn't seem to get the words out. Tears were leaking out and he was trying to hold them back. The camera crew left. But they continued to point their camera through the plate glass window of his office. As Farnsworth turned away, he could be seen putting his thumb and forefinger over his tear ducts, the way people do when they are trying to stem the flow of tears and don’t want to be seen crying.
"He’s a feeling person," I thought. He had watched a man being killed in front of his eyes and it bothered him. It was then that I moved closer to the television to read his name in the caption, "Mike Farnworth, NDP Public Safety critic".
The American therapist Arthur Janov has commented on the importance of electing officials who have not lost their ability to feel. A friend of mine, who has read everything Janov's ever written, explained his view that optimal intelligence involves the intellect working in conjunction with the feeling side of the person. Operating on intellect alone, having "fled to your head", won't cut it. If a politician has lost his ability to feel, if he's making decisions but unable to feel empathy with the people affected, Janov says, we're in trouble.
A quick example of people in positions of authority who have lost their ability to feel: the RCMP officers standing with Dziekanski when he was shot with a taser gun. Dziekanski was writhing on the floor in agony, clutching his chest, obviously not going anywhere, and one of the officers orders, "Hit him again!" Another officer shoots him again.
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4 comments:
I was distraught over the death of the man in the video, and like many public officials in the NDP I sought out a tv camera so the nation could see me cry. I explained afterward what prompted my outburst (out heart-felt tears.) I saw the man die right before my eyes, I said, and I couldn't help cry out loud in front of the cameras.
Well, you've probably seen it too. The poor guy, they just kept going after him. I saw him get knocked off the motorcycle. I saw them shoot him full of holes with guns of all kinds. They threw home-made pipe bombs at him as he was riding down the free way. I asked "Will this outrage never end?" Well, gentle reader, it did. But not before they flipped over a gasoline container truck and set it on fire, stripping the poor guy of his flash to the bones. Nor was that enough. They even had to go so far as to crush him in a metal press till the light went out from his eyes. And you ask me why I cry. You heartless bastard. I saw it with MY own eyes. Do you think I'm a machine? That I have no feelings?
When I finished crying I asked my neighbour what he thought of the video of the poor immigrant dying. He asked me: "Was he a wass-kewwy wabbit?"
When I explained that no, he was just a poor immigrant with a checkered past, Mr Fudd said: "Then it's twagic. Wee-wee twagic."
We need more programmes! We need more housing for the Poor! We need more government grants to take care of these people! I fall upon the thorns of life. I bleed. Stop the hurt of women wailing for their demon lovers. Save the albatrosses. I can't stop crying. I'm fuckin' sensitive. Vote for me.
dag,
I know you know that Farnworth didn't seek out a tv camera. The reporter sprung the video on him just after it was released. That's why he didn't have time to compose himself before commenting.
But the NDP do act sensitive to get votes. Did you see what they decided at their convention this weekend? They will be reserving a large number of ridings for women, transgendered, etc. to run in. If a man is an incumbent, he can run in the next election, but if he resigns, that riding will be automatically be reserved for a women or transgendered candidate. There were others besides women and transgendered on the list of disadvantaged people eligible to be candidates, but it is the "transgendered" that stuck in my mind. When the NDP leader, Carol James, read off "transgendered", I thought, this is social engineering run amok.
I wonder what the black academic you told me about -- was Sewell his name? -- would think of this since he argues that blacks were doing better in the U.S. before social engineering.
I'm not dag but, Thomas Sowell is his name and he is one of the great intellects of our time.
He has said:
"Civil rights cannot include everything that is done by government which benefits particular groups, individually or collectively. The whole case for civil rights is that every American (and by extension, Canadian) is entitled to them. Civil rights are not about doing special things for special groups."
All ellipsis, mine.
Yes, Thomas Sowell, and he's why I'm a "Sowell Man." He's the kind of man White liberal hate because he shows them to be nasty and creepy parasites who cause needless death and destruction wherever they enter in.
Sowell writes in an accessible style about issues anyone can relate to, ordinary life, and he's honest, something liberals really hate.
Ient to a bookshop in Vancouver, Canada and asked if they had books by Sowell. The clerk didn't know of him. I said he's a conservative economist and ... and then I got a ranting man screaming that he doesn't allow hate literature in his shop, that he doesn't allow racists to enter, that the neo-cons are responsible for more horror than Hitler.... The clerk was turning red and was choking from hatred as he tried to speak. I truly thought I'd have a fight with him in the shop. I thought he'd physically attack me even though I'm considerably bigger than he. The guy was so worked up he was losing his mind in front of me, not knowing that Sowell in not a neo-Nazi but a 70 year old Black American classical Liberal. What a world. Leftists are literally insane.
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