The American Spectator

p> ON THE BEAT br> Re: Shawn Macomber’s Get Out of Jail Free : /p> p>Mr. Macomber’s recent misadventure while covering an anti-Bush protest reminds me of nothing so much as one of the classic episodes of All in the Family wherein Michael (Meathead) is participating in an anti-war rally in Central Park. Gloria is beside herself with worry and Archie heads downtown to try and find Michael and haul him home. A riot occurs and Mike makes it back unscathed with a lurid tale of tear gas and billy clubs. Archie, it turns out, is inadvertently swept up in a mass arrest and we next find our highly disgruntled hero in a holding cell with the longhairs. Having nowhere to go an hilarious inter-generational debate ensues and some communication is made before the family arrives to bail out our hero. I last saw that episode as a child watching a late-seventies rerun but to the best of my recollection, said hippies did have a more coherent message than the rabble Shawn was locked up with… br> — Sanja Ivanchukov br> Arlington, Virginia /p>

Mr. Macomber’s treatment at the hands of the NYPD speaks to a paradox, a paradox present in South Central L. A. and in Iraq among those complaining about the American military.

Many people residing in South Central L. A. have had bad experiences with police and do not think kindly of police. But by and large many people in South Central have been victimized by some very bad people — what kind of life is it when you cannot let your children out of the house because criminal gangs are shooting their guns, and when you let your children out of the house, they are recruited by those gangs — and are thus in greatest need of the police.