Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Understanding Elitist Washington D.C.

When Charlie Sheen tweeted this yesterday, I knew he was in Washington D.C.:
...in car with Police escort in front and rear! driving like someone's about to deliver a baby! Cop car lights #Spinning!
Since I travel a lot, I get to see the eccentricities of different cities, but nothing prepares you for the elitist nature of Washington D.C.

It's common to be stopped from crossing a street, as the President or some other "dignitary" passes by. Sometimes the wait can be pretty long. At other times, you just see police escorts speed by that require other cars to pull to the side. This activity always reminds me of the old films that show  scenes from the old Soviet Union, where a Soviet leader with police escorts pulls into the Kremlin.

But D.C. is even more obscene about the entire thing. While the Metro police conduct random searches in the D.C. subway of the general public who are carrying packages, brief cases, etc. The elite get the masses pushed out of their way. And the "elite" are pretty much whomever the powers that be decide are the elite. Famous actors and actresses fall in this category.

That's why when Charlie Sheen described his police escort, I knew he had to be in D.C. And he was. No other city would have given him such an escort, none.

WaPo writes today:
Charlie Sheen, the ex-sitcom star turned serial ranter, got an unusual assist from D.C. police Tuesday night as he hurried to DAR Constitution Hall for his nearly sold-out “Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is Not an Option” stage performance.

The two sport-utility vehicles carrying the late-arriving Sheen and his entourage to the hall, at 1776 D Street NW, were escorted by two marked D.C. police cars with emergency lights flashing and sirens wailing. And a photo posted on the actor’s Twitter account (@charliesheen) shows they were traveling well above the speed limit.

“[In] car with Police escort in front and rear!” Sheen said in a tweet with the photo attached. “[D]riving like someone's about to deliver a baby! Cop car lights #Spinning!”

The photo, taken inside the SUV in which Sheen was riding, shows the vehicle’s speedometer needle at 80 mph. Through the windshield, the blazing strobe lights of the lead police car can be seen...

Responding to an inquiry about the police cars, D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump described what happened as routine. “This escort was handled as a reimbursable detail,” she said in an e-mail Wednesday afternoon. “This means that the government was reimbursed for the services provided.”

Most reimbursable details are much different. For example, stores, nightclubs and organizations holding special events such as festivals routinely pay the police department to provide officers for security and crowd control.

But can just anyone hire police officers to provide a lights-and-sirens motor escort? And is it okay to go 80 mph?

How much does it cost?

Crump said Wednesday that she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll check on it.”
The bigger the police state, the more the masses are abused and the elite, defined in whatever manner, are granted special privileges.

It doesn't matter what the rules are, the privileged get to ignore them. An advance man for President Clinton told me about a mysterious character that used to occasionally hang around Bill Clinton. This guy's ID was never checked. He was never checked for weapons, he seemed to be able to do whatever he pleased. It was just known by this advance man and the secret service that it was okay for this guy to pass.

Ben Bernanke said after a speech he gave, during Q&A, that the best thing about being Fed Chairman was that he could go around TSA security.

Charlie Sheen is an anomaly, the special treatment was just thrown at him, but that's what most in Washington D.C. strive for, special treatment. They lie and become apologists for the state so that they can be one step ahead of the masses who are regulated, patted down and abused with increasing frequency.

8 comments:

  1. So Ron doesn't get much of an escort, I guess.

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  2. Another great one is tarmac privleges. Every airport has a list of nomanklature who hase the privlege, board before or after all the peasents. No waiting room no line no rubbing sholders with the hoi poli. Movie stars are always on the list.

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  3. There are privileges to be had in anonymity also let's not forget. For instance, when you meet a celebrity in person, he cannot know anything at all about you, his knowledge of you is non-nonexistent, but you can already know for sure that he is a total dick.

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  4. I really did NOT like the recruiting ad for the FBI that accompanied this post. That image of a goon in full body armor brandishing a weapon really put me off my lunch.

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  5. watching kardashians kris says best thing about using girls gone wild boss joe francis' private jet is there is no security check. it occurs to me that a private jet could be as dangerous as private 737 - but of course as author correctly points out the elite have special rights - PERIOD. but kris does tell us great unwashed that TSA must then be about harassment and not protecting we the people from another 911.

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  6. What a shame that the American people have not become spontaneously angry en masse, as occurred during the whiskey tax. TSA abuses are such a huge indicator of where we are rapidly heading. What else will we be coerced to do? Take mass zyklon-b showers? Seems to me that many people will do it. "We all gotta die somehow," they'll say in acquiescence.

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  7. So they're doing it in the US of A now? How long has this been going on? A word of explanation: My wife and I spent 5 years in a Central Asian republic and were treated to this spectacle frequently. Smug me, I could only (then) be glad I was from "the land of the free". Guess the joke's on me. :-(

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