Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Are Helicopters Racist?
With apologies for my extended absence from the Ricochet community, I return today, like Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings, with terror and slaughter.
I call your attention to my most recent contribution over at PJ Media, in which I unleash the terror and slaughter on a favorite (if at times too easy) target, the Los Angeles Times, more particularly a story that ran in the paper’s Sunday print edition but appeared online Friday evening.
Los Angeles Police Department and County Sheriff’s Department helicopters fly lower over black neighborhoods than others, we are told, causing all manner of misery for those living below. Left unsaid but implicit in the article is that the only possible explanation for this is racism among the people flying the noisy whirlybirds.
The article is truly a shining example of agenda-driven journalism, in which the reporter, Jeong Park, had to ignore every last bit of relevant information regarding both air traffic control and crime in South Los Angeles so as to assign malign intent among the airborne cops and bring this embarrassment to print. He even linked to an FAA document he apparently believed supported the argument, but which in fact undercuts it.
The piece’s many deficiencies have been brought to the attention of several editors at the paper, yet as of this writing it remains online and uncorrected. Please click on over and read my piece (the L.A. Times article may be behind a paywall; I read it so you don’t have to) then return and weigh in with your comments.
Published in General
You wouldn’t want facts to get in the way of their storytelling, would you? Good grief. . .
Given that everything is racist, then racism is no longer news. Shouldn’t the LA Times cover that which is not racist?
Are they capable of that? If your entire frame of reference and value system is a little woke cognitive box, imagine how scary the world would be if you could not reduce everything to carbon emissions, scary MAGA heteros or the lingering effects of slavery. The ever-lurking shadow of fear…uncertainty, complexity, the pending realization that everything you ever wrote was trite nonsense…Sad, really.
Before I opened the FAA link, I made a bet with myself, and of course I won it. Yep…a ground-school instructor had once quizzed me on altitude minima, grinned patiently as I recited the fixed-wing regs, then handed me the book and directed me to 91.119 and urged me to read just a little bit farther, to the helicopter regs.
Clearly we need common sense helicopter control. They are instruments of war, after all.
In the hands of Mayor Rizzo, yeah. Do any city governments still stock satchel bombs?
Helicopters are indeed racist, as any 10 year old could have told you in the town where I grew up.
They are racist against Italians.
How so, pray tell?
A helicopter has two blades.
The little one goes “ginnie ginnie ginnie” and the big one goes “Wopp…Wopp…Wopp”.
QED.
Years ago, a Portland Police Chief nixed the idea of a helicopter for the Portland Police Bureau. He claimed it gave police officers an unfair advantage. That came as a surprise to Portland Police line cops. We never looked at policing as some sort of Olympic sport. The PPB now has two Cessna aircraft equipped with FLIR systems. The following videos debunks the Olympic sport model of policing.
It’s a great piece, Jack. Glad to see you around these parts.
Going to the Wayback Machine for that one, but yes, that was a debacle.
No, we wouldn’t want the police to have an unfair advantage. Why is Portland dying?
Thank you!
Years of a dysfunctional city government that lead to over 100 nights of rioting. Blaming police officers for their failures. Now we can add a Soros Multnomah County District Attorney. Hug and Release does not work.
That article already bookmarked under “Nonsense”.
They fly low so they can get better pictures!
Shush! No one is supposed to know.
Unfair advantage?! It made me think of an old Bill Cosby comedy bit about having a referee do a coin toss before every war.
Call it in the air, Portland police chief. Heads? It’s tails. you lose. Antifa/BlM captains you will burn what you like and if arrested not be prosecuted. The home team will not be permitted to use aircraft or video identification. Begin the rioting on my whistle…