The Jimmy Dore Show nov 24, 2011 UC Davis episode

That phone call with the UC Davis guy was embarrassing . . . . for Jimmy. Jimmy, you came off as rude & shouting. Take a tip from those protesters and let the other side lose their cool. You lost your cool and sounded like a bully with a chip on your shoulder.

I’m 20 minutes into the episode. I’m shocked by the UC Davis calls. Between Herman Cain and this guy, I just have no idea what to say. Jimmy, I disagree with the other guy. I think all things considered you stayed as cool as possible and you didn’t start cursing or anything. Everything that is going on is infuriating and if you’re like me you also can’t understand how injustice like this is allowed to happen. You’re passionate about this and you’re angry and you’re frustrated and you’re trying to do something about it. This is not the time to be stoic. We need to be non-violent, but we also need to be loud and concise, which is exactly what you were.

Jimmy, thank you (and your guests) for doing this show. I wish it could be more than once a week.

Ok you cursed once, but seriously one well placed expletive is how to properly use English.

Holy cow, Paul Gilmartin. Did you watch the video of the Chancellor walking to her car passed a line of hundreds of silent student protesters? After she’d just given a speech basically doubling down on what the cops did? The fact that Paul thinks the Chancellor gave a “sincere apology” is mind-boggling. I like Paul, and I listen to his podcast, so I’m going to assume he hasn’t seen the full footage of this woman speaking.

Re: Spec,
I disagree, I think sometimes it’s appropriate to “lose your cool” when you’re talking about thugs brutalizing non-violent students, over and over for months. It’s a totally insane situation and the talking heads on TV are certainly not channeling any of the appropriate outrage, so I’m glad someone is.

PS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmfIuKelOt4

I understand being upset over the situation. It was handled poorly by those police. But yelling at some low level press flunkie that just doesn’t want to say anything that would attract lawsuits doesn’t help matters. I think being snarky and sarcastic is more effective than just yelling the same question over and over. Besides, your beef is with the police, not that press twit from UC Davis.

“Did the chancellor… consider the possibility of police brutality?” If she did and then sent them in anyways she should resign.
and If she didn’t consider it, then she’s incompetent and should resign.” That sums it up nicely, Jimmy.

Stephen j Gould said ‘I can hire half the working class to shot the other half.’

The cops have always been ready to crush the poor at the behest of the wealthy, that is how they got the job in the first place. Check out Upton Sinclair for examples from 100 years ago.

Here is an explanation of what pepperspray was used.
“Def-Tec MK-9 is an extra-strength .7% Major Capsaicinoids solution (identified by an orange band on the cannister) which is 3.5 times more powerful than Defense Technology’s “First Defense” product.

That weaker solution is effective to 18-20 feet and should not be sprayed closer than 6 feet, according to the manufacturer. The only spray the company makes which is stronger is intended for use on bears.
”

http://aksarbent.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-kind-of-pepper-spray-did-uc-davis.html

I think you’re quite mistaken to say you have no power to be a bully tp the Andy, Jimmy. You have a reasonably large public voice and you have the man’s name and position. Hanging up on you would end the conversation but not the threat of being trashed publicly on the radio and internet. That’s what he was afraid of and I guarantee it’s why he stayed on as long as he did. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and it could end up costing him his job and contrary to what you assert about the police fearing the same thing, it’s not always about greed, it’s sometimes about keeping your family alive and well. Now that we’re in a full blown economic crisis it’s an even scarier prospect to find a new job on the fly. Is that an excuse for Andy and the police? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than portraying them all as greedily profiting from hurting people.

Pepper Spray the latest form of trickle down?

Jimmy,

First off; you’re misinterpreting me. I’m not saying your reaction is unreasonable or that what Andy was saying was defensible. I’m saying that before you even opened your mouth, the sheer fact that you are a person with a national (perhaps international) voice with thousands of listeners asking him for an official stance places you in a position of power over him. Not the phone call; him. I also didn’t say you were out of line; I expressed my opinion that he was probably afraid to say anything on a highly controversial international story. How you got that I think cops being in a tough position “somehow that makes it okay” when the last two sentences of my comment were these:

“Is that an excuse for Andy and the police? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than portraying them all as greedily profiting from hurting people.”

Clearly, I don’t think it’s ok. What I do think though, is that it’s not as black and white as you painted it in your show. You said cops do this for the money, for greed and I’m saying there are other and less selfish reasons they feel forced to do things like this too. To clarify though, I’m not talking about people like Tony Bologna and John Pike; they are an entirely different matter than just your average cop.

Now that’s out of the way, I did a little search as I honestly had no idea what a Senior Public Information Officer is and easily found Andy’s profile on the school’s site. http://ucomm.ucdavis.edu/profiles/ns_profiles.html

“Andy Fell, Senior Public Information Representative

(Since September 2008)
•Duties: Physical and biological sciences and engineering writer
•Background: Two years at a British medical communications agency, doing medical writing and communications for the pharmaceutical industry; six years as a research scientist in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Brisbane, Australia, studying malaria and other parasites; one year teaching college courses in parasitology and immunology
•Education: B.Sc. in Zoology, Ph.D. in Immunology, University of Edinburgh”

The guy’s a medical and science-based news liaison and writer for the school! No wonder he was scared silly and didn’t want to give a firm answer on anything. No wonder he wasn’t familiar with police procedures. Look, I work in the IT service industry at a fairly low-level and I get worried when angry customers call me about billing questions and I’m forced to talk with them for a short spell. If I give the wrong answer then I may have just put my bosses in a hole for money they shouldn’t owe, or at the very least a tough spot with the client, and that wouldn’t even make the local news.

Where’d you get “Director” from? Did you even click the link? He’s one of four people with the same title under the News media outreach part of the college News Service. Did you look at his duties? I’ll paste it again “Duties: Physical and biological sciences and engineering writer.” Also, I do understand the difference between my relatively unimportant position and his; his mistakes reverberate a lot further and have potentially much worse consequences if he gives the wrong answer.

Again, I’ve never said your outrage was not appropriate, but then again you never did find out what the actual regulations were, or at least you didn’t bother to let your listeners know. You’ve apparently got this black-and-white view of everything where no human being is capable of having a nuanced position on anything to the point where me calling you out for apparently misapplied in direction, but appropriate in level anger and outrage means I can’t be faulting Andy for anything he said, did, or didn’t say or do.

That the violence was unbelievably excessive and inappropriate is so obvious that I should think it goes without saying, but I also think it’s important for those of us who see things like this and get outraged to make sure that our efforts and energy are spent on going after those who actually mean something, and this guy Andy doesn’t seem to be one of them. He seems to be the guy who wasn’t expecting to get a cell phone with an outraged media personality shoved at him, and did his best to not throw his boss and associates under the bus in an effort to protect his job. Why can’t I fault the guy for not taking the obvious moral stand and yet still sympathize with him for not wanting to lose his job over a single phone call?

I didn’t ignore that part; I directly responded and even quoted a portion of it:

“How you got that I think cops being in a tough position “somehow that makes it okay” when the last two sentences of my comment were these:

“Is that an excuse for Andy and the police? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than portraying them all as greedily profiting from hurting people.”

Clearly, I don’t think it’s ok. What I do think though, is that it’s not as black and white as you painted it in your show. You said cops do this for the money, for greed and I’m saying there are other and less selfish reasons they feel forced to do things like this too. To clarify though, I’m not talking about people like Tony Bologna and John Pike; they are an entirely different matter than just your average cop.”

(ugh… please ignore the sloppy grammer from bad editing…)
I do want to be clear though, I’m not raging over here or anything. I’m enjoying the chance to have a conversation with you and the reason I’m focusing on you and your actions is because I’m talking to you, not Andy Fell. Otherwise I’d just be silently chuckling and agreeing with your show like I usually do.

If you guys scroll to the very top of the page you will find the words “Jimmy Dore Comedy”. Might consider lighting up just a bit?

As a political comedy show, there is fun to be had here in the comments, and some points of view that are worth considering, but as Shecky Greene used to tell me before he went on in the Catskills, “shrill and badgering ain’t funny.” Andy Fell, poor Andy Fell, is just a functionary – he peppered nobody, approved nothing, just tried to rope-a-dope a little as part of his non-corporate job smoothing over dumb cop violence. I’m gilmartining this a little – but Fell is just a flack – dime a dozen, who gives a fuck about him, all by himself on these lonely shores where a simply foppish obfuscation gets big laughs from us, but what if I called you about some bullshit thing KPFK is doing, like Gary Null or truther tinfoil, and asked you some prepared question about it? Huh? Nah, I wouldn’t do that – I have other ways of taking out my frustrations, and you’re still the man.

HEY jimmy! how about occupy wall street leave a message to the police union and state: when and if the police go on strike to claim that they are not paid enough or not compensated enough with benifits, wall street occupiers will form a private citizens security force to remove any and all strikers so that they will know what it feels like to be SHUT UP, SHUT DOWN, AND VIOLATED OF THEIR CIVIL RIGHT TO PROTEST for wages, benifits, pensions and such

Hey Jimmy,
Another kick ass show. I really wish you were on every day. Sorry to hear you left the Palin Teabag mugs I gave you at Left, Right and Ridiculous, but will happily send you some more.
I love the funny way you guys point out the seething fascism that exists in our leaders. The revolution will include laughter! You are doing good work to work out the severely atrophied frontal lobes in this nation! The corporate media has gone beyond piano players in the whore house to fluffers. Any promotion I can do to for you guys please let me know!

It’s grotesque to hear Megan Kelly down play the effects of pepper spray. Didn’t she just recently gave birth to a humanoid of some sort, while some poor woman had a miscarriage because she was sprayed.

I know the fda and epa aren’t really on top of the chemicals that are in the air, water, and food, but I’m sure they got a handle on what’s allowed in these chemical deterrents.