“Waddling like a cocksure duck,” as one commentator at the Dangerous Minds site put it, Pike with his blithe disregard for the multiple still and video cameras trained on him all but ensured that his actions, and his attitude in performing them, would go viral. What resulted was not only Pike’s transformation into a memetic icon but, much more importantly, an object lesson in the potency of citizen journalism as enabled by the internet. [...]
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I’ve tracked the “pepper-spray copy” story here at Photocritic International because it’s as vivid and immediate an example of the potency of citizen journalism via the lens media as a commentator on lens culture like myself could want. I’ve said, from the beginning, that without Lt. John Pike’s bring-it-on turning of this situation into a police-brutality photo op in front of a crowd of amateur paparazzi, heads would not have started to roll at UC Davis and he would not have become an international symbol of uniformed thuggery. [...] The “citizen journalist” documentation of Lt. John Pike nonchalantly pepper-spraying seated protesters on the campus of the University of California-Davis on November 18 has gone viral not just in the west but in mainland China as well — with the blessings of the Chinese Communist Party. This raises the question of whether Pike is actually a covert operative for the CCP, deliberately overreacting to nonviolent protest in order to discredit the United States and strengthen the hands of totalitarian governments everywhere. [...] The behavior of the administrators untimately responsible in this situation, no matter how reprehensible or questionable, did not manifest itself visually in a resonant way. Pike, lowest man on this totem pole, has outdone them all in that regard, rising overnight to global celebrity by becoming an internet meme, the instantly recognizable symbol of the callous, doughnut-heavy, authority-abusing white cop. The proliferation of Pike collages cheers me considerably, demonstrating as it does that the pillory — as a function that empowers the citizenry to mock and shame those who violate the social contract — endures. [...] |
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Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (8)
To the $1 million settlement in the UC Davis pepper-spray lawsuit add the $1,116,135 in actual monies paid out to manage this crisis, plus $1 million for other internal expenses and $1 million for diminished reputation. And let’s not forget the $240K Pike cost the university as settlement in a 2008 racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit resulting from his alleged homophobic slurs directed at an openly gay Asian-American fellow officer. Grand total so far: $4,356,135. That’s one pricey hire. [...]