So the police were trying to serve a warrant on some young White guy in a working class Pittsburgh neighborhood the other day, and the guy stabbed a K-9 dog with a pocket knife during a struggle. The dog dies after vets perform two surgeries and removed a kidney.
Today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (owned by Richard Mellon Scaife) has as its most prominent front page story, "K-9 Dies 'Warrior's Death'." Above the story and headline is a large picture of lots of policemen saluting as the dog is wheeled out of an animal hospital in a casket with an American flag draped over it. The caption to the picture is "RIP Rocco" (Rocco being the dog's name).
The front-page article, continued on Page 4, reports that "Flags on all city buildings were lowered to half-staff on Thursday night," and that a "procession of more than two dozen police vehicles, many carrying the city's 21 K-9 officers, accompanied Rocco's remains through part of the city." Also, "A number of officers sobbed openly outside the hospital as the vigil continued. Others, some of them holding their young children inside the facility, stood quietly, saying little."
I'm an animal lover, but this story gives me an uneasy feeling. We live in a society in which human life increasingly means little in various circumstances -- if someone is regarded as a "bad guy," or a potential enemy, or men in general especially when used as canon fodder for the government's wars all over the world -- and then there's the extreme violence routinely found in everything marketed to the masses, including video games -- but an animal is accorded this kind of treatment and media acclaim? We often remark how White men are almost never allowed to be heroes anymore, but a German Shepherd stabbed by a pocketknife is weeped over and flags are lowered to half-staff?
There's just some very strange dynamics at work in America today, some above the surface, others subterranean. The melding of the military and police mindset, and the placement of "officer safety" above keeping the peace and enforcing the law is part of it, but there's also this bizarre treatment of animals, where they appear more and more as human-like in commercials and shows, and then there's that whole trend of people who go out in public dressed like animals. Very strange.
Here's the link to the article:
http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/5505426-74/police-rocco-pittsburgh#axzz2s2qndP00