To fully exploit his global name recognition and the free visual branding that he achieved with the help of hundreds of volunteer photo collagists (including yours truly), I suggest that John Pike should consider a career in politics. He may be a liberal goat, but he became an overnight conservative hero. The right wing loved him for unleashing their ’60s-vintage fury at college students in general. […]
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In his 1968 book The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defined chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.” In that spirit (though he’s not Jewish), John Pike, formerly a lieutenant in the campus police at the University of California, Davis, filed a worker’s compensation claim with the State of California for “psychiatric injury,” which can result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). […] The term “sock puppet” has come to denote people who create false web identities with which to generate online attention to and (usually) praise of themselves ― such as posting favorable comments about and reviews of their own work at Amazon and other sites. We need another term for those who hide behind false names in order to do other kinds of online harm to people, and I propose “web weasel.” […] We need to preserve anonymity in some situations― that’s what makes whistle-blowing possible, among other things. But no reputable print periodical would publish unsigned letters to the editor; they require a verifiable sender, though they’ll withhold a name on request if there’s a good reason for it. No reason that online forums, and the comments section of periodicals and blogs, shouldn’t subscribe to the same standards. […] |
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Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (11)
UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has become the last woman standing, so to speak, in the school’s pepper-spray scandal. Everyone else in any position of authority in the hierarchy either resigned or got the heave-ho. Within a year or so all the students Lt. John Pike sprayed will have graduated or left. In less than a year Katehi will become vested in the UC retirement plan. That should take some of the sting out of the fact that her eventual obit will surely replay her November 19, 2011 televised “walk of shame” along a path lined with the students whose trust she’d betrayed. […]