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). […]
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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. […] “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. […] 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. […] |
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Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (10)
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. […]