talkpolitics | This week in dehumanization...

The first inkling I had of it (this time around) was in the comments section of Salon, which was also one of the first outlets I saw reporting on the confiscation of tampons and sanitary pads at the demonstrations in Texas the other day. The rationale offered – apparently by someone unclear on either the physics of throwing or the actual weight of tampons and sanitary pads – was that they could be used as projectiles. But then a commenter added this:

“Seems beside the tampons they also seized containers filled with urine, feces, and paint as well.”

Here we go, I thought.

Yep, KTEK had carried a story that included the following astonishing assertion from the Texas Department of Safety:

“During these inspections, DPS officers have thus far discovered one jar suspected to contain urine, 18 jars suspected to contain feces, and three bottles suspected to contain paint.”

Note, please, the words, “suspected.” I will be surprised if there is any significant follow-up to this story about the actual content of these “suspected” items. The bit about 18 jars of excrement especially strains credibility. Are we being asked to believe there was some sort of coordinated effort by a group of demonstrators to poop into jars? Seems to me that kind of tactic would at least be talked about by one person taking part, if only to complain about the nastiness of attempting it. Seems to me that finding something like this on someone would result in some fairly pungent comments by the officer, or some remarks of horror and surprise by anyone else watching, even if they were fellow demonstrators. There were a lot of people there. Nobody noticed officers confiscating jars of poop? Eighteen times?

To its credit, the Texas Tribune did a follow up to this story

“DPS officers outside the Senate gallery and at each entrance to the Capitol told The Texas Tribune they had not seen or found jars containing feces or urine, and multiple officers throughout the Capitol said they had not heard of any jars being found until a reporter mentioned it. Several officers also said they had not heard anything on the DPS radio system about jars of any excrement.”

I’ll grant you that there are a lot of crazy, stupid people in this world, and it’s conceivable that a few crazy, stupid people might think that throwing excrement and urine is a good way to bolster their cause during a protest, but those folks seem to be a pretty thin upon the ground. If it were to actually happen, I think it’s more likely to be the work of a single, seriously disturbed individual than a group.

The fact is, fishing for these stories will generally haul up an awful lot of qualifiers about officers finding “substance that appears to be” or “is suspected of being” or “looks like” poop and urine, with little to no follow-up. A jar of apple-juice or lemonade could also “look like” urine. As for the alleged excrement, the closest I’ve found online to someone documenting this was something I saw on a Glenn Beck related website where a baggie of something brown confiscated from demonstrators had a coy caption along the lines of “What does this look like to you? We know what it smells like!”

Well, guys, to me those discrete dark-colored things with roughly four sides and slightly rounded corners look like brownies jammed into a baggie, and I kind of suspect they smell by now like a stale combination of baked flour, sugar, chocolate and butter. I suspect that, not just because of the way they look, but because, if it were truly poop in a bag, the caption would most likely read, “Here’s some poop in a bag we took off of those disgusting demonstrators.”

Which brings us to my next point, which is that I in many cases, this seems not to be a matter of police departments committing an honest mistake. It’s a deliberate attempt at dehumanization. Confiscated chocolate pudding, baby food, brownies, juice, all could be “truthfully” and smirkingly described “having the appearance” of feces or urine. Put that out there in the media, and you can bet it will immediately morph from “we found things that appear to be/are suspected of being jars of feces/bags of urine” into “they found jars/bags of feces and urine that the demonstrators were planning to throw!”

From what I’ve seen, this story is most often invoked about predominantly white demonstrators, like members of OW, or anti-war or WTO protestors. Angry, or even calm black or Hispanic demonstrators, after all, are already halfway dehumanized by a certain kind of person. If the demonstrators are predominantly white, however, a little extra oomph needs to be added to make them menacing, and what better way than to invite the reader or viewer to imagine “filthy hippies” handling their own excrement, squatting over jars, or scraping it into baggies?

It is certainly within the realm of physical possibility that some significant group of demonstrators were planning to pelt Texas legislators with feces and urine. I’m just not going to believe it until we have something other than a statement by the Texas DPS issued shortly after they were embarrassed by news of them confiscating female sanitary products from demonstrators.

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From:

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com

Are we being asked to believe there was some sort of coordinated effort by a group of demonstrators to poop into jars? Seems to me that kind of tactic would at least be talked about by one person taking part, if only to complain about the nastiness of attempting it.

I have a 15 lb poop factory here at home. It would not be difficult for me to get some excrement into a jar.

From:

rick-day.livejournal.com

yeah, but would you actually attempt it?

From:

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com

No, but I also don't think in-person protest accomplishes anything period.

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This week in dehumanization...

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