Waiting for the man to jump

Remember that scene in Lethal Weapon, when the policeman approaches the man on the high ledge? He handcuffs himself to the man, and (to our shock and amusement) the policeman jumps them both off. And he gets off the landing mat and says: That was fun, let’s do it again.

Now imagine, instead of one psychotic policeman there are fifty. And imagine the man on the ledge is the chief of police. And imagine they roped themselves to him inside the building, and then dragged him onto the precipice. And now they jump.

That would be silly.

But essentially, that is what is about to happen in the USA. And there doesn’t seem to be a soft landing – except if the Republicans land on their heads. Amusing? If America jumps off a fiscal cliff, we may laugh – just until we realise that the rope attached to the last man is tangled round our legs.

Collateral damage

Hemingway, I think, said that first-time spectators at bullfights are shocked, not at the death of the bull (for that is the point of the exercise) but at the death of the horses.

It seems that before the matador appears, men on horses stick spikes in the bull’s shoulders to make him angry. This works. He responds by charging at the horses. Their death is shocking because it is incidental: they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the police officers mown down like Space Invaders in Leon. Or Ben Kinsella.

Or Jacintha Saldanha.

I’m sure it is very amusing having a joke at the expense of someone rich and famous. I expect it is fun throwing rocks at fire crews, or attacking linesmen. And if those people suffer, I suppose they (like the bull) must accept this as their purpose in life. And if someone else dies because the fire engine fails to arrive, we shake our heads in sorrow and say we didn’t mean any harm.

But even convicted prisoners are protected by national and international law from being publicly humiliated. Nurses, it seems, are not. 

I don’t pretend, of course, that the UK has a clean record in the humane treatment of prisoners (or nurses). We used, for example, to send convicts to Australia. But these days, we recognise that this is cruel and inhuman. After all, Australia contains radio stations like 2Day FM.