Posted on 03/02/2009 10:44:23 PM PST by Chet 99
At first glance, VH1'a Sober House, like its predecessor, Celebrity Rehab, appears to be exploitative reality TV at it's worst -- stars hitting their bottoms and relapsing, going on drama-fueled drug binges.
But there are moments on Sober House that are not only real and touching, they are even cathartic. In the most recent episode with Rodney King, the moment is downright historic. In this clip King revisits the site of his infamous beating. He forgives the officers who beat him and prays for the people who died during the riots. More than a decade later, Los Angeles is still healing from this incident. Hopefully this is one more step in our own rehab, one more step towards recovery for the city.
(Excerpt) Read more at laist.com ...
Had it occured 5 years earlier, WE would be fortunate.
nufsed
King was a drug addict the night he got in a fight with the cops and still is today.
My prayer is that he will realize that and be able to tell the world his real problem that night was not “racism” but “drug addiction.”
It would be a big break from the Sharpton-Jackson victimization cycle we continue to go through in this country.
This garbage is as old as God.
When in Slovakia over the past 4 years, I had a book of reading exercises that I used in tutoring English.
One was about the Rodney King event.
The title was “Turning the Other Cheek”, and all about the darling Rodney hugging everyone in court and how he forgave everyone.
This is very OLD news.
I guess the leftist are devoid of anything else to write about, now that the Messiah is their new god.
Well now I can die happy.
Oh, no.
Next Brett Favre will be un-retiring . . . wait . . . re-retiring, right?
So, I started watching and began to see how little control these people have over themselves and their own lives. It's really more than a bit scary, when you see what they've been willing to do for drugs or alcohol. And you see how their addictions affect the people around them. The choices they make, the people they surround themselves with. One of the people on the show, Amber Smith, is a former Victorias Secret model, and I believe that she's been in the SI swimsuit edition. Well into her 30s, she's an incredibly beautiful woman, but she's been addicted to and using opiates since she was in her teens. You would think that this woman had everything going for her, but her self esteem was so incredibly low that when a guy she once had a crush on asked her out, she met him at a party, got drunk, blacked out, and couldn't remember who or what she did. In her bio on the shows, she states that at one point, she was prostituting herself for drugs and drug money, and they "advertised her" using her magazine covers.
The thing with Rodney King is that these shows have really humanized him. For years, he'd pop up in the news for getting arrested or something else, and he was nothing more than the punchline for a joke. In this show of "celebrity addicts," he actually seems to be the most grounded and normal, as a human being. The guy's got problems and "demons," and he's trying to work through them in order to reconnect with his family. It's actually quite touching. And I find that he's really the most sympathetic character there, and I really hope that he is able to overcome his alcoholism and find a better life for himself.
For anyone who wonders how it is that anyone could do that to themselves, you might want to check out these shows, as well as a frightening and depressing movies called "Sherry Baby" with Maggie Gynenahll. AA & NA tell addicts that they need to put their lives in the "hands" of a higher power, and that's because they realize that when it comes to addiction, many people really are powerless against it themselves.
Mark
No need, all you gotta do is look at what they showed over and over on TV. All the while, king was trying to get up. He refused to put his hands behind him and be cuffed, and every kick, hit or choke that he got was completely justified. Until he was chained up, the officers couldnt be sure that they, him, and any innocent passersby were safe.
“No need, all you gotta do is look at what they showed over and over on TV. All the while, king was trying to get up. He refused to put his hands behind him and be cuffed, and every kick, hit or choke that he got was completely justified. Until he was chained up, the officers couldnt be sure that they, him, and any innocent passersby were safe.”
That isn’t what I am talking about.
I haven’t been able to find an internet showing of the seconds that were cut by the media before the beating starts.
What started the beating is when King launched from a crouch with both hands out going for a cops throat, I have it on vcr tape but I would like to see it on youtube, almost no American has seen it.
Even a Los Angeles detective asked me for a copy, he hadn’t known about that part.
I know that, I have seen that and I agree. What I am saying though is even without that, his actions that were shown justified what he got.
Fine, I put out a plea for anyone to contact me if they can find a source for that extremely rare piece of footage that I addressed and you tell there is no need, I can watch the same part of the film that everyone on the planet has seen a thousand times and that YouTube is saturated with instead.
Thank you for your responses.
The lesson from the RK riots is that cops are expected to remain passive and let minority suspects beat or kill them. Any defensive actions by the cops will, of course, be considered racist, even if the cops involved are black.
So the moral of the story is:
Beatings did Rodney King some good......
What you posted is the 61 second King beating, everyone has seen it and knows it by heart.
What I am talking about is the initial deadly King attack before the beating started, it was censored out by the American media. I heard about it when a woman called Rush and described it as the actual opening 13 seconds of the 81 second video version that she had watched in Europe.
I didn't know what to make of her claim until I saw it myself, Rodney King was on his feet and comes at the cop with his hands going for his throat, then the fight/beating starts, which is the part that is in the video that you posted and that we all are so familiar with.
"The actual King incident is 81 seconds long. he took the tape to KTLA. after the police showed no interest. First, by the way, he called CNN and CNN at that time did not have any phone on in the middle of the night. They do have now, they've got round the clock service because of that incident. And then he called KTLA and he took it in. And the KTLA people gave the tape unedited to the police department because they wanted to make sure that it was authentic, and the police confirmed it. And then they put on in their newscast 68 seconds of this 81 seconds. The first 13 seconds are critical because they show Mr. King lunging in the direction of Officer Laurence Powell, who then responds with this baton blow.
Lou Cannon author of “Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD.” speaking at PBS.
“The problem with understanding the incident is that the events described above occurred before the famous videotape of the incident—except for the first three seconds of the video in which King charges toward Officer Laurence Powell. These three seconds, and ten other seconds that follow, were deleted by the Los Angeles television station that showed the beating, which is the version that most people saw.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/authors_corner/jan-june98/cannon_4-7.html
Mark.
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