Opinion: A Dumb Choking Joke In Brookline & Cancel Culture

Press release from Brookline Resident Marty Rosenthal:

October 1 2020

As a member of the Select Board’s Police Reform Committee, aside from also being a former Select Board Member and a current Town Meeting Member, first, I deviate from and add to my below (last week) Statement to offer super kudos to the Board -- and the Police Union -- for agreeing to finally introduce body and dashboard cameras!

Now the worse news, our last week Statement on the exaggerated and counterproductive brouhaha about Bernard Greene’s, yes, dumb “choking” joke at Sept. 16th’s Police Reform Committee. The PAX Board on Sept. 20th voted these four points:

(1) to join the substantive criticism of Bernard Greene’s “choking” gesture;; BUT

(2) to accept his next day apology (“… inappropriate … a lapse, and I apologize. … ”);

(3) to decry the presumably well-intentioned but severely overreacting call for him to resign, both as Select Board Member and as Chair of the Reform Committee -- where it’s actually he who’s pushed the chokehold ban!; AND

(4) to also see this somewhat deserved -- but exaggerated -- outcry as one of several recent examples of the dangers of WA16, “Recall of public officials” -- for no specified reasons, though its non-binding Explanation says, “This is intended for only the most grievous of circumstances.”

In a democracy, there’s a regular way to remove leaders you criticize -- elections. Bernard got over 4000 votes in 2018. The voters can pass judgment on his work next May. A self-selected and vocal group “demanding his immediate resignation” for a basically non-impeachable (but admitted) “offense” feels -- instead -- like bullying.

We decry the pandemic of progressives’ incivility and ad hominem attacks in not just Brookline, but everywhere -- seemingly an overreaction to, and near-mimicking of, “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” And, it really is a manifestation of the “Cancel Culture.” See July 23rd’s N.Y.Times’s op-ed, “Should We Cancel Aristotle?” -- with a great (3 min.) video, “Cancel Culture in 1283” [nyti.ms/3403rgZ].

We find astonishing the irony of anti-racist activists who not only urge the resignation of our first ever African-American Select Board Member, but also (by guilt by association) of the entire Police Reform Committee. Do they (really) want to set that work -- I’m sorry, both sincere and clearly “led” by Bernard -- back by more than three months? Please visit the Committee’s website to fact-check those misguided attacks. Are they concerned only with “reimagining” Police, the Board’s other current committee (“Task Force”) -- like the wonderful 2017 Minneapolis report “mpd150” -- which made no actual reforms?

PAX has always valued public service. Here, the seemingly “popular” demanded punishment is grossly disproportionate to Bernard’s “crime.” We’re well aware -- and not complacent -- that we’ll now get further ad hominem attacks on PAX, like for other recent stances that various progressives have criticized. Speaking of Aristotle, for our annual Newsletter, I’ve several times taken public solace from the his “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” Bernard’s been doing plenty! Who here, even virtually, is infallible?

This press release was produced by the Brookline Resident Marty Rosenthal. The views expressed here are the author’s own.