Should you just happen to be in Sydney next week, wonder over to the Opera House and check out the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I’ll be there, spreading dangerous thoughts about flogging and the war on drugs.
Did I mention they’re flying me over there all fancy? Like in business class? Classy, those Aussies are!
It should be a blast.
Part One of a interview of me by Michelle Brunet at Criminal Justice Schools Infois online. If they’re nice enough to interview me, I’ll be nice enough to tell you about it!
Some of my old police friends my recognize these stories from Slate.com, which are taken from Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan’s soon-to-be bestselling The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office. Tim knows my story well, since his help and editorial vision made Cop in the Hood the rip-roaring success it is.
Check this out by Michael Corbin in Baltimore’s City Paper: Better of Two Evils. Makes me sound like such a intellectual bad-ass. And potty mouth. Fuckin’-A!
Seriously though, it is very powerfully written. Makes me want to re-read my own books.
Caleb Kennedy wrote a nice feature on me for the Daily Princetonian.
“I was not particularly happy at Princeton,” [Moskos] said, explaining that he felt much of the student body came from a “New England prep school culture” that he was not used to.
But I loved my professors. And one of them called me a “star student.” It makes me beam.
I’ll be on my favorite intelligent TV show again this Saturday, 8-10AM (Eastern Time). MSNBC. Man oh man do I hate the idea of setting my alarm for 6:30AM. But it should be fun.
I’ll be on Hot 97’s Street Soldiers with Lisa Evers this coming Sunday morning (it was prerecorded today). Rounding out the roundtable is Noel Leader, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, and Norman Seabrook, President of the New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. It’s a lively hour.
You’ll hear me question Brooklyn rapper Uncle Murda as to whether a stop-snitching advocate who goes by the name of “Murda” is really a good voice for violence reduction.
I’ve always loved doing radio interviews and never been keen on TV. Partly because most TV is so stupid. Why should I put on a suit to get driven to Manhattan (they don’t like it if you make your own way to the studio) to stare into a camera and then say a talking point to somebody I can’t see (and can barely hear)? And then, after the ever awkward slight audio delay, say one more thing. Then somebody says something and the host pats himself on the back for such an in-depth discussion. Sometimes, rarely, it might even last 5 minutes.
Roger Ebert once said, “When writing you should avoid cliché, but on television you should embrace it.” Unfortunately, that’s true. TV is a strange medium. And that’s what you’ll be thinking when you’re done.
Or maybe it’s one of those craaazy shows. Think about it the next you see somebody on TV–especially somebody huffy and “passionate,” particularly if he’s conservative and on some trading floor or doing an infomercial (I’d love to see a conservative infomercial on a trading room floor–not certain what they’d be selling)–think of how crazy (and scarily skinny) most TV people would look if they were behaving that way and weren’ton TV. It’s a very silly game to play.
Up With Chris Hayes was different. Don’t like the political slant? Get over it. (Whatever happened to it being unpatriotic to criticize the President during wartime? Oh, I guess that only applied from 2001-2009.) But leave that aside and think of what “Up With Chris Hayes” actually does.
It’s an actually conversation. With real live human beings. People with whom, as a guest, you can make eye contact with and touch. It also is long (time flies when you’re on the air… but I think I was there for 40 minutes). It’s somewhat free form. And yes, the conversation really does continue unabated during the commercial break. (Usually there’s just some mindless shuffling of paper until some techie gives the all clear.) Up with Chris Hayes is like the best of radio… but in living color. And at least now, a few years after my first TV appearance, I finally have a suit that fits.
Also, I was really tempted by those pastries in the center of the table. I wonder if they were tasty? I really wanted to shove them into my pie hole and sit back contently spitting out bits of sugar every time I talked. Hey, free is free! You can take the cop out of the uniform… but then you might have trouble getting the uniform back on the cop.
Here’s the link to the video. It’s segments 4 through 6.
[You can read more about the TV experience in general on one of my older posts.]
Tune in tomorrow (Saturday) around 8:40AM (Eastern Time) to MSNBC.
One of Mother Jones’s favorite books of 2011 is In Defense of Flogging.
It makes a fabulous Christmas stocking stuffer, for all you Old Calendarists out there (just 10 shopping days left).