Week 5 blog

To begin this week's blog I will first talk about Kasinksy's article Patrolling the Facts: Media, Cops, Crime. In her article Kasinksy talks explores more deeply the relationship between the media and law enforcement.  More focused on news media she discusses the recent changes to law enforcement and the police and their new efforts to control or to manipulate their image in the media. She goes into the different ways that police and law enforcement are portrayed in the media the different ways in which this is done and the ramifications that has for society and how that affects our views of the police and law enforcement. She argues or at least quotes someone that says the media is a tool that the powerful uses to their agenda. However in times where the powerful or the police, law enforcement, or government are under persecution from the majority of the population the media jumps to that side in order to give the story that sells. Therefore the media has a lot of influence on the government because it influences the minds of the people.
The next reading this week was Chapter 4 on Cops and Detective Films in which Rafter focuses on as the title may suggest, cop and detective films. Rafter examines the evolution of these kinds of films and talks about this week's viewing: Dirty Harry. She discusses how this sets the precedent for many movies to follow. She talks about how these display sexism and glorify the ideal masculinity, and where these films may be going these days.
Now, more on Dirty Harry...Awesome movie. The second or third time I've seen it. Dirty Harry Callaghan is the ultimate cowboy, hardcore, straight-shootin, hard-working, blue collar, Irish-American cop. He is everything a cop should be. But for good cops like him the system just slows him down because he doesn't go by the book. He goes by his experience and instinct. "The book" that he doesnt go by was written for idiot cops who were wrong or have bad instinct. Dirty Harry is a badass.
Back to my outside source: The Black Donnellys, as the episodes go on, and the plot thickens, the situations and problems the Donnellys find themselves in become more intense, it is becoming more and more obvious that the mainest of the main characters fits into Rafter's classification of the masculine hero of the show. He faces down Italians, and mob-bosses, and is level headed enough to keep his brothers out of trouble and deal with the police as well.