What a difference a day makes, right? Along with thousands of other Toronto residents, I’ve gone from admiring the restraint of our police officers to a sense of sickened disgust at their abuses of power yesterday — the attacks on peaceful demonstrators (singing “O Canada,” for fuck’s sake), the unjustified detention of bystanders (in the pouring rain, for four hours), the unlawful search and seizures, the denials of basic rights, all of it designed to push back against Saturday’s wave of vandalism.
If you were following my Twitter feed, you doubtless caught the exact point where it all clicked over from sympathy to revulsion; if not, the exceptional coverage on Torontoist should catch you up in short order.
The abuses of police power need to be explained, and they need to be explained today. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to put the question to our mayor this afternoon at the Pride Week launch, an event dedicated to openness and harmony and all that stuff for which our city is supposed to stand. If nothing else, he’ll squirm in an inclusive manner.
Oh, and since some of you come here expecting box-office news on a Monday, here you go: “Toy Story 3” held the top spot over the weekend with $59 million, with “Grown Ups” earning $41 million for a respectable second place and “Knight and Day” limping into third with $20.5 million. Somewhere, Tom Cruise is vowing to put everything he’s got into his Les Grossman project — which will doubtless be the scariest comedy ever made.
Sorry, Norman, I am still backing the police. Any overreaction on their part is understandable in light of what went down on Saturday. But I’m afraid the Toronto Pride Parade inclusion of a virulently anti – Israel group who will be allowed to march in the event is a mockery of openness and harmony. Most Toronto Jews, gay or straight, feel alienated by this decision. Pride has been tainted by this.
Sort of related, I’ve noticed that ABC’s dull new cop show “Rookie Blue” is very obviously filmed in Toronto. Although I don’t think they’ve ever announced where it’s supposed to take place, the show doesn’t seem to be pretending that the city is New York in this case. There’s no attempt to disguise or shoot around Toronto landmarks. A sign for Yonge St. was perfectly visible in one scene.
I’d say that this probably isn’t the best time to be glorifying Toronto cops. On the other hand, most Americans probably have no idea what’s going on up there right now anyway.