It's not terribly healthy when a blogger is lost for words, but our gracious ring-master pulled it off by dropping this gem-like turd from Police Association hench-thing president Greg O'Connor into my Twitter feed.
Police Association president Greg O'Connor believes the officer who arrested entertainer Tiki Taane at a Tauranga nightclub for singing the rap anthem F*** the Police will have the public's backing.
But Green MP Keith Locke has defended the performer, saying he has the right to sing whatever he wants and the police were being "precious".
Mr O'Connor said he could not go into detail about the case in which Taane, 34, is to appear at the Tauranga District Court on Friday on a charge of disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence.
But he said that "any right-thinking New Zealander will understand and will be fully supportive of police actions" when the facts emerge.
"Cops are being attacked all over New Zealand and nothing happens in isolation, so I'm sure when New Zealanders get the full version and not the Keith Locke version they will fully understand."
I'll take Greg's claim to privileged knowledge, and a telepathic understanding of the minds of all "right-thinking" New Zealanders, with a grain of salt - and a whole case of tequila.
But as a culture vulture, there's a rather skanky logic fail going on.
"Cops are being attacked all over New Zealand and nothing happens in isolation..."
OK, Greg. Let's play your game.
For rather obvious reasons, Southern Opera has to cancel their already postponed from last September production of Tosca. For Greg's benefit, that's a jolly little blood-and-thunder melodrama whose second act climaxes with our heroine murdering the chief of police after a pleasant evening of blackmail and implied date rape.
Not exactly my cup of tea, but since it's premiere in Rome, on 14 January 1900, it has been enormously popular. With 110 years of data, it should be a snip to prove a causal relationship between performances of the following scene and cop killings and suicides. Right?
Grand opera a little rich for your cop-killing blood? Try some comic operetta instead; and there's few better than the tuneful snark of Sir Arthur Sullivan and William S. Gilbert. Marvel at the blood-thirsty maidens and marginally less eager policemen in this clip from The Pirates of Penzance! (Greg, however, might want to lie down in a dark room with a wet rag over his face. It's disrespectful.)
Still too hoity-toity? Who doesn't love a musical with twinkle-toed juvenile delinquents?
Tosca, Pirates and West Side Story aren't exactly obscure; and in their own ways, all were controversial and accused of encouraging disrespect for lawful authority. But the one thing O'Connor and his ilk can't do -- and even worse, don't believe they have to seriously try -- is back up their assertion that words and music they don't like lead to real world crime.