by William FinneganI've written before about how the United States continuously baffles me. It, as a country, has been responsible for so many achievements in the sciences, arts, literature, pop culture, etc., etc., and yet, it is also home to so much intolerance, weirdness, depravity, and hatred. I decided to start a feature on this blog called 'Glad to be Canadian', for those times when I come across things that remind me of how lucky I am to live up here, as opposed to in the US.
This article profiles Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (including Phoenix). He has gained some small levels of fame for marketing himself as 'America's Toughest Sheriff', a title based on his efforts to humiliate and degrade prisoners in his county's jails. He is famous for having set up tents in under-used industrial parks, and fencing them in to create Tent City Jails, as a solution for over-crowding. He has prisoners wear pink underwear, and shackles them in pink hand-cuffs, not due to any supposed psychological benefit, but because it humiliates them, and amuses him. He has also decided to wage a one-county war against illegal immigration, and goes to such extreme measures that people become afraid to leave their homes.
Finnegan's well-written article doesn't criticize much; it instead allows Arpaio to dig his own rhetorical graves. The man comes off as a total publicity-hound, who is attempting to tap into the fears of red-neck Arizona as a way of orchestrating his own rise to stardom. Finnegan catches him inflating or massaging the facts a few times, which only adds to his foolish image.
What amazes me is that this man can be so succesful. He is expecting to win a sixth term as sheriff in 2012. I don't understand how such a man can keep his position. Between 2004 and 2008, his department was sued 2200 times - a truly astronomical figure.
In Canada, this man wouldn't keep his job - not even in Alberta. This article makes me Glad to be Canadian.
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