Walking into the Wrong Neighbourhood by Mistake

... I would love to
meet Gerri Peev in a locked room for five minutes ...

• Since original publication, Scotsman site administration appears to have removed the comment from which the above phrase was snipped. 

Jeez!  It's like a US
journalistic invasion of the United Kingdom.

When I see the stream of bile flowing from the US public into the
Comments Section of the Scotsman, and other UK newspapers, after the Power -
Monster - Resignation issue, I wonder first if the writers' feeling of acidic
vituperative superiority is an accepted norm. 
That automatically leads me to think of my own responses to the US
presence around the world, and my own opinion of US military actions that have
so destroyed any goodwill towards America. 
Then I remember how I felt, and still feel about Katrina, Guantanamo,
Rendition and Torture (while I am doing this I have a slideshow of US made
action/war/horror movies running through my head.  I watched Casper the Friendly Ghost by
accident the other day - Christ, as the child I remember being, I would have
been so frightened of parts of that).

I think of, and wonder about, Police brutality, College murders and Gun Crime connectively with Facebook, Bebo through to Utube, LiveLeak Snuffit
on the Web.  That leads me to Tasers, and the New Heat Weapon that will be on a street near
you by next year.  I think of the total
lack of any information - written, as well as visual - about Iraq and
Afghanistan that is available to US citizens through their so-called
News/Media/Entertainment outlets--Hello! You can get Al Jezeera now!  Then there's Venezuela…  No. That's another whole can of Cuba,
Don't-Cry-For-Me-Argentina, Philippines, Manuel Noriega can of Worms.

I remember the opening chapter in Bonfire of the Vanities, where the
two main characters drive off the freeway into a rundown black area by
mistake.  They act out their insipid
little lives in one single scene; mistake a possible offer of help as an
assault - it's what they always see happening on the television and films in
their world - and proceed to assault the man with their Mercedes.

What was I thinking about? 
Oh. Yeah...

I grew up on a diet on American Crime and Film Noire, and although
off the top of my head I can't remember an actual film title that contained the
scene I am visualising, I can certainly remember the content of the argument in
that 1940's black-and-white film image.

Along the lines of; I didn't mean to say that or; You shouldn't
have written that, was the underlying unspoken agreement between the Politian,
Suspect, interviewee and the Journalist that everything was on-the-record until
it was off-the-record.  In other words,
if you don't want to be quoted out of context, or have a statement published
that is either ambiguous, or could be misinterpreted as salacious, insulting or
downright slanderous, then work out an agreement and what lines that can be
crossed before the interview starts.  Actually, I think the film I'm trying to
remember was made in the 1930's - Bogart, Cagney, "Top o' the World,
Ma"…  It'll come to me.

Then I wonder again about the obnoxious attitude of these invasive
posters to our UK newspaper comment sites, and I think I might understand why they might think their viewpoint is right!