By Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Rick Rosner: Good cop, bad cop refers to two cops. Someone is in an interrogation room. Bad Cop steps in, rattles the chair, pushes him up against the wall, and says, ‘We’re going to take you down. We’re going to take you whole family down.” He tries to scare the shit out of the suspect.
Good Cop comes in and says, “Jerry, Jerry! Get a Coke.” Jerry leaves, Bad Cop. Tom says, “He’s a hot head. He’s got stuff going on at home. I’ll keep him away from you. Just, you and me talk, do you want a beverage, a cigarette?” So, Bad Cop tenderizes the suspect. Good Cop comes in and makes friends.
This was, I guess, an established interrogation technique. Except now, everyone knows about it, because it has been on every cop show ever, for decades. However, given the current context, when you think of a bad cop, you don’t think of a Jerry who rattles the chair in the interrogation room.
You think of the asshole who stood on George Floyd’s neck for almost 9 minutes.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Those are good points. However, we have been doing these sessions before the unfortunate murder of George Floyd and the rise, or the coming to prominence, of these political-social movements. Why would we even need to change the title of the series if we have been doing this longer than this has been ongoing?
Rosner: Imagine, you’re talking to George Floyd’s family, or even somebody like Amber Ruffin who is this lovely and writer-performer for Seth Meyers. She has had a series for months, where she talks about run-ins that she has had with the cops.
She is an adorable young black woman, who is the farthest thing from suspicious or criminal you could be. Yet, she has had a number of crazy run-ins with cops shaking her down or abusing her, because she is a black person. Let’s say, you are talking to her. You’re talking about “Good Cop, Bad Cop.”
Somebody who has lost a family member or who has a family member in prison. They’re like, “Yeah, but…” Or Good Cop, Jerry, gets in there and slaps the suspect, but Tom is all nice. Yet, Tom is complicit. Tom is enabling. Tom know what Jerry does.
Tom goes along with it. So, Tom who goes along with a bad cop while not the bad cop is still a bad cop because he is allowing bad cop to do what they do, and probably covering for them.
Jacobsen: What if Tom & Jerry other than having a cartoon show and being cops are black, while all the other cops are white?
Rosner: The arguments being made – and I buy it – is the police culture in America is insidious and corrupting regardless of what race you might be. It won’t necessarily corrupt everybody. But it might make most cops explicit.
Regardless of what race you are, if you have been a cop for 12 years and have been steeped in cop culture, all your friends are cops. This is not a fair characterization. But we have two girl dogs in the house. Our previous dog was a girl.
They’re more dogs than they are girls. There is more behaviour about them that is doglike than is girl-like. There is almost nothing that our dogs do, except, maybe, how they pee; that is really strongly gender-specific. They’re mostly dogs.
Most of the stuff they do is dog-specific. I would assume being a cop is so life-defining that a lot of people have an identity tied to what they do rather than whatever race they belong to. I am guessing this is true or a lot of cops.
Jacobsen: What would be a more appropriate title with a similar meaning for a series?
Rosner: When it became a genre in the 70s to have two people argue on TV, I think the first might have been “Point Counterpoint.”
Jacobsen: I like it. Also, it is not saying, “One person is bad. One person is good.” Also, it’s not implying too many other things.
Rosner: I think someone should do a show with a bit called “Count Pointercount.”
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*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
Rick Rosner: “According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.”
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash