CNN Video report: Steven Seagal to Team Up with Sheriff Joe Arapio for mock school shooting and training
I am a martial artist. I may not be very good. I might not even look graceful falling down, but I am still a martial artist.
And I have been since at least the age of 25, when I finally coughed up money and made time to really learn and practice.
About that time a man named Steven Seagal released a movie called "Above the Law". It is an action movie. It is an outstanding action movie with aikido highlighted in the fight scenes as this was/is Seagal's trademark martial art.
For many years since I have respected him as an accomplished and talented martial artist. As an actor....meh... but atcion films are mindless ventures and that is what appeals to me: if I want to think heavy and test my range of emotions, I have my job in mental health. I get more than enough heavy emotional stuff I do not need to watch 'Terms of Endearment' on a weekly basis. I want to forget about that stuff.
Anyway, the sad truth, from my little corner, is that Seagal has succumbed to what I often term as "success" or "Hollywood Success".
It happened to David Lee Roth, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jonny Depp, Mickey Rourke: Oliver Stone is like Hollywood Success cubed. It seems to have about the same impact as a major cocaine habit. You get really full of yourself, think you can do no wrong and, as in Seagal's case, you grow unhealthy, too portly, and ....well Steven seems to have dredged new depth to this phenomenon.
He has, in the past couple years ventured into the lame-ass Reality Show industry, as a sheriff deputy in Mississippi. I have only seen a few seconds of that lame shit but I thought it was pretty bad.
Well, this just tears it:now he is teaming up with Joe Arpaio, America's Worst Sheriff.
Together these buffoons are going to have a MOCK SCHOOL SHOOTING to create the training scenario.
The training event will involve six instructors leading 40 armed volunteers through a simulated shooting on Saturday, with teenagers acting as students, the sheriff's office said in a statement.
Seagal will lead the training run, focusing on various aspects of shooting scene management, including "entry room tactics and hand-to-hand tactics," according to Arpaio's office.
Actually, all I can do is sigh.
This is so stupid, so unwarranted and so rife with bad messaging I have no place to begin other than to say I can't respect Seagal any more. Not at all.
He has become an idiot. His movies, never 'films' to begin with, are terrible. I have tried to watch a couple movies from mid 2000's to 2012 - he needs to be taken aside and gently told "It's over". "Stay away from a camera".
Sure, maybe he 'means well' but this is an ugly publicity stunt. the message is "more guns" and "armed guards" versus improved school security: Where is the focus on keeping threats out to begin with. This is Job 1. Not hand to hand combat. I love fighting but it is not appropriate to be focusing on it in this sort of scenario.
Teaming up with Sheriff Joe is such horrible judgement. I see no need for an extended rant: Arpaio should have been in jail 10 years ago: the man is a threat to the community. (Of course he is re-elected by an area that must have a collective IQ somewhere south of 85. Nothing else explains this rabid preoccupation with doing the stupidest things possible.
I certainly hope these numbnuts do NOT hurt anybody during this 'training' session.
To be positive, for a nanosecond, Disaster Drills ARE essential and one doubtlessly hopes that insights gleaned from reviews of our numerosu shooting tragedies provide good information for (A) improving school security and (B) enhanced disaster response. We do it for tornadoes and earthquakes; I recall numerous bomb threat trainings in hospitals and in high school. That is appropriate.
Staging a shooting in a school for a publicity stunt with a famed action film star highlights one of the root problems we have with "guns": people's attitudes and the FACT that too many Americans have seen TOO MANY MOVIES.
Between movies focused on solving all problems with guns and authorities sending the message guns will protect you from shooting I see Steve and Assho Joe actively making things worse.
And now I hereby jettision my last molecule of respect for Steven Seagal.
See ya, and I don't wanna be ya.