WTF! The NYPD Hates Chinese Opera?

Photo Courtesy The Gothamist

One of my favorite photographic destinations in NYC's Chinatown is Columbus Park, where large number of Chinese residents and non-residents congregate during the weekends to play xiangqi, a board game similar to Western chess, mah-jong, and cards while listening to cacophonous Chinese opera performed by two groups of amateurs (most of whom are senior citizens).

But now I'm seriously pissed off. Here's why:

The Gothamist recently had an article with a video featuring the NYPD arresting an elderly man at the park on May 8 when they tried to stop a group of senior citizens from playing Chinese music...presumably he was a member of the bands that accompany the singers.

It may have been caused by a noise complaint by a resident, but it's more likely that it was that these bands of amateurs did not have the requisite permits that all street NYC performers need to have before playing in the streets.

Having said that, there's no doubt the NYPD crossed the line in how its officers dealt with this. On The Gothamist site, there's a short video that shows how the Chinese and others were brutally dispersed...the use of mace and batons was threatened, and the man arrested was thrown to the ground, then handcuffed.

These amateur Chinese opera singers (more like classical Chinese karaoke in my view) were certainly cacophonous, and perhaps even discordant to Western ears, but they brought in a lot of tourists and residents alike, and didn't harm anyone...quite the opposite.

So it's either that the NYPD has no ear for Chinese opera, or they really have nothing else to do. Since Osama Ben Laden was killed last week or so, I suppose they can now focus their efforts on arresting harmless senior citizens who speak no or little English.

The NYPD ought to nab the marijuana peddlars in Washington Square Park instead...or the vendors of counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags on Canal Street...and leave me the Chinese opera singers to photograph.

I wrote a number of posts on the Columbus Park Chinese opera, but this one describes the setting, while this following audio slideshow I produced is of one of the bands.

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POV: NYT & Its Posed Photo

Zackary Canepari/The New York Times-All Rights Reserved
The New York Times's editors published an unusual apology on Friday. The apology relates to a picture appearing in a May 5 front-page article about the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which showed a silhouetted Taliban logistics tactician, holding a rifle (above). The Times subsequently learned from the photographer that the rifle the Taliban tactician held was not his, and claims that had it known this information at the time of publication, it would not have used the photograph to illustrate the article.

PDN Pulse asks if its readers think this is over the line?

I don't think this is a major issue at all, especially since Canepari seems to have clarified the situation. Frankly, had the editors of The New York Times been half (nay, just one-hundredth) as meticulous with the blatant lies and obfuscations propagated by the Bush Administration which led to the Iraq fisaco as they are now with Canepari's photograph, as a nation we would have been the better for it, and we wouldn't be where we are now.

We all recall The New York Times published lies about the Iraqi's non-existent WMD program as fed to it by members of the previous Administration and their newspaper cronies, and subsequently "apologized" for it.

Update: For another take on the story of the staged picture, read Daniel Sheehan's post on his Photo Blog. He quotes Washington DC photographer John Harrington's view that Canepari "is likely to be persona non-grata at the New York Times, and his journalistic ethics will also likely give other editorial publications pause to hire him."

Of course, the editors of The New York Times who sold us sordid lies about the reasons for our occupation of Iraq are (with the exception of Judith Miller) not personae non gratae. Go figure.

Another Update: I knew my friend Asim Rafiqui would write of the New York Times' silliness in his The Spinning Head blog. He writes this:

"We are supposed to forget that this is also one of a number of American newspapers whose journalists failed to ask even the most basic of questions and failed to examine even the most public of facts during the build up to the invasion of Iraq. Their ethical reporters were on the front lines of journalistic jingoism, helping sell the war to the American public."

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