Privileged White Guy Comes To Agonizing Decision
All these concentric circles of privacy depend on some level of shrouding. They depend on some level of secrecy and awareness of the distinction between the inner privileged space and the outer exposed space. They depend on the understanding that what happens between us stays between us.
...
Cop-cams chip away at that. The cameras will undermine communal bonds. Putting a camera on someone is a sign that you don’t trust him, or he doesn’t trust you. When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.
Spoken like a man who has never had to pee into a cup or been strapped into a lie detector as part of his interview for a minimum wage job. Or had any adult transaction with the po-po that wasn't straight out of turn-of-the-last-century upstairs/downstairs British detective fiction where the same copper who could be sacked by the lord of the manner not knowing his place, could turn around and all but pistol-whip the maids and man-servants because class.
But the real hilarity comes in the last paragraph:
But, as a journalist, I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them.
Mr. Brooks performs many functions on behalf the rich and powerful.
Journalism is not one of them.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/04/privileged-white-guy-comes-to-agonizing.html
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Gee whiz, why would anybody ever think that????? 
I'm a white woman and I don't feel totally trusting, either. This apparent "pay-to-play" for that 70-something insurance salesman geezer in Tulsa Oklahoma getting to go out IN THE FIELD and play cop in a sting operation - O, My, Freakin', GOD. Didja have fun out there, pal? Hey, LOTSA fun swaggering around with your little badge and your little gun AND your taser, and your cute little police officer costume. Didn't you just feel like some big HE-man then? Lets you relive your fun days as a five-year-old playing "Cops & Robbers" in the sand pile by the swing set.
I saw guys like him at this celebrity "shoot" to which a friend once took me. A "sporting clays" shoot - where the targets were these clay discs that were mechanically pitched into the air at different shooting spots. It was ridiculous. The AFTER-party, that is. Everybody seemed pretty serious and responsible with their gun-handling out on the range. And there was a lot of supervision at each stop. Thankfully!
But it was the AFTER-party down by the picnic tables that really stunned me. It seems EXTREMELY revealing of the inner psyche, just to watch. I saw GROWN MEN, who had to be at least in their 40s if not 50s and older, swaggering around like some Rambo or John Wayne character, with their guns and their gun holsters and their big-ass cowboy hats and bullet belts, with their Western shirts and jeans and cute little cowboy boots. It was embarrassing! It was like freakin' HALLOWEEN. I had to fight every instinct in my body to avoid confronting some of these idiots - "how old are you? FIVE??????" They were sure acting like five-year-olds who got to play dress up like Cowboy Bob who played the kiddie cartoons on TV every afternoon after school or something. EMBARRASSING. Grown men, proudly strutting their arrested development. "And you're not completely ashamed of yourself, dude? What are you? A FIVE-year-old?"
It was extremely revealing - and instructive.
Of course David Fucking Brooks isn't on the receiving end of any of that, and won't ever be. So I'm sure it all seems very very sad to him.
You know, the "friendly" encounters "like intimate friendship."
