choose your metaphor

There is no lack of blogging on the lack of a competent police investigation into Dead Eye Dick’s hunting accident. Cheney was not interviewed (till the morning after the shooting), the crime scene was not examined, alcohol and drugs were not tested for, and now, it turns out, the previous local Chief of Police is now an employee of ranch owner Katherine Armstrong.

So, I (and many others) start to wonder about the best metaphor for the either bungling, negligent, or criminally conspiratorial current police chief of Kenedy County,
Ramon Salinas III.

Redd, over at fdl, has taken to calling Salinas Chief Wiggum, and the Simpsons’ cowardly, donut-loving, and lovably corrupt top cop seems like a good fit at first. . . .






The complete abdication of responsibility, followed by a “move along, nothing to see here,” stonewalling made me seize on the arrogant and dimwitted Officer Barbrady from South Park. . . .










But the coziness of the Armstrong clan with the local cops, and the still-missing official police report (update: a partial one has just surfaced on The Smoking Gun), has made my metaphor bend sinister. Add in the setting—a stark ranch in a border state—and I become surer than ever that the appropriate corollary for Chief Salinas is Orson Welles’s portrayal of the wily, filthy, and dangerous Captain Hank Quinlan.

And who can beat the title of the film for an overarching description of the shooting incident: Touch of Evil.