To protect and serve, and bust you upside the head

I took a week off to putter and write (which are often the same thing), and while I was gone everything went to hell in L.A.

First, the cops went crazy swinging their truncheons and shooting their play bullets at men, women, children, dogs, houseflies and the media, and then a judge had the audacity to order America’s empty-eyed sweetheart to jail. In between those performances, I got the flu.

There were other items of passing interest, not the least of which emerged from within our own ranks when sportswriter Mike Penner declared in a column that he was altering his gender to become Christine Daniels, the woman within.

I’ve seen many strange newsroom occurrences in my newspaper career, but this is the first time I’ve seen a man become a woman almost before my very eyes.

Our primary interest here at the L.A. by God Times seems to be entertainment, so we are fortunate to have celebrities occasionally driving drunk, snorting coke, screaming at their kids, picking up hookers who turn out to be cops, dancing without their panties, shaving their heads and otherwise filling the holes in our news pages.

I’m not sure into what category Paris Hilton falls, since the only thing she seems to be good at is portraying Paris Hilton. It was she who was sentenced to jail for 45 days by a judge who obviously misunderstood how confused the poor girl was about the law and all, silly goose.

Not only did Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer order her into the slammer as a parole violator, but he also specified that she could not spend her confinement in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel, or any five-star accommodation.

Hilton, looking a little like a whipped schnauzer, indicated she had not understood the terms of the drunk-driving pleas she had signed months ago. “I just sign what people tell me to sign,” she said tearfully. “I’m a very busy person.”

But all is not lost. Hilton, who lived on a farm for her television role in “The Simple Life,” can segue her time in the pokey to “The Con’s Life.” Although scrubbing toilets and consuming a food known only as grub may not be the most viewable show on TV, it’s an era when anything sells, so why not a nice little rich girl in a designer jumpsuit incarcerated for being too busy?

And then there were the cops running around like schoolyard bullies whacking everyone they could, no doubt in fear of their lives, since many of those participating in an immigration rally at MacArthur Park were armed with flags and placards, both of which could be construed as deadly weapons. I can’t count the number of officers who have been skewered with flagpoles and beaten bloody with posters.

Chief William J. Bratton showed his stuff by shifting personnel around, promising to punish those responsible for the unofficer-like conduct and apologizing to members of the media who were among the victims. One was Christina Gonzalez of Fox News, who could be seen on a Channel 11 video being pushed around by a burly cop and looking as though she would have liked to smash his face. You might get away with pushing a reporter around, but beware the Latinas. They bite.

It was as I watched the cops running out of control that I was overcome with waves of nausea and was forced to rush to the commode. Earlier that afternoon, my grandson Joshua, who is in kindergarten, had vomited in school and been sent home. His mother explained that he does that when he sees something disgusting.

I asked Joshua what he’d seen and he said he’d seen a boy eating lunch with his mouth open and food dropping out. The school decided to call me when they couldn’t reach his mom. I brought him home. Once removed from the disgusting scene of his classmate dribbling food, Josh was fine.

Later that same day, I was watching news reports about those whose job it is to protect and serve doing so by whacking everyone on the cabeza when I vomited too. I realized very quickly that it was the flu, because my bones ached, my head hurt and I felt like I was only a cough and a wheeze away from the embalmer.

But as I think about it now, almost over the flu, I realize that I displayed Joshua’s response to viewing something that was truly disgusting, which is to say the very people we count on to keep us safe, doing us in. If there is anything more disgusting than that, I’d like to see it. Well, no, actually, I wouldn’t, because one upchuck is enough.

Like Paris Hilton, the poor dear, I’m just too busy to throw up every time a cop beats a civilian.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.