The thing I have in common with James Bond

Not his license to kill or his Aston Martin or lethal gadgets or nubile Bond girls. No, it's martinis. I had my first one when I was nine, decades before Bond. I've even downed a few at Dukes Hotel in the same bar in London where Ian Fleming created 007 and the “shaken not stirred” line was born. Of course a real martini is made with fine English gin (mine is Bombay Sapphire) just enough dry vermouth, an olive and a good bartender. It must be cold, served straight up and never on the rocks. Alas, vodka has invaded the glasses of the free world. At a martini “event” in London in the 90's every drink on the menu was a vodkatini. The bartender grudgingly made me one with gin. One of my highlights as a Mad Man was writing the first James Bond tv commercial: suave guy, theme music, aston martin, luscious blonde—and our product, an expensive after shave. It was voted the best tv commercial in the world that year. (If I were modest I'd be perfect.) However, Spectre and Smersh had me in their sights because three years later I was carried out of a Detroit restaurant to the emergency ward with a ruptured gall bladder. It seems that lobsters downed with martinis at midnight can get you faster than a Bond villain. I had the gall bladder out in London and gave up drinking. Today my License to Act Up has been revoked and I'm in bed by 10. Once in a blue moon I'll order a martini and, like Proust and his madeleine, memories of the sweet, swift years come rushing back and I'm in my turquoise velvet safari suit ready for action.

Orwell explained Ferguson 80 years ago.

Before he became George Orwell, Eric Blair was a policeman in Burma in a job he loathed. He was a white officer with a native crowd that wanted him to do something, so he shoots an elephant that had calmed down but had wreaked havoc. In his essay “Shooting an elephant” he wrote: “I was legally in the right so it gave me a pretext for shooting. I often wonder whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool?” Is that what happened in Ferguson when an officer trapped in a macho personality shot an unarmed boy so as not to look a fool? Is it OK now for an officer to kill an unarmed 12 year old? Is it OK for 5 cops to pile on a helpless unarmed man and choke him to death so as not to look foolish? Unlike the young Blair/Orwell the US is home to barbarians with badges. They shoot from the hip and return to the station for donuts without a second thought.