Ripple

“Early on, LAPD commander Daryl Gates had said no to Cops filming in his city. Then, in 1991, George Holliday recorded the beating of Rodney King, graphic evidence of police brutality that led to a mass uprising a year later, after the jury delivered a not-guilty verdict. In 1994, the new LAPD police chief, Willie Williams, agreed to let Cops film his officers. “At this juncture, it makes certain sense for the department to receive some positive coverage,” said Gary Greenebaum, the president of the police commission, in the Los Angeles Times.”
― Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

“Frank Berry, then the head of the NAACP, also objected to the show, but from a different angle. The way he saw it, the problem with Cops wasn’t that it worked with the police—it was that cops behaved better on camera than they did in real life, concealing their racism.”
― Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

“Anyone could rebrand a mediocre businessman, some small-timer in need of a glow-up. But taking a failed tycoon who was a heavily in hock and too risky for almost any bank to lend to, a crude, impulsive, bigoted, multiply-bankrupt ignoramus, a sexual predator so reckless he openly harassed women on his show, then finding a way to make him look attractive enough to elect as the president of the United States? That was a coup, even if no one could brag about it.”
― Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

“Darwin had no problem saying that animals had fun playing. But suddenly only people could “play”; a behaviorist might say that non-humans could merely “engage in affiliative activity.”
― Carl Safina, Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn Who They Are