Design & Culture

This post innaugurates a new feature here at J of ET: Design & Culture. It's goal is to examine and explore the intersection of two things we're not really qualified to comment on. Today's post:

Have you seen the new police cars? They're highly agressive looking like some not-too-distant future RoboCop fascist police state thing you'd use to round up politcal prisoners. I think they're called something like the Dodge Interceptor or the Chrysler Intimidator. They represent another nail in our spiritual and aesthetic coffins. When I was a kid a cop car would look like what Sherrif Andy Taylor and Barney Fife would drive around in. You'd see a squad car and have some kind of respect and even though you knew they'd haul criminals around in them, you could still envision sitting in the back seat with Opie and a picnic basket packed by Aunt Bea and heading on up to the lake to go fishing. Or else a cop car was Car 54, Where Are You?, or Adam-12. Even the police cars from the Kennedy assination or the Newark riots or the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago have a benign family sedan look to them. They were something iconic and fun to draw, like a doghouse or firetruck, a taxicab, a tree, or a cloud. They were black and white with a cherry on top. It's hard to imagine that the new style of cop car was designed in any part by an actual human being. They make us seem like we're a nation of nothing but saps, cretins, and thugs running around with guns. Where have you gone, Kent McCord?