What would Andy do?

Last Thursday’s Diane Rehm Show focused on events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the fact that law enforcement officials nationwide are more likely to stop, question, arrest and kill black people than they are non-blacks.

You heard it here first, folks.

But when one man called in to suggest that police officers do these kinds of things because they’re bullies, the panel objected.

Police officers have a hard row to hoe, they said. Police officers deserve respect.

The caller’s comments, ineloquent as they were, offered the panel an opportunity to address wider issues like the militarization of civilian police forces and our post-9-11 willingness to accept whatever we’re told is necessary to keep the evildoers at bay.

Those issues were not addressed, however.

Sit, public watchdog. Stay.

Stockholm syndrome: Capture-bonding. A psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them.

Red herring: An idiom used to refer to something that misleads or distracts from the relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or characters towards a false conclusion.