American Police Mook

This image was just Dugg up over 2,500 times yesterday – it is a pretty funny cover of a “mook” (crossover between a magazine and a book) about police in the US:

I did a bit of research on the ‘mook’ – the image was lifted from a Japanese blog entry from August 2008 that did research on old Japanese books about police. Just like the commenters on Digg, the Japanese blogger had a lot of fun with the cover image. Here is a translation of some of his comments (I’m taking the liberty of paraphrasing here and there):

This is the coolest (magazine) cover ever! I am getting heartburn just looking at it.
This guy pigging out… is just the right balance of the American sense of justice, ‘wild-west’ factor, and heroic tough-guy image.

There are so many questions I want to ask this guy, such as: ”Dude, how many Big Macs are you gonna chomp down?”; “Is it really necessary to throw ALL your fries like that out of the boxes?”; ”what’s up with the half-eaten burger laying around? Why did you pick up another one already??”; ….and: “um, I know you’re a cop and all, but do you really need to throw your baton on top of the fries?”. I mean, the baton is virtually gleaming from all the oil!

Whatever you’re thinking please don’t say: “it’s all just a production stunt”.  This is the culmination of a great deal of thought about what ‘just what is an American cop?”…..

Of course he is being facetious – it is hard to translate the sarcasm as funny as it is in the original Japanese.

The “American Police” mook was originally published in 1980 – you can tell by the old containers in the cover pic. Although it has a funny cover, the contents are serious about introducing everything that your average Japanese “police otaku” would want to know about cops in the US – “from the big city to the countryside”. Details include info on SWAT teams, their equipment, patrol cars, methods and of course weapons.

Here are a couple of pics of the contents: