Thu, 08/22/2013 - 18:15 by Natasha Neale
The Encyclopedia Hearsay was founded on four principles: misinformation, rumours, half-remembered conversations and outright lies. Anyone can contribute so long as articles are written with no research whatsoever. If you are citing The Land Before Time as a source or abusing footnotes like David Foster Wallace, you are on the right track.
Diplomatic immunity is a legal right afforded to foreign dignitaries. When invoked, the dignitary is not punishable under any law.
Now the obvious way to write about diplomatic immunity would be to string a bunch of Lethal Weapon 2 quotes together in a clever way, and that is exactly what I was going to do, because that would make for what I had thought would be a hilariously inaccurate article. That proved to be too time-intensive and required research, which is frowned upon. Here’s what I remember from Lethal Weapon 2 instead.
The main villain is a drug-dealing, murdering, multiple-henchman-having South African1 terrorist. Murtagh and Riggs are police detectives portrayed by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. In the movie, Riggs dislocates his shoulder and then pops it back in by slamming it against a shipping container in the rain2, a female character is introduced so that she can die after Mel Gibson sleeps with her and Danny Glover’s toilet explodes in a scene where he is literally “too old for this shit.”
This all leads up to Riggs and Murtagh in a showdown with the South African dude3 who shoots Riggs and then invokes diplomatic immunity. Now the reason an article on diplomatic immunity that cites an 80s action movie was going to be funny is because “obviously you can’t just kill people and claim diplomatic immunity and then be fine4,” but I accidentally read an article on Cracked about it today while looking for clips from the movie. Now I am 100 per cent certain that diplomatic immunity works exactly the way it was portrayed in Lethal Weapon 2.
It’s worth pointing out that about four seconds after invoking diplomatic immunity, the South African dude is shot and killed by Murtagh who then says, “It’s just been revoked5.” This seems realistic because I am fairly certain that if anyone were to torture a cop, threaten the cop’s family then shoot at that cop until they ran out of bullets, that person would be shot in the face as soon as that cop was able to get a shot off, regardless of their status.
Diplomatic immunity is probably abused sometimes6, but it’s also probably important for international relations7. Invoking diplomatic immunity in situations where it is clear you were being a dick is strongly frowned upon, and usually results in the diplomat not being allowed to be a diplomat anymore. Or they get assigned to a different country or something.
1 The most impressive part of the film’s production is that they were able to find multiple South African actors. I don’t think any of them have worked since, and no one except actual South Africans can do a South African accent.
2 This might have happened in Lethal Weapon 4 or else it happens in every Lethal Weapon movie.
3 The politically correct term for South African is a “dude” or ASA (Actual South African).
4 I mean I get that not anyone can do it; you have to be a diplomat.
5 This is just a catchy one-liner. Murtagh in no way has the authority to revoke a travelling dignitaries diplomatic immunity, even if that dignitary is in egregious violation of the law.
6 I know that diplomats for a while would keep a running tally of parking violations while at the United Nations building in New York and compete against each other to see what country can get the most.
7 Although it’s definitely considered a perk by diplomats.
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