Bang Bang, Talk Talk: War, the Ultimate Network Reality Show

Who would have thought that after months of buildup and nervous anticipation, the first blow in the war would be struck by the Los Angeles Police Department?

A power-hitting right-handed cop took batting practice on a couple of war protesters near the federal building in Westwood on Wednesday. His handiwork was captured live on KCAL-TV 9, giving him the distinction of leading off the news on the first night of bombing.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t need a four-star general (retired) to tell me what I was looking at when this cop stepped up to the plate.

It was a “decapitation attack,” if I might borrow from the jargon that has commandeered both the language and the national psyche in a matter of hours. The officer saw a “target of opportunity,” and he took his best shot, launching the “shock and awe” portion of the campaign.

Strange days, indeed, even for those of us who are several thousand miles from the action. The war wasn’t a day old and we were propelled into a TV-ruled empire of 24-hour reality programming.

The first time I heard people referred to as “human assets,” it was a bit jarring, especially since I know those assets could soon become “collateral damage.”

So I turned to National Public Radio for a sense of perspective, and they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too. It sounded like NPR had been taken over by the Defense Department, with granola-eating hosts suddenly spitting out military lingo and chatting up retired brass as if they were jazz legends.

I tried my best to resist the seduction, but with a 24-hour radio and television assault, and live broadcasts from a Qatar stage crafted by a set designer hired by the military, you’ve got no chance.

Before you know it, you’re cursing the French and other “noncombatants,” checking weather forecasts for Baghdad and joining “the coalition of the willing.” Who wants to be left out of a campaign called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”?

“I have no troops in kill-box Alpha-Bravo,” a military analyst told NBC host Brian Williams, describing hypothetical communications among combatants in the Iraqi “theater of operations.”

I recommend tuning in to one of the alphabet soup cable networks that simultaneously gives you the latest on the war and the market. They’ve got terrific graphics on Nasdaq, the S&P; and Dow, and you don’t have to take your eyes off the explosions to check their impact on your portfolio.

“This is going to be an emotional war in terms of investor sentiment,” an anchor said on CNNfinancial, warning that war planners might not take Wall Street’s operating hours into consideration.

“A lot of developments in this war are not going to confine themselves to the regular New York trading day,” he said.

A reporter concurred, adding that she had noted a market rally “when the air strikes became more aggressive.”

For the duration of the war, I’m going to buy during low-yield “target of opportunity” attacks, and sell at “shock and awe.” I could retire by war’s end.

“This is not about quantity bombing,” one military analyst said on network TV during a discussion of whether “shock and awe” had begun. “It’s about quality bombing.”

If this kind of talk offends you, please do not -- I repeat, DO NOT -- take to the streets in protest in Los Angeles.

LAPD Chief William J. Bratton sounded so annoyed about the fuss in Westwood on Wednesday, you’d think he was chief of police in San Francisco. Protesters in that city staged a “vomit-in” Thursday outside a federal building, barfing to demonstrate that the war is making them sick.

” ... The demonstrators are not doing any service to the residents of Los Angeles,” Bratton said, “because we end up not servicing 911 nonemergency calls. As a result, the vast majority of residents of Los Angeles are not able to get police service as we deal with the demonstrators.”

There will be no police staffing problems, however, at the Academy Awards on Sunday, where unprecedented security measures are being taken. Bratton is sending over an Alpha and a Bravo company to make sure the beautiful people get in and out of the Kodak Theatre without getting their hair mussed.

So please consider your civic duty and get your priorities straight. Protesting the war on Sunday would not only be unpatriotic, but it could drain police resources and turn the cast of “Chicago,” as well as other “human assets,” into “targets of opportunity.”

By the way, I checked in with Lynwood High School art teacher Anna Christensen, 58, and she said she was doing OK after getting clubbed by that officer, whom she called Mickey Mantle.

Christensen said she wouldn’t bash all police just because “a lone aggressor” lost his cool, and she drew a parallel with the war.

“What I try to teach my students,” she said, “and what the U.N. was trying to teach the U.S., is that we can solve our problems without resorting to physical violence.”

Maybe so. But I hear “the market is handicapping a very short war.”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com