Jesse James arrested: Shoot-out at the Long Beach Corral

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Well now, that’s a misleading headline if ever I wrote one, and I’m the one who wrote the headline “Dina Lohan Wants to Come In Your Mouth” when she released a line of toothbrushes.

The truth is, Jesse James, heavily favored to become the Ex-Mister-Sandra-Bullock very soon, was indeed arrested yesterday for vandalism of a paparazzo’s car. The only shooting was done with a camera, which of course leads one to ask why there haven’t been any pictures of the damage released. The bigger truth is that it was a citizen’s arrest, by said paparazzo, and the cops who showed up in response to his desperate call failed to find the situation quite so exciting, and declined to file charges.

As the pap’s trigger finger was creeping towards the digits 9, 1, and 1, James (who knows a good opportunity for non-marital-breakup publicity when he sees one) made a fast move and perpetrated his own citizen’s arrest on that same paparazzo, the charge being stalking (which is sorta in the job description of a paparazzo, if you think on it). If, indeed, the stalking took place, it was seemingly so laissez-faire that James was able to sneak away and vandalize the car without being observed, let alone photographed.

Yes, this is what the romantic Old West concept of vigilante justice has come to in the Twenty-First Century.

The cops declined to take up James’ noble singlehanded anti-stalking crusade, and the two are left to settle their differences like real men, in the old-fashioned way: to take each other to court.

Great-great-granduncle Jesse would be so proud.