It’s not that HE forgot to salute heroic Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who managed to divert a crowd of “stop the steal” rioters from rushing into the Senate. I just didn’t see the heroism at first.
I saw a guy simultaneously (a) defying the hooligans and waving his baton and (b) backing away and running up the stairs. I watched it two or three times and said “okay, brave man but I don’t see the bold heroism.”
Only now that everyone is proclaiming Goodman a hero…only now am I finally understanding what happened. When he pushed one of the hillbillies in the chest, he was goading him and the crowd into following him down the hall in the opposite direction of the Senate chamber. Got it, took me a while. But didn’t the animals break into the Senate anyway? I saw the photos the day it happened.
If this encounter had been dramatized in a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron or David Fincher or Martin Scorsese, Goodman’s motive and strategy would have been much clearer. On top of which the sequence would have been shot horizontally instead of with the dreaded “portrait” (i.e., vertical) a.r., which a vast majority use time and again. All you have to do is tip the phone 90 degrees to the left…not hard.