Keller @ Large: Tune Out The Noisemakers

BOSTON (CBS) - Have you ever watched in horror as two people who really need each other – a couple you are friends with, perhaps, or two co-workers in your office – get caught up in a spat so bitter that the relationship is destroyed?

That's how I feel watching the ongoing train wreck involving the police and the black community over those relatively rare but intolerable cases of unjustified police violence and the public backlash against it.

This is a problem our culture's been struggling with for a long time, and it's gotten worse over the past year or so as high-profile cases of brutality have been caught on video, appalling decent people on all sides. And like any hot-button political issue, it has attracted clueless grandstanders who've done their very best to make things worse.

Exhibit A would be movie director Quentin Tarantino, who showed up at a recent anti-brutality protest in New York recently and said: "If you believe there's murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I'm here to say I'm on the side of the murdered."

Unfortunately, those remarks came just days after a New York City cop was brutally murdered. A number of police organizations have demanded an apology from Tarantino, as if his foolish rhetoric is worth wasting energy on.

The whole uproar is infuriating everyone and diverting energy from serious problem-solving.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

Policing a high-crime area may be one of the most thankless jobs on earth. The people who live there desperately need the cops to help them, and vice versa.

It's time for all sides to tune out the noisemakers, drop the posturing, and stop the cycle of grievance.