Audacity of Truth
Rahmbo:
"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive."
-Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) on Obama's COS, 3/7/10
Velvet Lair- Legends March 18, 2010
- Some things are just not cute March 18, 2010
- The adventures of the lady spider killer continue March 11, 2010
- Intermission February 19, 2010
- People who allow their dogs to poop in other people’s yards February 16, 2010
- Big Government
- Hot Air
- Whip count from “The Hill”: Everything depends on Stupak; Update: Stupak reaches deal with White House; Update: Eight or nine to vote yes; Update: Obama releases draft of executive order
- Alcee Hastings on openness and transparency
- Breaking: Stupak voting yes?; Update: Or is he? Update: CNN says Stupak told them he’s still a No; Update: ABC confirms still No … “for now”
- Michelle Malkin
- Jake Tapper
- Legal Insurrection
- Lynn Sweet
Obama solidifies his position as non-post racial President
I can’t really add much more to what Dan Riehl wrote last night in response to the President’s assertion in his press conference that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the arrest of black Harvard “scholar” and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. outside of his home after the report of an attempted burglarly that turned out to be him trying to get into his own home after his door apparently got stuck. The police officer who arrested Gates is being accused by Useful Idiots of racial profiling in spite of a police report that suggests otherwise (read the police report at Dan’s link).
Obama’s response? Ben Smith reports:
Gates was arrested for allegedly disorderly conduct — a charge that was quickly dropped — after a confrontation with a police officer inside his own home. Though some facts of the case are still in dispute, Obama showed little doubt about who had been wronged.
“I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that he Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home,” Obama said in response to a question from the Chicago Sun-Times’s Lynn Sweet.
Gates, Obama allowed, “is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all the facts.”
Yeah, that’s an understatement. He doesn’t have all the facts, and he is admittedly biased when it comes to Gates, Jr. To the statement, “What role race played” – why not instead say, “I don’t know whether or not race was a factor – we shouldn’t be so quick to judge before all the facts have been layed out.”? I guess that is expecting too much. He’s implicitly acknowledging his belief that race played “some role” – he just “doesn’t know” how much.
However Gates, he continued, “jimmied his way to get into [his own] house.”
“There was a report called in to the police station that there might be a burglary taking place – so far so good,” Obama said, reflecting that he’d hope the police were called if he were seen breaking into his own house, then pausing.
“I guess this is my house now,” he remarked of the White House. “Here I’d get shot.”
Undergirding the long digression, though, was Obama’s place as a new symbol of racial reconciliation, and his long past in the trenches of the politics of race and discrimination in the Illinois State Senate.
“Separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-American and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately,” the president said, eagerly engaging the issue of racial profiling, a concern earlier in his career that has seen little White House attention to date.
“That’s just a fact,” Obama said of profiling. “That doesn’t lessen the incredibly progress that has been made.”
Riehl’s reax:
Not having all the facts, he should have withheld judgment, perhaps pronouncing the incident as unfortunate. He didn’t term Professor’s Gate’s alleged reaction to questioning, after apparently breaking into his own home, as ill-considered, let alone stupid, or otherwise dumb. And the Cambridge police are not the neighbor who summoned them to the scene. We have no way of knowing if they acted “stupidly,” or not. However, that was a conclusion Barack Obama was prepared to jump to based solely upon Race, while admitting not knowing the facts.
He also displayed a willingness to abandon American police officers in the line of duty without a full hearing of the facts. It’s impossible to recall any former president doing such a thing, at least before some objective fact finding was done. This may not be a wound he recovers from, and certainly not easily, in terms of his political career.
Meanwhile, any notion of a post-racial era in America due to Obama is likely doomed. That, perhaps, is the biggest shame of all.
Actually, the biggest shame of all is that the mainstream media, liberal Democrats, and black “leaders” have gotten away with perpetuating the myth about Barack Obama being a post-racial politician. He repeatedly proved he wasn’t once the primaries got going last year, and continued to play the race card whenever he felt it suited his political needs during the course of his campaign. And don’t even get me started on his spiritual mentor Rev. Wright.
Obama may not be an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson type in terms of overt race-baiting, but that’s only because he knows how to play the race card in much more subtle ways that Sharpton and Jackson do. Not a big deal in the scheme of things as far as he’s concerned, though. He knows that the liberal black community will stand behind him 100% on this, and white liberals – forever wrapped in a cocoon of liberal white guilt over America’s laws against black people decades ago – will, too.
For more, read Jules Crittenden, who has an interesting take on Obama’s response to the question about Gates, Jr’s arrest, and who also has more on the arresting officer. And as always, the blogger commentary on this issue is piling up at Memeorandum.
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Wow. I can’t believe the level of outrage in the majority of these comments. I think all this “concern” really isn’t about the incident between Gates and the Cambridge police but about an African American president making any statement that acknowledges that there are still racial issues in the United States. Would this have really raised any concern if any other President would have made a statment like this or brought up the issue of racial profiling? NO! While the article tries to imply that the issue has received little attention from the White House until the black guy got there the truth is President George W. Bush, yeah that President George W. Bush, issued a directive in 2001 to deal with racial profiling and he was righfully applauded for at least acknowleding and confronting a very real problem.
Yeah things in Cambridge kind of got out of hand and yeah everyone involved could handled things better. There is a history of racial profiling in the community but somebody breaking into a house looks shady regardless of their race. If you want to debate if the president should have made a statement about his friend getting arrested or not thats 100% understandable. But if you feel like you need to vent your disgust everytime an African American, whether he is our president or not, makes any comment on a racial issue in this country then it seems like there is a darker, underlying meaning to your stance. Hopefully thats not the case.
Oh, yeah, and for a guy who is such a great speaker (of course, only when his teleprompter is working) and supposedly the greatest president we’ve ever had, he’s made a huge blunder knocking the police force of a state full of his liberal buddies!
I guess he’s not so smart after all.
The conference last night was supposed to be about healthcare. Obama is probably really pissed off at the reporter who asked about his friend, the good professor, and his altercation with the police (unless, of course, it was another staged question). Without his teleprompter, I believe Obama spoke from his heart in assuming the police officer was “acting stupid” and that his good friend was “the victim”.
I don’t know about you, but listening to Obama go off for three minutes while admitting he didn’t have the facts smells of racism to me. Even Bill Cosby was shocked. Oh, I forgot, Bill Cosby is hated by Blacks. Go figure.
Henry Gates has set African Americans back 10 years!
I too am so tired of the race card being screamed everytime something goes wrong in their lives.
They get FREE medical insurance because WE the tax payors pay for it, but yet work our butts off and still can’t afford it for OUR families and can’t get the free stuff because we so dumb, we actually work and make .50 cents too much to qualify..
I watched his speech last night and was sickened to hear how the poor blacks and latinos get picked on by the cops because of their color. NOOOO they get ” picked’ on because they doing chit illegally..
If you can’t speak proper or plain english, too lazy to learn it, then move to the country where they actually speak it. If we moved to their country, they would DEMAND that we speak and understand their language. But yet, they come here (mostly illegally) get our SS income, our jobs, free money and medical care and oh yeah, if you see them driving in front of you get in the other lane ASAP because they will slam on their brakes and when you rear end them, YOUR at fault and your insurance company and you will pay out the wa zoo for their new home, car and what ever else they want…
There is no doubt a lot of racism in this country. I am a White woman with a best friend who is Black. We talk often about racism, especially when Obama came on the scene. But the racism goes both ways. The “Great Healer” of our nation should have kept his mouth shut instead of invoking “opinion without facts”.
I’ve come to believe, however, that this was totally planned by Obama and his buddy Rahm. They wanted to divert the discussion in this country away from healthcare and make it about racism so they can ram their universal healthcare through. The deceit is mind-boggling and they have succeeded in pitting Blacks against Whites and Whites against Blacks, in addition to putting this country into debt that is unsustainable. Sad we have such a person in the White House.
“Racism” as Carol says cuts both ways, but that’s not surprising, it’s a human trait, ingrained in all of us, to be suspicious of what is different. People are a clannish lot, we form associations based on family, religion, country, race, whatever, and hew to those groups and against outsiders. People also have intelligence and can overcome false bigotry and prejudice, but it’s just too easy to encourage some people to blame all their problems on someone else, that’s another bad human trait, and the President missed yet another opportunity to ease the tension. Also unsurprising, in his entire life he has been the beneficiary of playing this abused racial bias card, his association with Bigot Wright gave him credibility in the black community, he rode the community organizer thing to a seat in first the state house and then the Senate, and finally the Presidency, so don’t expect him to change his spots on this.
Nice work Barack… with one comment you managed to alienate 75% of America.
And anyone who has spent any amount of time in the “higher” education system knows the Professor Gates type: bitter, spiteful, bigoted racist with a position of power who felt emboldened to make a political statement.
This is the type of Professor who would change the subject on you when you attempt to engage in a debate- or would give you a poor grade because you actually have an opinion, and done research outside of marxist texts and such. You are fooling no one, Mr Gates.
And Mr President, is this “nuance” you’ve spoke of? “the police acted stupidly”? -please
Obama is out to rip this country to shreds in EVERY way- who can question that such ill-advised statements are divisive… and NOT helpful? He has no idea what happened, he admitted it- and apparently doesn’t care, either… he’s picked his side.
But back in reality, the childish and paranoid Gates completely baited the cop, who acted with admirable restraint, IMO… all he had to do is show his ID and shut up, he was treated with respect. This guy was clearly looking for a fight… and he ought to thank God he didn’t find one.
Obama is going to destroy race relations in this country with his vengeful “get even” mentality… some messiah- Americans should have chosen a fair and sensible human being instead of this embittered nut.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Obama played the race card. You saw it played routinely during last year’s campaign, as ST says.
What’s making him look even worse is that the more we learn about this incident, the worse Gates looks. For example, Cambridge happened to dispatch a “diverse” unit of police – one white, one black, and one Hispanic – all of whom have the same story. For obvious reasons, Gates is focusing on the white cop. His whining would get no traction if he went after the black cop, and he knows it. And that’s all the more reason Obama should have stayed out of this matter.
Oh, and did anyone else find this part annoying:
No, your sense of entitlement aside, this is not your house. Last I looked, it still belongs to We The People. You’re a temporary guest and you ought to start acting like it.
Besides, if Obama were locked outside of the White House, he wouldn’t try opening the door. He’d try going in through the window.
His presidency has been in the works a very long time, but Barack has never had to face racism. Also, lest we forget, Barack Obama is half white. – Lorica
I’m just sitting down here in the bayou wondering what role race played in the President’s remarks…
I’m forced to consider two similar incidents in my own life, both triggered by errors in my house alarm system. In both cases, a police officer showed up to investigate, and he definitely asked for my identification and an explanation in both cases. In one case where I still had my door open as I expected them to show up, the officer approached with his hand on his sidearm. I made sure I didn’t make any sudden moves, spoke politely, and happily, but cautiously, produced my ID from my back pocket. That’s all either officer really wanted to see, something to make sure I was the owner and a quick “hey, the idiots triggered my alarm instead of running a test even though it was in test mode” to explain the call.
I didn’t get indignant, didn’t act like an ass, and there was no problem. In one case the officer responding was Hispanic. I suspect the outcome might have been different if I’d immediately started lambasting him about how all the Latinos were just looking for an opportunity to jump on a white guy, how they were all scum, etc. (insert racially bigoted comment here). I actually thanked both of them for showing up so quickly, told them I appreciated the fact that if it had been a real burglary it was nice to know they were out there and could respond so quickly, which was my honest reaction.
It’s easy to pick on a cop for responding with a hand on their weapon, or being nervous inside someone’s house by themselves, etc. but I’ve worked with a fair number of police in my last job in forensics, and while there are undoubtedly asses in the police, it’s not a safe or easy job. Imagine you walk into a strange house where a burglary was allegedly taking place, encounter someone you don’t know from Adam, who starts verbally assaulting you, acts out of control, and refuses at first to show ID. You have no idea if he’s in the house alone, if there isn’t an armed accomplice hiding somewhere, it’s a stressful situation and antagonizing the cop and making his job harder isn’t a smart way to go about it.
Same with traffic stops. Showing a little consideration usually helps, imagine you are a cop, out on the highway, alone, away from backup, walking up to a car at night with limited visibility into the car. Think that isn’t a pucker factor situation? I’m amazed they are as calm and professional as they are sometimes, I’d sure not feel comfortable doing that. Jumping up and down, making sudden moves, etc. Yeah, maybe you aren’t armed and that made a cop overreact, but if you would take a quick moment to think about their position, it would smooth things out a lot.
And let’s just also be rational, if you do get into their face, you do risk a smackdown. Not all of them are professional, and run into the wrong one and you do not want to give them an excuse. You can always complain later and raise a stink, in the middle of a stressful situation isn’t exactly the place to get into it, it can often trigger reactions that no one on either side will feel good about later.
In one of the incidents, my house was in total disarray, we were in the middle of reorganizing things, boxes and crap strewn all over the place. The officer said something like good thing you were here, looking at this place I would have assumed someone was ransacking it. I sheepishly admitted that he wasn’t seeing the place on it’s best day.
LOL Sev. That reminds me of the one and only false alarm we had at my mom and dad’s years and years ago where the police actually came out to see what was up.
I was still in high school and lived close enough to walk home from it to the house, and me and a friend had walked home together that afternoon to study and chill out or whatever. So I got home, and went down the hall to turn the alarm off, and had mistakenly keyed in the “hostage” code rather than the regular code, which meant that the alarm company doesn’t call you to see if the police really need to be sent out. They send them immediately. Well, literally within ten or so minutes two police officers pulled into the driveway, and I internally freaked out, wondering what was going on. One of them walked up the steps to the front door and I met him out there with my friend. He asked me cautiously, while walking slowly forward “is everything ok here?” I told him yes, it was and asked if there was an issue – he said the PD had gotten a call about a hostage situation wanted to come in and look around the house. I realized then that I had keyed in the wrong code. Shortly after that, my mom drove up the driveway, blazing a trail – took her fifteen minutes to get there on a drive from work that normally took about 35 minutes – LOL. She was on the contact list for the alarm company and they called her as well as the police to let her know about the “hostage” situation. Man, was I sure embarassed having the police there and mom showing up, looking very panicky and worried.
In any event, it ended well – the police officers were nice enough but not overly friendly, just doing their jobs, and I was as nice as I could be without knowing at first why they were there, even though internally I was freaking out. My fear was that someone had called in a report of suspicious activity around the house and the police were responding to it. Turns out it was a false alarm, and all my fault.
You’re right in that we should all put ourselves in the shoes of a policeman and imagine what they see everyday, and what they’re thinking when they get a report of a burglarly or other crime in progress. It sounds like Crowley acted with the utmost professionalism in dealing with a crazy-acting “respected Harvard professor” who apparently relishes playing the victim card if it can garner him attention in any way. I can understand being upset and concerned with having a policeman ask you for ID in your own home, but had Gates considered the fact that there had been some other burglaries in his area – including an attempt on his own home – maybe things would have turned out differently.
I had a similar case a few years ago. My home alarm allows time to shut it off when you enter – but only through the front door or the garage door. This one time when I got home I dropped something off in the back yard, and then went in the back door. The alarm went off immediately and a few minutes later the local police showed up while I was working in the garage – which, like Sev’s house, was in disarray. They asked to see ID, I showed it, and they left. Case closed. It never occurred to me to berate them or scream about being oppressed. much less yell insults about their mommas. But then I’m not an elitist Harvard professor of community organizing…..
I did learn never to go in through the back door again..
I’d take you hostage anytime Dear.
– Lorica