O, Cruel Snarkery
Lifson at The American Thinker sums up this picture’s thousand words:
Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?
In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful … Especially when they think nobody is looking.
Good point. Only here, the world’s looking. Kind of compounds the obliviousness.
Althouse: “Let’s cut Obama some slack.” You mean like they always cut Bush slack? (That’s a matter of do as they say, not as they snark. Case in point: something-or-other lefty blog.) Never mind, Althouse’s altruism is just a kickoff for more cruel snarkery. Meanwhile, here’s Althouse with the cutting snobbery: It’s Gates’ fashionista daughter’s national act of condescension on a young girl’s makeup job.
Steyn: It’s not only worth a thousand words, it’s got legs. Which bevy of dolts at the White House let that one out?
My guess, Mark, is the image guys figured it makes Obama look like Moses, leading one or more bigots to the Promised Land. Or Obama the Messiah, who just cured the lame-brained. Something like that.
Speaking of Bush, Surber catches the despised former president back in the day, helping along another reformed bigot. (Not sure we can call Gates a reformed bigot, though, as he hasn’t really entirely come clean).
Interesting photo, no matter which way you break on that. Touching interaction between Crowley and Gates (who finally climbs down a little in his latest take on this whole business, acknowledging he had something to learn about the cops. I’d add he still needs to acknowledge new lessons about race relations. The fact that prejudice and discrimination is a two-way street, and the damage goes in both directions.) Obama looks like he’s ready to get these two and the awkward situation they represent out of his house.
Either that or it shows us what we already knew. Crowley is a gentleman. Obama, as amply demonstrated by assorted bizarre international incidents, is not.
About Gates’ lesson learned, a couple of things:
Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control.
Nice dodge, but in fact, what we learned is that both principles had a great deal of control over the narrative. Gates exercised it poorly, crying racism, continuing to cry racism, and demanding that Crowley grovel. Crowley exercised his control deftly, maintaining his dignity. When the explosive truth about his background as a non-bigot came out, it was because we … the Boston Herald, the newspaper I work for … ferreted it out with assistance from him or his camp. Then, there is the issue of the lack of control exercised by the president of the United States, who shot from the hip in aid of his friend, casting aspersions while admitting he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Let me say that I thank God that I live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day, and, more than ever, I’ve come to understand and appreciate their daily sacrifices on our behalf. I’m also grateful that we live in a country where freedom of speech is a sacrosanct value and I hope that one day we can get to know each other better, as we began to do at the White House this afternoon over beers with President Obama.
Thank God we live in a country where speech is protected, a country which guarantees and defends my right to speak out when I believe my rights have been violated; a country that protects us from arrest when we do express our views, no matter how unpopular.
No matter how racist, no matter how defamatory … hang on, we have laws about defaming people. But before we get to that, we also have laws about screaming in a provocative manner in public. It’s called “disorderly conduct.” Cops routinely levy the charge at people, black and white, trying to interfere with their exercise of their duty.
And thank God that we have a President who can rise above the fray, bridge age-old differences and transform events such as this into a moment in the evolution of our society’s attitudes about race and difference. President Obama is a man who understands tolerance and forgiveness, and our country is blessed to have such a leader.
I’m not thanking any higher powers, but in this particular case, I’d say its encouraging the leader of the free world at least recognizes that he stepped in it, and tried to make it good. A little self-awareness and humility could go a long way. But, as Lifson’s insightful snark shows, there’s a long way to go.
The national conversation over the past week about my arrest has been rowdy, not to say tumultuous and unruly. But we’ve learned that we can have our differences without demonizing one another. There’s reason to hope that many people have emerged with greater sympathy for the daily perils of policing, on the one hand, and for the genuine fears about racial profiling, on the other hand.
No kidding. Look at what could have happened to Sgt. Crowley after the way Gates profiled him as another bigot white cop.
Having spent my academic career trying to bridge differences and promote understanding among Americans, I can report that it is far more comfortable being the commentator than being commented upon. At this point, I am hopeful that we can all move on, and that this experience will prove an occasion for education, not recrimination. I know that Sergeant Crowley shares this goal. Both of us are eager to go back to work tomorrow.
So on to the education. Raise your hand if you think Professor Henry Louis Gates, or President Obama for that matter, is ready to graduate yet.
Topics: Obama, academia, cops, racism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:13 am Comments (4) on Saturday, August 1, 2009
4 Responses to “O, Cruel Snarkery”
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August 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[...] Rudeness trackback The Obama-worshiping crowd thinks that Obama is so cool and classy, but once again we see them proved wrong. And [...]
August 1st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I believe the only lesson Professor Gates learned was that he picked the wrong white cop (and police department) to mess with. Sgt. Crowley not only maintained his dignity throughout, but he also maintained his job and his whole career, which Gates and the Grievance Industry would surely have bullied him out of, had he not had the support of the Cambridge Police Department. I pay kudos to them.
Anybody want to speculate that part of Sgt. Crowley’s classes on racial profiling also include very good advice for white cops who are accused of racism? Too bad that Barrett clown didn’t take the classes.
By now I’m so used to Obama’s gaffes and missteps and outright stupidities, there’s just nothing left to say about him.
August 1st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
There is an interesting coupling here that merits mentioning.
We have an administration whose President leaps recklessly to condemn a white police officer doing his job before coming into possession of all the facts of the regrettable Gates incident, which is the same administration whose Justice Department recently dismissed the charges against some armed Black Panthers for intimidating voters AFTER the defendants had lost their case through default: http://tinyurl.com/mxlu2a
What, I wonder, should we make of this?
August 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm
[...] related news, Jules Crittenden has a picture of Crowley assisting the race-baiter who called him a racist that speaks volumes about the true [...]