How soon until the news media starts investigating, harassing and ridiculing Police Sergeant James Crowley, and his wife and family?
Obama’s media allies defend him by trying to impose personal misery, and if possible, professional destruction, on anyone who crosses him.
Obama chose to get involved in this, so it is about him now.
Sgt. Crowley and his family are next.
Watch.
UPDATE: While some of the facts are not yet in — statements from other witnesses for example, which I have not seen, though they may be on the Net somewhere — it appears for now that the police officer was doing his job and that Prof. Gates was out of line to the point that he was within the scope of the Massachusetts disorderly conduct statute. I base this on the police report, in large part, as well as the known facts, i.e. that there was a report of an attempted break-in, that there had been break-ins in the neighborhood, that Gates was locked out and trying to get into his own house, that the police arrived to investigate, and (some speculation) that Gates was probably in a foul mood, sensitive to real or imaginary racial slights, and failed to exercise self-control. Do cops lie on police reports? Yes, some do, from time to time. Do cops act abusively, or condescendingly or blusteringly? Of course, we have all seen this from time to time. Do we have any basis to say this officer did anything wrong or inappropriate? Only if you accept what Gates says and discount the police report to zero. I am inclined to see the conflicting stories as at best a wash, with Gates’ story making less sense overall. Were there witnesses to this episode? Yes, apparently there were. Can they confirm or rebut what was in the police report versus what Gates says happened? Maybe. Will this investigation continue? Apparently not formally. Will the news media keep it alive as a controversy? Likely. Will we get more clarity, or only heat and not light? Too soon to say. I am open to contrary facts, but I am not seeing them yet. So far, I see no basis to assume that Sgt. Crowley was (1) racist, (2) stupid, or (3) abusing his authority.
My point is that since Obama inserted himself into this, I predict his allies will rally to him and use all available means to smear and intimidate and harass someone who has found himself adverse to Obama.
Lex is correct.
Oh, I loved this:
“No one wants to talk about race,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist and ABC News consultant.
Of course she’s right. We should talk about race more. Because we never do.
Obama’s decision to get involved was bizarre by any normal standard of presidential behavior. Yet it makes some sense in the crude logic of urban machine politics, where the organizer’s job is to encourage group grievances in order to get candidates elected and legislation passed. And sometimes, when your program bogs down, you use your organizing skills to create diversions. Will it work in this case? I doubt it, but it doesn’t cost Obama much to try. (It costs the country, and particularly racial minorities, by making non-minorities even more cynical about anything labeled “race” than they already are, but the short-term political benefits to Obama outweigh the distributed long-term costs to everyone else.)
As in the Duke fake rape case, one can see the simple inversion of race prejudices in America. Fifty years, if a white woman blamed a group of black men of raping her, she was instantly believed. In the Duke case, the same circumstances occurred only in reverse. Fifty years ago a white cop would be believed over a black man without question by the powers that be and now the circumstances are reversed.
What this tells us that a significant part of our population and polity still use the same psychological mechanism to judge their fellow citizens that most Americans used fifty years. Ironically, it is probably only non-leftist whites who have changed because they have been the only ones held accountable for judging others based on stereotypes. Everyone else has gotten a free pass to be a bigoted as they like. Heck, a lot of leftist will tell you that only white people can be bigoted and that the concept doesn’t apply to anyone else.
I think the real story here isn’t the racism, or reverse racism. That “r” term is thrown about so much it really doens’t mean much to me anymore.
The real story is that the President got involved. No WAY would Bush have gotten involved, or any other president that I can think of. Nobody knows the details of the situation yet, and it isn’t a federal issue anyways. Is it?
It is just very odd that Obama would say anything about it, and imho makes him look rather goofy. You would think that he would have “people” around him to coach him in these types of situations.
To your point of the post, this man and his family will be destroyed very soon. I feel very sorry for him.
Isn’t this becoming just a little too obvious for most people to swallow? There is a local issue and because of some aspect of it, such as the need to emphasise victimology, the President gets involved. He is in the wrong and the media starts harassing the people on the other side who were doing their job. Who can believe in this rubbish any longer?
On second thought, Obama’s intervention looks more like simple bad judgment than it does anything more calculated. But as Krauthammer suggested, this kind of unforced error provides insight into how Obama thinks, and what it reveals insn’t good.
For what it’s worth
Cambridge is known locally as “The People’s Republic of…” It’s the Berkeley of the East Coast. It is as far left, anti-racist, politically correct as it is possible to be.
In addition, Sgt Crowley teaches a course against “Police profiling” at the Police training academy.
Further, it’s interesting that the question was asked by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times, who writes extensively about “racism”, is known to Obama, and saved him from any more questions he couldn’t answer about healthcare.