Posted on 07/23/2009 4:25:16 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
President Barack Obama has strained through his career in national politics to embrace nuance in all things, and never more than when the subject is race. But an off-the-cuff remark at the end of a news conference designed to further his health core agenda put him at the center of a familiar public melodrama of white cop and black victim in which big-city mayors — never mind presidents — tread with the greatest of caution.
The White House spent Thursday trying to both defend Obama’s words and to soften his position from the night before, when the president departed from his talking points, aides said, to express authentic disgust at the arrest of a black Harvard professor in his own home.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs stood by Obama’s statement that a Cambridge police officer, James Crowley, had acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. but added some implicit criticism of Gates’s conduct, suggesting “both sides” bear blame for the incident. Obama, who said that he was “surprised by the controversy,” said he wished that “cooler heads” had prevailed and described Crowley as an “outstanding” officer.
Police organizations attacked the president’s willingness to criticize a police officer without knowing all the facts, Republicans dusted off law-and-order attacks largely absent from the presidential campaign and everyone from comedian Bill Cosby to the Irish-American media piled on. Meanwhile, critics of police brutality praised Obama, and the Rev. Al Sharpton went so far as to tell POLITICO the words showed that the president is not really “post-racial.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Poor Robert Gibbs needs some industrial strength turd polish for this one.
.... and now TOTUS is PISSED!
Yikes! It’s like a scene out of “Gremlins”. I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight with that image.
The Kenyan Imposter really stepped into it....he’s on full tilt now.
Hey Obama! How about a nice big cup of Shut the Hell Up?
Tell me if I have this figured out—
Gates has just returned home after a 20 hour flight from China. He is tired and cranky. Maybe some in-flight refreshments were partaken. At the threshhold of relief, his front door, it fails him, busted from a prior incident. It is so jammed he had to have his limo driver help him shove it open.
Finally home, a LEO shows up, questioning his right to be in his own home. Gates is testy, and his judgment is strained by his fatigue, and the rest is history.
Is that it? Because I believe this is it than some grave snapshot of American history.
He attacks private individuals guilty of no crime by name which is beyond the pale for a president to do.
Some particular person is "too fat" for his tastes, stupid, etc.
Gates acts like an ass and it is all the police officers fault. No facts of the particular case required. Just the blanket Blacks and Hispanics are unfairly targeted. Like OJ since “Blacks are unfairly targeted” he gets a free pass for killing two people.
Gibbs must have no other employment options - who would keep a job cleaning up their bosses $h!t every day.
On the other hand, let him talk. Let him screw himself into Hell.
Actually Gates had just arrived from Newark, NJ where he spent the night in a hotel. This is about an hour and 15 minute flight.
According to people who have delt with Gates he is a very irratable, difficult person all the time.
No, the police officer was called by his neighbor, who obviously didn’t recognize him or the other man. The earlier incident was part of string of front-door break-ins, so she was obviously perfectly reasonable in calling the police.
The police appear to have treated him courteously but he refused to show ID, then showed them an ID without an address, they called their superiors and the Harvard security to check on it, and Gates, in the meanwhile, was screaming that classic yuppie line, “Don’t you know who I am?” and calling or pretending to call some “captain” on his home phone while they were trying to talk to him.
Gates had many opportunities to lower the tone - he didn’t have to follow them to their cars screaming and shouting - but clearly he had by then realized that he had a publicity and even possibly financial gold mine in the making and the rest is history.
That was no off-the-cuff remark. It was fully prepared.
Read the police report first!!! Gates belligerently follows police officer Crowley out the front door, berating him and calling him “racist” the whole time. After repeated requests from Crowley to calm down, and witnessed by neighbors, add’l police officers who showed up, and the lady who reported the possible breakin in the first place, Crowley finally places Gates under arrest for DO because the idiot Gates refuses to STFU. If Gates the idiot would have just showed his ID initially when asked, and been civil about it, that would have ended the matter right there.
That’s it with this exception.
Gates went on to call the police officer a racist in public and then Obama went on to side with Gate’s in a very high profile way.
A) Gates has made it his mission to publicly destroy the officer.
B) Totus should have never said a word about it.
C) No white person would have gotten away with saying the things Gate said to a black police officer and a white mayor would not have apologized to the white person who said the things he said.
It is clear who the racists are.
He isn’t just stepping on the third rail. He’s giving it a big wet kiss.
Thank you for that information.
Here is another oddity I noticed. In the police report the witness saw two men trying to force open the door. When Gates was being hauled away the LEOs asked him for information to lock the door. Gates, in a moment of lucidity, says the door was “unsecurable”, apparently damaged in some prior break-in or attempt.
My question—who would go off to China without fixing their front door first? Especially since he already was the victim of a break-in?
Sgt Crowley, in his own words, good interview, he should run for office.
Fat al supports odumbo, a bigger racist you will never find. That said it all
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