STUPIDLY

[wkmac]

What's interesting in this whole affair of Gates and the Cop (could a TV show be in the offing?) is what is being said down deeper within the African American community and I'm talking down in the streets. Seems Professor Gates is actually not that well thought of in some circles and this whole incident has begun to ignite into an anti-Obama backlash within the African American community.

President Obama’s “friend” Dr. Henry Louis Gates has been richly rewarded for arguing “that poor African-Americans are largely to blame for the fact that blacks stand at the bottom of the nation’s steep socioeconomic pyramid.” Presumably, and by the same logic, Gates must now blame himself for getting arrested in his own home by a Cambridge policeman. Actually, Gates’ first impulse was to cash in on the experience with a “PBS special” on Blacks and the criminal justice system – a subject that never previously crossed his mind.

source

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Now that Henry Louis Gates’ Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you think that he will go easier on them? Lighten up on the tough love lectures? Even during his encounter with the police, he was given some slack. If a black man in an inner city neighborhood had hesitated to identify himself, or given the police some lip, the police would have called SWAT. When Oscar Grant, an apprentice butcher, talked back to a BART policeman in Oakland, he was shot![/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Given the position that Gates has pronounced since the late eighties, if I had been the arresting officer and post-race spokesperson Gates accused me of racism, I would have given him a sample of his own medicine. I would have replied that “race is a social construct”--the line that he and his friends have been pushing over the last couple of decades.[/FONT]

source

What compelled President Barack Obama, the great practitioner of the art of dodging racial issues, to put precious political capital at risk in defense of Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, whose run-in with a Cambridge policeman threatened neither the Harvard professor’s life nor freedom? At no time in his candidacy or brief tenure as president had Obama displayed the slightest inclination to voluntarily come to the defense of Black folks in general or to interpose himself between white power and any individual African American. In this sense, he has been studiously “race-neutral” – or some would say, downright hostile to Blacks in the mass.
Surely, Obama is skilled enough to have easily parried a reporter’s question on the Gates affair. U.S. presidents, including this one, routinely deflect questions bearing directly on critical issues of war and peace. Why was the apparent racial profiling of Dr. Gates an occasion for Obama to characterize a local police action, and the police officer himself, as “stupid” – thus bringing down the certain wrath of the white public he has so assiduously courted?
The answer lies in the deep-felt class bond between Obama and Gates. Although Obama graduated from Harvard the same year Gates joined the faculty there (1991), in a profound political/cultural sense they are classmates. The class to which they belong is only loosely linked to material wealth. Rather, it is largely negatively defined – that is, Gates’ and Obama’s shared class status is based on the perception of what they are not. They are not like the rest of Black folks; they are different, a cut above the rest, in their own and in white people’s estimations.

source

What is also amazing is to find so many here attacking Professor Gates when his earlier messages to the African American community would be such as to be hailed by those same folks who now condemn him.

Another “PBS special” from Henry Louis Gates? White supremacists can be forgiven if they are not shaking in their boots. Five and a half years ago, the bourgeois professor fouled Black History Month by narrating an ambitious, four-part, and British-directed Public Broadcasting System television series titled "America Beyond the Color Line." Purportedly dedicated to providing a provocative new take on race, class, and black experience in the U.S., Gates’ documentary spent an inordinate amount of time beating up on impoverished blacks for not having any, well, class. Accepting the dominant privilege-friendly and Euro-bourgeois notion that success, empowerment, and freedom are essentially available to all who exhibit proper individual initiative and "personal responsibility," Gates argued that poor African-Americans are largely to blame for the fact that blacks stand at the bottom of the nation’s steep socioeconomic pyramid. In “America Beyond the Color Line,” Gates did not understand class in the radical way that the term has been used by leading black intellectuals and activists like W.E.B. DuBois, CLR James, Martin Luther King and Manning Marable: as an oppression structure that is intimately and inseparably (dare I say dialectically) bound up with race (today we must of course add gender) in the construction and preservation of American inequality. [1] He used “class” rather in the bourgeois and accommodationist Booker T. Washington [2] sense, arguing that lower-class blacks needed to work harder and smarter to acquire the middle- and upper-class skills, education, habits and values possessed in greater degree by black elites. One of those elites Gates held up as a role model in “America Beyond the Color” was the leading imperialist figurehead Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, featured as an example of what blacks can accomplish when they work hard, study, save and behave decently.

source cited earlier

It will be interesting in the days ahead to watch the current adminstration and the African American community as discontent does seem to be growing and I suspect if things don't start to turn for the better, louder voices will begin to prevail!

 

[Babagounj]

I wonder how many today are recalling what Jessie Jackson said during that off camera moment about bho.

 

[moreluck]

I'm kind of glad this whole fiasco has come about. It stole the thunder from B.O.'s health plan for about 2 weeks.......making it impossible to pass a bill before V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N !!

 

[Jagger]

It turns out that the President was right. Officer Crowley did act stupidly, by arresting an innocent man without probable cause that a crime was committed.

 

[Babagounj]

It turns out that the President was right. Officer Crowley did act stupidly, by arresting an innocent man without probable cause that a crime was committed.

But a crime was committed. Its called acting like a spoiled child.

 

[browndevil]

But a crime was committed. Its called acting like a spoiled child.

We could only hope acting like a spoiled child was a crime. We would all have perfect children

 

[tieguy]

Typical excerpt from Sean Hannity's radio show....

Sean; Welcome to the show Joe Conservative, your a great american

Guest; thank you Sean, your a great american too...

Sean; No, really, your truly a great american

Guest; right back at you Sean, and your show is for great americans too...

Sean; and here's Lee Greenwood singing "Proud to be an American"....

uggg, I think i'm going to puke now...

Yep some people love and support their country while others puke.

 

[Jagger]

But a crime was committed. Its called acting like a spoiled child.

Crowley violated a man's god given right to be free from unreasonable seizure. He needs to apologize to Gates and ask Jesus to forgive him.

 

[Jagger]

Yep some people love and support their country while others puke.

Hannity is a socialist.

 

[Babagounj]

Crowley violated a man's god given right to be free from unreasonable seizure. He needs to apologize to Gates and ask Jesus to forgive him.

This story would not have been made news worthy had Gates kept his mouth shut. Its Gates that should ask for forgiveness, subjecting the entire world to his endless rantings.

 

[Jagger]

Being angry and yelling at someone, even if that person is a police officer, is not sufficient cause to sustain a disorderly conduct charge. You are absolutely permitted to express yourself and your first amendment rights to free speech.

 

[Jagger]

Being angry and yelling at someone, even if that person is a police officer, is not sufficient cause to sustain a disorderly conduct charge. You are absolutely permitted to express yourself and your first amendment rights to free speech.

 

[over9five]

Being angry and yelling at someone, even if that person is a police officer, is not sufficient cause to sustain a disorderly conduct charge. You are absolutely permitted to express yourself and your first amendment rights to free speech.

Then I would expect to see some false arrest charges leveled against the Cambridge Police Department. Perhaps even a lawsuit.

Unless of course, Gates knows he was in the wrong......

 

[Jagger]

The stilted language in the Gates police report is intended to mirror the courts' awkward phrasing, but the state could never make the charge stick. The law is aimed not at mere irascibility but rather at unruly behavior likely to set off wider unrest. Accordingly, the behavior must take place in public or on private property where people tend to gather. While the police allege that a crowd had formed outside Gates' property, it is rare to see a disorderly conduct conviction for behavior on the suspect's own front porch. In addition, political speech is excluded from the statute because of the First Amendment. Alleging racial bias, as Gates was doing, and protesting arrest both represent core political speech.
​

--Carol Rose and Sarah Wunsch of the ACLU of Massachusetts​

 

[moreluck]

Jagger....go yell "fire" in a movie theater and then tell me how that went for ya.

Hope you got a good bailbondsmen.

 

[Jagger]

Then I would expect to see some false arrest charges leveled against the Cambridge Police Department. Perhaps even a lawsuit.

Unless of course, Gates knows he was in the wrong......

There might not be enough dollars of injury to warrant a law suit. That's why cops get away with small crap. Not enough damages. No torture, no beating, no big legal defense fees.

I've sued cops for false arrest, when the Chief didn't discipline them, and collected nice settlements. I got one judge banned for life and I got another one disciplined.

 

[Jagger]

Jagger....go yell "fire" in a movie theater

Why would I do that, dude?

 

[Jagger]

Hope you got a good bailbondsmen.

I don't use bail bonds men. I post cash bonds. It's one of the advantages of being rich.

 

[over9five]

OK, I just read this and now I'm madder than hell.

Did you know good ol' Professor Gates has a new book out?

It now appears this was a huge publicity stunt to sell Gates' book. Sgt Crowley was an innocent victim of a publicity stunt.

Disgusting.

 

[diesel96]

Yep some people love and support their country while others puke.

Hannity and others like him hide behind the American flag and use it as a tool try to convince and reassure a segment of the population that they are the great americans and anybody who disagree's with their warped views is anti-american. During the Bush/Cheney years, while the administration was on a highway to hell on destroying this country (not to mention other countries), real patriots for the love of their country and the dying young men and women in the armed forces, dissented and demanded to put a stop to the insanity. Conservative bully pulpits who use the flag as a tool, called them anti-americans and terrorist lovers......Well guess what, the real country loving patriots had risen above the nonsense and the extreme rt Rep conservatives are still scrambling around to find their next Ronald Reagan.....Oh god, I think I'm gonna Ralph, blow chunks, Toss my Cookies....

Sean Hannity, one of the biggest abusers of the Stars and Stripes as a merchandising tool for his own self-egotistical patriotic rants cashing in on his TV and book celebirty. With this, he follows the lead of his employer, the Fox News Channel, who has exploited the flag as a logo to sell itself as more patriotic than thou.
Such flag-waving for personal and corporate profit has gotten so out of hand, the House and Senate ought to passed a constitutional amendment banning corperate and self interest flag desecration once and fall all. I for once would buy front row seats watching TV personalities/executives hauled on to Court TV, but not for expressing free speech, but for patent and trademark infringements on American flag and symbolism....