"So whether Limbaugh is 'racist' is a near-meaningless question. Suffice it to say that he's intensely race-conscious and constantly plays upon white racial paranoia. In Limbaugh's world, racism is everywhere--it's just directed at white people. Earlier this year in Belleville, Illinois, two kids who happened to be black beat up a kid who happened to be white in what witnesses and police say was a non-racial dispute over seating in a school bus. Apparently, the color-blind analysis of that incident is the following:
"Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,' and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white."
Chait is correct that whether someone says Rush is a racist is meaningless at this point. Chait finishes:
"The conservative is a double victim--of false accusations of racism and of racism itself. Limbaugh moans, 'Frankly, the biggest problem I face in the current climate of political correctness is that I'm color-blind about it.' Poor Limbaugh--he tries so hard to avoid race, but it just keeps finding him."
Here is a clip from the recent interview conducted by Larry King with the Boston cop suspended for sending racist email.
My impression: This man should be fired. While listening to him it sounds like he does not understand that his actions were wrong or offensive. He apologizes to police officers, soldiers and citizens but not to the author of the editorial nor Professor Gates who he called a jungle monkey. His excuse is that he did not mean for people to perceive his words as offensive or racist. He asserts that he isn't a racist. I think this guy is a racist. The quote that stands out from the apology is, "I did not intend any racial bigotry, harm or prejudice in my words." How is that possible? I could forgive a person that makes a statement that is prejudice or bigoted, if afterward they are aware that what they said is wrong and understand why it is wrong. This man is not aware of that he is racist.
The cop suspended from the Boston PD for writing a racist email has apologized. He is going to fight the PD to keep his job if he is fired. His lawyer said, "I think the department has taken such an outwardly over-proportional response," he said. "We have police officers who do heroin, cocaine and keep their job, beat their wives, keep their jobs. The mayor isn't out on TV saying they're g-o-n-e."
If that is his argument he should start looking for a new job.
Should the cop be fired?
I think so. We are continuously told that cops should get the benefit of the doubt. I don't think that is appropriate but that it what some think is appropriate because cops do a potentially dangerous job. If we are to give cops this benefit we should also hold them to a higher standard of behavior. I think the language and ideas in this email surpass that standard.
Sphere: Related Content
You could not ask for a more perfect illustration of the thesis of my latest book, 'Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America,' than the black president of the United States attacking a powerless white cop for arresting a black Harvard professor -- in a city with a black mayor and a state with a black governor -- as the professor vacations in Martha's Vineyard.
President Barack Obama planted the question during a health care press conference, hoping he could satisfy the Chicago Sun-Times, which has been accusing him of not being black enough. He somehow imagined that the rest of the country might not notice the president of the United States gratuitously attacking a cop in a case of alleged 'racial profiling.'"
If she wants to talk about hoaxes we should start with how anyone would put her on a list of the top 100 Public Intellectuals.
As if this situation wasn't bad enough its now helping Coulter sell books.
Sphere: Related Content
Steven Benen at The Washington Monthly asks Fox News Execs if its talent can say "literally anything on the air" with out any reaction from the network. Of course he is asking about Beck's latest episode of crazy.
I thought about this a couple of days ago but not seriously. A story from ABC News claims that Gates "and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages."
Sphere: Related Content
He may have killed someone then dined on the body.
American Thinker may be one of the most disgusting websites I have seen. Writers for this site continually make outrageous arguments and comparisons. Today Randall Hoven writes "How Cops Should Do It?" The emphasis on "should" is Hoven's. Be warned, Hoven is a master the art of Reductio ad absurdum.
Hoven tries to explain the similarities between between Jeffrey Dahmer and the Gates-Cambridge PD affair. In his description of the Dahmer situation Hoven writes that police were called to the scene where a naked man, a homesexual, was walking naked outside a house. The house belonged to Dahmer. The police ask the naked man if he was OK and Dahmer tells them that the man is fine. The police leave and the man is killed by Dahmer. Dahmer had killed 17 men and boys before he was captured.
I know the connection to Gates so far is thin. But if you drink a lot it will not become clearer. Hoven tries to put the final coat of crap on this story. He writes:
"But the police did their jobs: no ethnic profiling, no homophobic biases - just good, politically correct police work.
When called to a potential crime scene at a residence and the legitimate resident tells you everything is fine, a good police officer makes no further inquiries, calls in his report that 'all is well', and returns to his previous duties.
Heck, politically correct policing is so easy that anyone can make the right call without even being at the scene, hearing witnesses or gathering evidence. You can do it from your own house, or even the White House."
The police did not capture Jeffrey Dahmer so Hoven believes the fourth amendment should be repealed unilaterally by police just in case.
How outrageous is that? Is that a conservative attitude?
I have counted so far essays at various outlets that call President Obama a liar, either implicitly or explicitly. I am OK with that, I don't think it is true but it seems hard for people working in policy, politics and opinion to avoid the assumption if someone disagrees that person must be lying.
What bothered me was Thomas Sowell in the National Review online. Sowell's A Post-Racial President? asserts that the idea that we were entering the post-racial era was a naive hope. Sowell thinks if you understand where President Obama comes from a place where people "benefit greatly from crying racism." The place which Sowell refers is "community activist." Sowell writes:
"For 'community organizers' as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.
What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose."
That is not my experience as a community organizer. Actually not my experience as a community organizer in the exact position Barack Obama held in early 1980 in Harlem. Perhaps there is a difference between a white and black community organizers but I have not witnessed any differences. A community organizer does not promote "grievance and polarization" as Sowell asserts. A community organizer, such as Barack Obama, is a instrument for people and communities that need to enter the policy process where they have been ignored.
Sowell's implication that a community organizer is a fan that blows rage, resentment and division between communities to gain "politically, financially, and socially" is grossly overstated and offensive. I agree there are some organizers who have a developed self interest but they are few.
Now to a point of act that Sowell gets wrong. Sowell writes:
"As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pushed the 'racial profiling' issue, so it is hardly surprising that he jumped to the conclusion that a policeman was engaging in racial profiling, when in fact the cop was investigating a report received from a neighbor that someone seemed to be breaking into the house that Professor Gates was renting in Cambridge."
Here his claim is that President Obama in the July 22 news conference accused Sergeant Crowley and the Cambridge PD of racial profiling. But a simple return to the text and or video of the news conference dispels this error. From the transcript of the news confernce (the video is at teh bottom):
Question: "Thank you, Mr. President. Recently Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?"
Answer: "Well, I should say at the outset that "Skip" Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts...
But so far, so good. They're reporting -- the police are doing what they should. There's a call, they go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in, I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but my understanding is, is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house. And at that point, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct -- charges which are later dropped.
Now, 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 the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."
It is very clear to me that President Obama did not claim this incident to be racial profiling. This line, "what I think we know separate and apart from this incident," is very important. Perhaps Sowell missed it or perhaps he is engaging in fanning the flames of "resentments and paranoia" and "using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish [his] purpose."
I think the President addressed the Gates and Cambridge Police issue magnificently on Friday. I don't think he had to revisit the issue, if all thing were equal, but politically it was a distraction that needed to be dealt with.
What is the point of inviting Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley to the White House for a beer. The invitation is a good way to defuse the problem but the beer seems unneeded. Was President Obama trying to identify with Crowley?
Just three "regular guys" sitting around drinking some brews talking about race. That doesn't seem real.
"It is a death that has come too early, as even the nation's latest unemployment numbers show. African Americans have close to double the joblessness of whites, while the unemployment rate among Latinos is a third higher than that of whites. In a nation that is rapidly becoming more racially diverse, these are destabilizing disparities in power and class. In the professional world, blacks and Hispanics make up a mere 4 percent to 6 percent of the nation's lawyers, doctors and engineers. These gaps are exacerbated by differences in education and income and, more important, by the history of government-enforced segregation that long denied African Americans entry into schools and the business world.
So, why now? More often than not, it is the American left that gets lost in absurd fantasies about race in this country. They pretend there has been no progress in recent decades, even when they see the rise of a black middle class and witness the election of a mixed-race president and the likely confirmation of a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court. But today, it is the right wing and its supporters on the high court who are making stuff up. They pretend that the nation is already so transformed that a colorblind America is a reality and that affirmative action is superfluous, so much so that white employees in a city fire department -- an arena long dominated by Irish and Italian Americans -- need help from the Supreme Court to get a promotion."
Apparently CNN chief Jon Klein will allow Lou Dobbs to descend deeper into the lunacy he is helping to foment. After telling the Dobbs show that the birth certificate story was dead Klein has said that he will not stop the network or specifically Dobbs from continuing to discuss this "dead story."
"He's got more than 30 years as a television journalist, and I trust him, as I trust all our reporters and anchors, to exercise their judgment as various stories evolve."
Klein's lack of courage in the face of the truth is disgusting. To defend Dobbs as a journalist of great experience, while at the same time you explicitly describe his reporting as ignoring facts. Klein wrote in an email earlier to Dobb's producer:
"It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonight. And then it seems this story is dead -- because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef."
I can understand, I don't agree, but I understand not just accepting the claims of authenticity of the certificate from FactCheck.org but to ignore the confirmation from the State of Hawaii is just wrong. Dobb himself has said that the Certificate of Live Birth is a document that shows that there is another document. It takes a special kind of genius to ignore the logical conclusion at which you just arrived. The State of Hawaii is saying that they have the birth certificate.
I don't think that Dobbs should be fired for perpetuating this non-issue but he should be fired for not doing his job. If Dobbs is truly a journalist and CNN, therefore Klein, truly values good reporting based on facts and the logical conclusions that those facts present they should stop this mess before any further legitimization of the conspiracy nuts continue.
I firmly believe that this non-issue is so important to the conspiracy nuts because the of 44 presidents Mr. Obama is “one of these thing is not like the others, one of these thing does not belong” (Sesame Street for the ill informed). Responses from readers to previous posts about the birthers have used language that sounds troubling. Perhaps I am being too sensitive. Here is an example:
“Mr. Obama was born to a woman separated from her Kenyan husband, a woman who went to see him shortly before Obama was born. Obama spent his early youth abroad, thinks of himself as a citizen of the world, and wrote an autobiography strongly focused on his absent father and his supposed African roots.
That's unusual. We've never had such an exotic candidate with such a peculiar personal story. Most past presidents have had two American parents.
So it's not unreasonable to ask to see some proof of his place of birth. What is unreasonable is that he steadfastly refuses to provide it. In fact, that goes beyond unreasonable: it's bizarre.”
What do you think am I being too sensitive? Are the use of "exotic", "citizen of the world", "unusual" and "peculiar" innocent or are they displaying that President Obama's differentness from the previous 43 presidents is threatening?
Barack Obama's birthday is next week do you think we will do anything special, such as getting over this craziness?
"generalizations about race don't lead only to bad things, like an unjustified arrest. They can lead to good things, too. The best example is well known around Harvard Square and other academic communities: affirmative action. Part of the rationale for affirmative action is that African Americans are more likely than whites to have struggled harder, under the burden of greater disadvantages, to reach the point where they are poised to enter Harvard. Therefore, they deserve a break. No doubt this is true on average. And no doubt it is false in many cases. You can easily decide that some generalizations are just too toxic to allow, even if true on average, and race might be a good area to start. But you'd be hard-put to justify forbidding racial generalizations in split-second decisions during tense confrontations between citizens and cops, while allowing them in the relatively leisurely precincts of a college admissions office."
I read the police report and have initially three questions.
1. Is it possible to act disorderly on your own property or in your house? 2. If you are going to show ID to an officer in this situation why not show ID with your address? 3.It is possible the person with the real problem with race is the woman who called the police?
I did find funny the line in the report that says Gates said his front door was unsecurable because of a previous break in attempt.
Sphere: Related Content
