NOT NEWSWORTHY
Please excuse me while I rant about what this country considers national news. For the past few days, the topic on every front page, every news station, and every internet news headline is this ridiculous conflict between a black Harvard scholar and a white cop.
Summary for when I look back on this in 15 years: Professor Henry Gates returned home and found himself unable to get into his house. He and his driver struggled for some time to get the door open. A few moments after they achieved entry, police officer James Crowley shows up saying he is investigating a potential break-in. What happened next is subject to debate, but the result was Gates being arrested for disorderly conduct - a charge that was dropped later.
What is most frustrating is that we don't know what really happened. Gates says the cop is a racist, that a white man would never be arrested in his own home, and that he wants this to be a "teaching moment". Crowley says Gates became unruly when he simply asked to see some ID, and that he carried on screaming for so long that he had no choice but to arrest him. Putting myself in Gates's situation, I can appreciate that the attitude of the cop would change my reaction to him. If he really was non confrontational, I would just be like, "Oh, gosh, I was fighting with my jammed door....here's my ID, I live here." But if he was aggressive and making me feel like a criminal in my own home, I would get defensive and unwilling to easily show my ID. Fine, I get that. But this guy Gates is just looking like more and more of a whacko with a huge chip on his shoulder.
I personally think he was just waiting for a moment like this to happen so he could raise a racial firestorm. No matter how much he asserts that Crowley is a racist pig, the facts speak to the contrary: he's taught police seminars on racial profiling for 5 years, and even performed CPR on former NBA star Reggie Lewis when he collapsed on the court. A good Samaritan saw some guys trying to force themselves into a house and decided to call the police. So the police show up, just doing their duty, and this guy shouts that he is being asked for his ID because "he's a black man in America". What reasonable person would do that? Now he's going around giving all these speeches about how racism is alive and well and how he wants to make a documentary about his sorry experience. Yeah, racism sure held you down, buddy, what with your Yale education and your nice tenure at Harvard. Meanwhile, the cop has said next to nothing. Look, I'm sorry, but this kind of thing COULD happen to a white man, and probably HAS...it's just Gates had the oppurtunity to throw down a race card (and an "I'm educated and respected" card) and he did, gleefully I'm sure.
This story should have never left Cambridge, but it's all over the fucking place because this psycho snob WANTS it to be, and the media loves nothing more than to give people like him a platform. Its the biggest load of hyperbolic crap I've seen in a while. And of course, since everyone was dying to know what our black president thought of this EPIC RACE FEUD, Obama just HAD to comment and sadly his comment was foolish, saying the police "acted stupidly," although he admitted to not knowing what happened, which got the police union up in arms, so now he's apologized and invited everyone over to the white house for a beer. Gimme a break! What a damn embarrassing circus.
Today, I saw an article about how the LAWYER for the FUCKING WOMAN WHO CALLED THE POLICE-because we've spent millions on McGruff the Watchdog and "if you see something, say something" to encourage people like her to report potential crimes-issued a statement saying she is "not racist." WELL OF COURSE SHE'S NOT, JESUS CHRIST, who is EVEN THINKING THAT? Why does she even need a lawyer? Oh God, my head is about to explode.
I had a really juicy episode of one of my favorite daytime court shows interrupted because the Cambridge police union's press conference was deemed "Breaking news". The episode was about a stupid guy who lent his former girlfriend's friend money to have an abortion and she never paid him back. It had just started and was already full of such "wha?" moments as the girl saying she disagrees totally with abortion, "but was involuntarily put into the kind of situation where I became pregnant." (can you just say "rape", or are you trying to conceal the true story of maybe your boyfriend whined about not wanting to use a condom?) Anyway, these two are duking it out, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of middle-aged white dudes with humorless expressions are filling up my TV screen with their podium. WHAT ABOUT THE ABORTION MONEY???
I wish people would get outraged about stuff that matters, like the fact that the MA sales tax is increasing from 5% to 6.25% in less than a week. I guess there is no hope for that....before this debacle, all anyone wanted to talk about was Michael Jackson's death. And after this? Maybe Hermione will show her tits in the DVD release of the new Harry Potter movie. That'll keep the masses busy for a while!
Summary for when I look back on this in 15 years: Professor Henry Gates returned home and found himself unable to get into his house. He and his driver struggled for some time to get the door open. A few moments after they achieved entry, police officer James Crowley shows up saying he is investigating a potential break-in. What happened next is subject to debate, but the result was Gates being arrested for disorderly conduct - a charge that was dropped later.
What is most frustrating is that we don't know what really happened. Gates says the cop is a racist, that a white man would never be arrested in his own home, and that he wants this to be a "teaching moment". Crowley says Gates became unruly when he simply asked to see some ID, and that he carried on screaming for so long that he had no choice but to arrest him. Putting myself in Gates's situation, I can appreciate that the attitude of the cop would change my reaction to him. If he really was non confrontational, I would just be like, "Oh, gosh, I was fighting with my jammed door....here's my ID, I live here." But if he was aggressive and making me feel like a criminal in my own home, I would get defensive and unwilling to easily show my ID. Fine, I get that. But this guy Gates is just looking like more and more of a whacko with a huge chip on his shoulder.
I personally think he was just waiting for a moment like this to happen so he could raise a racial firestorm. No matter how much he asserts that Crowley is a racist pig, the facts speak to the contrary: he's taught police seminars on racial profiling for 5 years, and even performed CPR on former NBA star Reggie Lewis when he collapsed on the court. A good Samaritan saw some guys trying to force themselves into a house and decided to call the police. So the police show up, just doing their duty, and this guy shouts that he is being asked for his ID because "he's a black man in America". What reasonable person would do that? Now he's going around giving all these speeches about how racism is alive and well and how he wants to make a documentary about his sorry experience. Yeah, racism sure held you down, buddy, what with your Yale education and your nice tenure at Harvard. Meanwhile, the cop has said next to nothing. Look, I'm sorry, but this kind of thing COULD happen to a white man, and probably HAS...it's just Gates had the oppurtunity to throw down a race card (and an "I'm educated and respected" card) and he did, gleefully I'm sure.
This story should have never left Cambridge, but it's all over the fucking place because this psycho snob WANTS it to be, and the media loves nothing more than to give people like him a platform. Its the biggest load of hyperbolic crap I've seen in a while. And of course, since everyone was dying to know what our black president thought of this EPIC RACE FEUD, Obama just HAD to comment and sadly his comment was foolish, saying the police "acted stupidly," although he admitted to not knowing what happened, which got the police union up in arms, so now he's apologized and invited everyone over to the white house for a beer. Gimme a break! What a damn embarrassing circus.
Today, I saw an article about how the LAWYER for the FUCKING WOMAN WHO CALLED THE POLICE-because we've spent millions on McGruff the Watchdog and "if you see something, say something" to encourage people like her to report potential crimes-issued a statement saying she is "not racist." WELL OF COURSE SHE'S NOT, JESUS CHRIST, who is EVEN THINKING THAT? Why does she even need a lawyer? Oh God, my head is about to explode.
I had a really juicy episode of one of my favorite daytime court shows interrupted because the Cambridge police union's press conference was deemed "Breaking news". The episode was about a stupid guy who lent his former girlfriend's friend money to have an abortion and she never paid him back. It had just started and was already full of such "wha?" moments as the girl saying she disagrees totally with abortion, "but was involuntarily put into the kind of situation where I became pregnant." (can you just say "rape", or are you trying to conceal the true story of maybe your boyfriend whined about not wanting to use a condom?) Anyway, these two are duking it out, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of middle-aged white dudes with humorless expressions are filling up my TV screen with their podium. WHAT ABOUT THE ABORTION MONEY???
I wish people would get outraged about stuff that matters, like the fact that the MA sales tax is increasing from 5% to 6.25% in less than a week. I guess there is no hope for that....before this debacle, all anyone wanted to talk about was Michael Jackson's death. And after this? Maybe Hermione will show her tits in the DVD release of the new Harry Potter movie. That'll keep the masses busy for a while!