Fisking the Obama “apology”
I don’t have to spend a lot of time at it, since John at Powerline has already done a fine job.
But I would like to add just a little tidbit concerning the following sentence of Obama’s:
And I could have calibrated those words differently…
Note the word “could.” That’s a very subtle qualifier, a weasel word extraordinaire. The word Obama should have used is should, as in “And I should have calibrated those words differently.” “Could” means essentially nothing; merely the capacity to do something, not any need to do it.
The trouble with the word “calibrated” is also massive, but some of this was dealt with by Powerline already. Suffice to say that Obama is being is way too “calibrated” about his words at this point. Words mean something, especially ones like “stupidly.” They are not all ambiguous or arbitrary, except to a Humpty Dumpty like Obama:
[T]hat shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents ”” ”˜
`Certainly,’ said Alice.
`And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
`I don’t know what you mean by “glory,””˜ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t””till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!””˜
`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,””˜ Alice objected.
`When _I_ use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean””neither more nor less.’
`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master””that’s all.’
Obama’s was not an apology for an unfair assertion about Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge Police.
Rather, Obama’s was a reassertion of the righteousness of Obama’s belief that the police acted stupidly.
Obama’s statement was also an apology for not asserting (police stupidity) in a rhetorically slick fashion. Basically, it was an apology for getting caught at being truthful and forthright. Obama was saying:
I apologize for not having been more skillful at misleading the yokels. Not you guys, of course! YOU guys would have known what I meant. However, I should have said it in a way which would appease the yokels. I did not say it in a way which would appease the yokels and yet signal to you smart people. For that, I apologize.
Obama’s is a slick tactic of a fake apologizer: apologize not for the transgression, but rather for displaying lack of skill. The true narcissist will favor an apology for a lack of skill in an area in which the narcissist has demonstrably excellent skill. Therefore, even as the narcissist “apologizes”, the narcissist is effectively drawing attention to himself for having such wonderful skill in this area.
Thus, we see Obama’s “apology” was actually an overt celebration of Obama’s rhetorical skill. In fact, and maybe I’m over conditioned, but I could barely hear even a fake apology over the loud clanging implicit praise of The One’s rhetorical skill, i.e.
I’m usually so fantastic and wonderful at rhetoric, and I apologize for not being as fantastic and wonderful as usual. There! Aren’t I reasoned and wonderful and magnanimous for apologizing?! Of course I am. Now let me lecture YOU about jumping to conclusions, and about race. You will love it.
He regrets not hiding it in ambiguity. He regrets not parsing it better so he could have insulted him and have people argue whether it was or wasnt.
the term “duping delight” comes to mind
I was following up on a link from Shrinkwrapped titled Linguistic Tells in Narcissism. The “telling” point:
Horowitz says that narcissists rely on a defense he has termed “sliding of meanings.” Within the context of narcissism, sliding of meaning refers to defensive remolding of linguistic meaning to preserve the narcissist’s primitive sense of perfection. In layman’s terms, the narcissist can never admit to being wrong or deficient in any significant way, so he or she plays weaselly games with words.
Which is exactly what Obama was doing with “could,” the weasel word neo points out.
Wasn’t in fact Obama who said (during his campaign) “Words mean something”
In addition to “could” instead of “should,” and the whole concept of calibrating one’s words, there’s this:
“I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station.”
The police report describes the sequence of events. Sgt. Crowley had left Mr. Gates’s home, but Mr. Gates followed Crowley out the door, shouting at him. Mr. Gates was not “pulled” from his home, he left of his own volition. Further, had he stayed within his house, he would not have been exhibiting his disorderly conduct in public, but he chose to engage in such behavior out in the public, and that is the offense for which he was arrested.
Further, it is dismaying to observe the many articles and comments around the web from people who do not understand that Mr. Gates was not arrested for breaking into his own house, and that the whole incident arising out of the initial 9-1-1 call had been satisfactorily resolved and Crowley was leaving, and that it was Gates’s belligerent public conduct by which he put the cuffs on himself.
My gut instinct was that when Gates lipped off by saying “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside,” he crossed a line. Crowley might have been able to walk away with this egomaniac screaming at him, but not after that. That’s something most American men understand, especially, I think, most American black men. We all have a first amendment right to say whatever we want, but we don’t all have a right to avoid the consequences. You’d think a Harvard professor would know that.
look… if they had an open mike recording from JFKs death, then dont you think mikes been open and recording at least since that date?
confirming my suspicion:
said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association. “It’s public record. From dispatch to conclusion, it’s all on tape.”
on the flip side their angle is now looking to be that they are going to try to link the 911 call to the police officer to demonstrate somehow that what a caller thought would be heard by an officer. i believe that the 911 operator acts like a buffer.
however i think that everyone in the unions and such would never be pressing so hard up to the president unless they had four aces.
(and a defamation lawsuit threat cinches it for me)
and i think that we are going to see more and more incidents where the truth wont die and the lie wont live and the twist wont twist – thanks to SFN (scale free networks) and ubiquitous sensing
Ubiquitous sensing is my term for where all kinds of sensing is going on and as a side effect they provide information as to the validity of events or information other than what they were set up for. i use it rather than big brother since there really is no term to describe it that i have read (dont even know if others notice and designate the difference).
its more than a security camera happening to look out a window. its phone cameras, open microphones, tourist images and videos. it can be seismographs picking up where the first shells in georgia fell. its Kamiokande able to detect things other than intended.
Plus it was yet another opportunity for Obama to deliver one of his smarmy lectures about how …race is still a troubling aspect of our society. Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive, as opposed to negative, understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio.
No, Mr. Obama. You are now President of the United States — your portfolio is America and the American people.
You are not some Jesse Jackson guy swooping in to put in your two cents about a minor incident in Cambridge, Mass, even if it does involve a friend.
So, will Gates soon be dodging them pot-holes along with Wright? I’d love to hear Gates come back with something stupid like: “Well, Barry’s a politician. He has to say things like that”.
ouch… the first flop just came in and i think they may have better than aces.
Black officer at Gates home during arrest said scholar acted strange, supports arrest
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-ap-us-harvard-scholar-arresting-officer,0,4731766.story
A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation.
– – –
Lashley says Gates’ reaction to Crowley was “a little bit stranger than it should have been.”
Somebody made the observation that racism has given Gates a hell of a career.
Where would he be without it?
Richard Aubrey: yes indeed, Gates owes his career to racism in America. He had a professional obligation to cry racism when the cops showed up at his door. What else could an affluent, comfortably insulated, milquetoast and light-complected past-his-prime professor do? Being mistaken for a burglar actually flatters the man. But professional ethics, and a quest for black authenticity, demands he give the cops a hard time.
The Obonga narrative continues it’s downward slide. Rasmussen has his approval numbers below 50% today. Eventually if the numbers fall below 40 percent he might issue a real apology to Officer Crowley. Heh
Good point, Hong.
He might even have to calibrate his apologies to Crowley as a function of approval numbers.
One black congressman, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), who was stopped by a police officer a few years ago in what he said was a case of racial profiling, said that Obama was “right on the money.”
“I had the exact same kind of thing happen to me, only it was in an automobile,” Davis said.
—
Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said: “What the president said was honest and it was right. There is a long, sad history in this country of African Americans and other people of color being subjected to racial profiling.”
—
and this pip:
Connie Rice, a black Los Angeles civil rights attorney who has played a leading role in reforming the Los Angeles Police Department, agreed that the Gates incident was not an obvious example of racial profiling.
“Racial profiling is when an officer makes a traffic stop or takes some other action based only on some bias they hold,” she said.
But, she cautioned, “that does not mean that there were not racial elements to what happened.”
The officer, Rice said, appeared to be acting more out of an “arrogance of power,” which could be in part racially motivated. And Gates, she said, seemed to manifest what she called “Black American Princess Syndrome.”
“This was the supreme humiliation for Henry Louis Gates, because he has achieved a rarefied status and the considerations that are usually afforded to him went right out the window when the officer arrested him,” Rice said. “In a minute, that cop erased all that Gates has had to work through to get where he is.
“That officer was not going to back down because he had been challenged and he would look weak,” she said.
“But Gates was not going to back down because that officer tripped every racial humiliation that Gates and his family have experienced since slavery.”
Gates is half Irish (i dont know how much the officer is).
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Henry-Gates-has-50-Per-Cent-Irish-Roots–51568452.html
Does Obama have any friends and associates who wag their tails instead of snarl? I can’t think of a single one. And tail wagging to get a more advantageous bite doesn’t count.
Every word out of Obama’s mouth is calibrated. As though language is a mathematical algorithm exercise chasing a preponderance of public opinion.
This is getting – ok, has gotten – ridiculous.
First, Gates was out of line. Period.
Second, Gates was not going to back down because …well, actually, I don’t care. You challenge a police officer, you should be arrested, and/or become acquainted with his nightstick.
Third, Gates bleated about racism because it’s what he does. He’s a third-rate hack who got his position at Harvard in grievance studies strictly and solely to assuage white liberal guilt, which Harvard has in profusion. The racism here is 100% on Gates’s part.
Fourth,
“Racial profiling is when an officer makes a traffic stop or takes some other action based only on some bias they [sic] hold,” she said.
Ignoring the poor grammar, let’s strip away the crap. Profiling is good police work, period. Who’s more likely to be stopped, a car full of blue-haired grannies or one of teenaged males? Why? Is that inappropriate? Is it OK to profile by age and sex, but not race? Why?
And let’s go further, and have a frank dialogue about race, as liberals always urge us to do. Blacks are disproportionately responsible for crime in this country. It’s that simple. And before any comrades trot out the tired excuse about differential reporting, enforcement and/or conviction rates, let me point to one statistic: the leading cause of death among black males 15-24 is…homicide, and the vast majority of those are perpetrated by…other black males 15-24. Now it’s hard to ascribe those statistics to differential reporting, enforcement and/or conviction rates. Dead bodies are hard to fudge.
So it’s not bias; it’s objective fact that makes police look at blacks as likely suspects. Blacks have more trouble with police because … they create more trouble (crime), and police are in the business of dealing with troublemakers. If blacks want to have less trouble with police, they need to disown their own criminal element and expunge its influence on their culture (e.g., rap music).
There. I feel better. I was gone, but now I’m back.
I’d be ashamed to be a Harvard professor or the POTUS and discover i gave a 40k a year anonymous cop enough power to render me an idiot.
And I could have calibrated those words differently…
In a way, he’s telling you, flat out,
“My words don’t really mean a thing; they’re just noise”.
–
Occam,
Report immediately to the nearest re-education camp!
Yeah, I know. I’m too wedded to objective reality to dissemble fluently. There goes my career as a Democrat politician. Or as any politician, for that matter.
Crowley and the black officer who supports the arrest will now be savaged by the media like Joe-the-plumber and Palin.. It’s their behavioral software, they have to do it.
Profiling is police work. Profiling is noticing environmental factors which bear upon a circumstance. Profiling is not the problem, and it is misleading to claim it is.
Police skill at profiling can be either a plus or a problem. Skillful profiling, i.e. shrewd appraisal of environmental factors, is good policing.
Unskillful profiling, i.e. sloppy appraisal of environmental factors, is bad policing and can be offensive.
The complaint ought not be, and in reality is not, about profiling.
How to get a more skilled police force? Increase compensation and benefits. Otherwise, be happy with the overall level of skill of police forces which – in the red states, at least – generally deliver excellent value for the dollar. I know several police officers who do the job largely b/c they love it. They deliver far more value than they draw in salary. Far more.
davidt,
Seems almost a certainty. And did you read the police reports? They didn’t redact the name of the woman that called the police.
I fear she might be a casualty too.
For more about Gates, read Stanley Fish’s nauseating NYT piece today (Sorry, I can’t do links). As English chairman at Duke, he hired Gates 20 yrs ago, and Gates promptly bought “the grandest house in town” and renovated it. He left Duke for Haavard, calling Duke the “Plantation”, even though it had hired him, and apparently paid him handsomely enough. Same attitude as Michelle at Princeton, which wasn’t black enough for her either.
Next week Obama will hold a press conference. He then will anounce that he is saddened and angry to observe that the American people have still the stupid tendency to appoint rookies to serve as president. ‘It is sad that after two centuries you are still this stupid. But I, Barack Obama, will no longer cooperate. I WILL resign tomorrow as president and I WILL sue the American people for having put me in this position. Clearly, there is racism behind this and my lawyers will find out more about it. You will not have seen the last of me. Clearly you don’t know who you are messing with. I thank you all.’
“I WILL resign tomorrow as president”
If only we could get so lucky. President Stupidly will be with us for some time to come.
Heather Mac Donald at National Review has an excellent article on this brouhaha and towards the end she takes a sledgehammer to Obama’s statement: “What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
Turns out Obama hasn’t bothered to get that “fact” right either. Among other information HMD supplies, police officers are less likely to stop black motorists during the day when their faces are visible. And when they do stop black motorists, officers of all races report that the drivers often respond immediately: “You only stopped me because I’m black.”
Personally, I don’t want my President to apologize for anything. Apoligies are unpresidential. They suggest diffidence and indecisiveness. Not a good impression when you’re staring down the panoply of our nation’s adversaries.
It doesn’t matter anyway. The damage is done.
Obama’s guard was down. His initial off-the-cuff remarks gave a rare peak into his character. In a moment of irresolution, our good President brushed his aspirations aside and opened his soul and defended the indefensible.
The commenters here need no affirmation. We’ve seen it all before. Professor Gates might just as well have been Reverend Wright.
davidt Says:
“Crowley and the black officer who supports the arrest will now be savaged by the media like Joe-the-plumber and Palin.. It’s their behavioral software, they have to do it.”
Yeah, but eventually the public will notice the pattern and it will stop working. First Rove, then Cheney, Bush, Joe, Palin… and now a couple cops? Come on…
Tom – with respect and for clarification only – Stanley Fish’s article in the NYT is very supportive of Gates. Fish has been a leader in the post-modernism. Quoting from Wike. . . he “is best known for his analysis of interpretive communities – an offshoot of reader-response criticism. Fish’s work in this field examines how the interpretation of a text is dependent upon each reader’s own subjective experience in one or more communities, each of which is defined as a ‘community’ by a distinct epistemology”. It’s not difficult to see this sort of stuff reflected in Obama’s words and behavior.
“Personally, I don’t want my President to apologize for anything. Apoligies are unpresidential.”
I strongly disagree – Presidents are human and make mistakes. I think, when truly done, an apology does quite well. When done badly they are better off with silence.
An Apology when you do not feel apologetic is bad – silence is golden in this case. Indeed, this is the *worst* case to give one. Everyone knows you didn’t mean it, were pressured into it, nothing has changed, and you expect us to be stupid and accept it. An apology when you really didn’t do anything wrong is also bad for similar reasons – you are pressured into it even if you are convincing (or *shudder* believe it). An apology when you made a real mistake is a Good Thing.
In cases such as this I would prefer silence (as Bush Jr did). Yea, you stuck your foot in your mouth but let it go, those things happen. Obama is just shoving his foot deeper in trying to mitigate it without taking responsibility of his actions. As such it is an apology (or even in this case a passive aggressive statement wrapped in the guise of an apology – I’m sorry you are so stupid as to misunderstand me) not felt and not meant – *that* is indecisive and better off left silent.
As bad as Bush Jr was I do not think he had anywhere near the self aggrandizing that Obama does. I think that Bush Jr could at least fall back too mostly being open as to who he was. Obama needs to conceal it and this is just another example of it.
“If only we could get so lucky. President Stupidly will be with us for some time to come.”
You mean you want President Biden? I’ll take the current train wreck as to that one. At least this train wreck is obvious and is bringing some things out into mainstream talk as his would.
I do agree that an Obama is forcing some race relations to the forefront and I want them to go on for another four years. Biden lets them linger – if I’m going to suffer the pain I might as well get what I can out of it. This argument is a great example – there are a great deal of people who consider the “minority” (or rather persons with a high percentage of melanin) to always be in the right no matter what. This is making that argument come out and I applaud that – but I bet that Obama doesn’t really like it as much as I do 🙂
I do not think that the Repub’s will reap anything from it – I do not think they are in a position to do so. Indeed, I find them trying to out Obama the current administration and that is a race to who can be at the bottom. I think Obama or an Obama-lite will be the next president and I really do not care which. My hope is to have a strong party emerge and avoid a bloody revolution – but that is another wall of text that isn’t appropriate here.
Occam’s Beard and all you folks, for your diversion, I offer this link, to Chris Rock’s “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police.”
Hysterical. And too blisteringly true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8&feature=PlayList&p=43CCC6FA37E83BF2&index=0
Occam’s Beard and all you folks, for your diversion, I offer this link, to Chris Rock’s “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police.”
Hysterical. And too blisteringly true.
http://tinyurl.com/o633j7
Sorry for the double post, Neo. There was a Server Error message after the first one, and I thought it didn’t go through because the link was too long.
The could/should thing reminds me of BO’s reaction to Rezko: boneheaded. BO is a master at confessing to the lesser crime and at portraying said crime as proof that he is just a average guy who sometimes makes dumb little mistakes. Don’t we all?
strcpy’s comments on apologies were correct. A sincere apology is fine. It indicates that the person has really thought about what he did wrong and has learned from the mistake. BO is incapable of sincere apology because a priori he knows everything. He can’t allow reflection to chip away at his self image. His “apologies” are just a bunch of words that allow him to say, “As I’ve said before…” Throw enough words into the game and you make it harder for critics to point out the contradictions. You wear people out.
People like Mr Gates act the obnoxious way they do for a reason. Because it works as a strategy. Really no different than a child throwing a tantrum in the toy aisle at walmart.
The difference being, the child eventually gets around to feeling shame and embarrassment when ridiculed by his peers. Mr Gates has no such support system among his peers.
Watch for him to change the topic to something like “the sad history of injustice and humiliation and the unresolved issues of race that must be confronted now.” He might dust off Mr. Clinton’s National Conversation on Race (remember that one?), praising Clinton and saying, “this is unfinished business.” He will talk about the need to explore “the legacy of slavery and racism.”
He (actually, his minions) will find the most over the top and intemperate responses to this case and say, “While Sgt Crowley acted correctly in the context of a confused situation where misunderstanding could occur, the comments of his defenders show that racial animosity is lurking just below the surface. Notwithstanding the undeniable progress we as a country have made, where the mayor of Cambridge, the governor of Massachusetts, and the president of the United States are African-Americans, we have not fulfilled our destiny to become a post-racial society, where E Pluribus Unum describes the reality of how we live. I look at it as my unique responsibility to help us begin the healing.” (This is almost too easy.)
He will try misdirection. Today’s local spin said that as a Harvard-trained law professor, he focused on the point that once Gates produced identification showing he was the householder, he was in the clear and that should have been an end to the matter. The point is, he’s not only more moral than the rest of you, he is smarter and better-trained.
The textbook lesson is, when the Left suffers a setback, they immediately go over onto offense, move the goalposts, and dredge up the memories of previous slights and outrages. There is a term for the latter: “Waiving the bloody shirt.” This is deep training.
The goal in this is to discourage the defection of the urban and media elites and soccer moms.
Oblio,
With that 2nd paragraph, you could land a job as the TOTUSI replacement. That was great.
Oblio,
I can understand “dredging up memories of previous outrages”. It’s an instinctive reaction, a defense mechanism that allows people to discern patterns in the environment. Part of the process of learning. If I lived in Ukrainian shtetl in 1917, like my grandfather did, and suddenly saw a Cossack riding in the street, playing with his whip, I’d run like hell and yell to alert others, not waiting to be beaten first. What’s more, because of my family knowledge, I can smell out an anti-Semite from miles off. It’s the survival mechanism.
The problem with “waving the bloody shirt” is that the real sufferers don’t do it. Only the people who make their living out of it. Who profit, and profit handsomely, from offenses directed at others. Like J. Jackson, like Sharpton, like Gates. Like Barack and Michelle Obama.
Tatyana, you are right: to remember past outrages and injustices is completely human and understandable; that’s why it works. And you are right that for this reason, the cynical manipulate and play on these natural feelings. It contrasts sadly with the rhetoric of moving beyond racism and the past; it’s all about wallowing in the past and using it as a stick to beat people who are innocent.
I don’t think they stop to think how treating an individual person as a representative or symbol of a race or class and to punish that person for acts done by others denies his humanity and dignity. If it is morally permissible to do so, what was the problem with racism in the first place? If racism is not wrong, on what basis can being a victim of racism create moral claims on anyone else? There is a contradiction at the heart of the modern rhetoric of “civil rights.”
I wonder why the tapes of the 911 call and the recordings on police radio of Gates screaming at Crowley that we’ve heard about haven’t been released. I’m sure Fox News is probably trying to get them. The Mainstream TV news sources maybe not. I’ll make a prediction: If there is no law compelling the release of the recordings then we will never hear them. Protection of Gates’s and Obama’s spin must be protected at all cost.
Dear readers: Suppose you came into contact with a police officer. Suppose you make a huge fuss in public, accusing the officer of malfeasance to his face and making remarks about his mother. Suppose you are then arrested as disorderly. Suppose you continue to rant publicly about what you allege is the officer’s malfeasance.
Here’s what would happen to you:
At some point in time you would find yourself in front of a judge. The judge would then ask you if you cared to recant your allegations. Readers, if you then remained adamant you would get every legal sanction that judge would be able to impose. Fine, jail-time, whatever the judge could stick you with. The enforcement and judicial components of our legal system do not usually put up with such behavior and tend to teach hard lessons to the recalcitrant.
But that will not happen to Gates. He’s a celebrated Harvard professor with friends in high places. You can’t get any higher than the POTUS. And he’s a member of an anointed minority with victimhood status that is officially endowed in every area of our culture — employment and promotion, government contracts, education, etc. He can allege malfeasance from start until doomsday with impunity.
I’d like to see a picture of the Sotomayor firefighters and the policemen in this case… the pattern is clear. It didn’t all start with Obama, but America’s chickens are indeed coming home to roost. And one of those chickens is the ‘reverse’ discrimination against white males, and the denigration of responsible people in general.
Then, remember the slain recruiter? How long did it take Obama to issue a statement in that matter? A wimpy one at that. But the abortionist got a quick response, and this Gates guy gets a near immediate response. It’s very clear where Obama’s head is.
You have to wonder, if Gates was an ACORN worker, the President would have flown to the scene demanding release.
You know one of the saddest things from all this is when people manufacture abuse and brutality, it only harms those who need protection the most from when abuse and brutality actually occurs. Faking it is such an utterly cowardly, self-centered, and revolting betrayal of basic morality and fellow solidarity that it feels like a felony offense to mankind!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger Simon has an insightful piece on PajamasMedia where he classifies the Gates problem as a ‘nostalgia for racism’; a nostalgia that, unfortunately, some just can’t let go of. As an academic, it rings too true to me.
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2009/07/24/gates-and-obamas-nostalgia-for-racism/
JohnC: I read the Simon piece and I thought he was being far too kind. I imagine Simon has a nostalgia for racism. Maybe I do too. I can get all shivery when I hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I miss the simple storybook morality of the civil rights movement which I watched on TV and closer up when my high school was integrated.
But Gates and Obama have a far deeper personal investments in racism. It’s close to their reasons for being and the basis of their careers. Unless I am entirely mistaken, racism is the still smoldering rage to which they’ve both dedicated their lives; hence, their immediate ill-considered reactions to Officer John Crowley.
JohnC: I read the Simon piece and I thought he was being far too kind. I imagine Simon has a nostalgia for racism. Maybe I do too. I can get all shivery when I hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I miss the simple storybook morality of the civil rights movement which I watched on TV and closer up when my high school was integrated.
But Gates and Obama have a far deeper personal investments in racism. It’s close to their reasons for being and the basis of their careers. Unless I am entirely mistaken, racism is the still smoldering rage to which they’ve both dedicated their lives; hence, their immediate ill-considered reactions to Officer John Crowley.
What is with the WordPress servers these days? I hit the Submit button twice and got Server Error 500 something each time. Therefore the duplicate post.
The moral is to reload the page and check whether the post went through before resubmitting.
Woof woof woof. A content-free series of phonemes.
The crap that passes for “research” in the humanities. Good God.
Bullseye. We have a family of Obamanauts (yes, some of them reproduce) whose little angel terrorizes the family. We can hear her screaming four houses away. (True story.) We’ve seen her mother literally flee the house to escape the brat, only to be followed outside by little Angelica screaming, “Now!” at her, over and over. Rather like Gates and the cop, come to think of it.
When Gates saw a white cop on his doorstep he wasn’t outraged, he saw dollar signs.
Davidt, I think he saw press conferences, task forces, appearances on talk TV, another book, that sort of thing. I doubt that he’s motivated (much) by money. Now fame and clout, on the other hand…
Occam,
For both Angelica and Gates, the consequences of screaming have always been positive.
For Barack, the consequence of invoking race, or of invoking profiling: has always been positive, has always been a winning formula, has always constituted an ace in the hole. Until this instance. Barack cannot imagine a circumstance in which invoking race would be a negative for him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This thread has been fun reading all the way down. Nice comment, Oblio at 9:06 am.
The links have been very good. “Black American Princess Syndrome”! LOL
Huxley — again, I’m with you on with Gates / Obama and their ilk with personal investments in racism. I’m not so much with you on PPM, however. I prefer the original from Dylan. Thanks though for all your hard work in here to ferret out the essence of Obama and that crowd. I appreciate it.
Thanks also to you Occam. And yes, that Wiki definition is content free. As you probably know, Fish is one of many who are responsible for pushing the post-modern view in academia that there are no absolute truths. Instead truth depends on what you (the reader) bring to the table. Hence everything is (morally) relevant to one’s personal experiences. It ain’t hard to see that played out in Obama’s behavior and attitudes.
Didn’t anybody there have a cell phone with a camera?
I think Crowley should have pulled out his cell phone and taped the encounter and arrest. He had to have known that he was dealing with a Harvard guy who was out to make him pay for being so presumptous as to question his bonafides.
According to the police report I read on The Smoking Gun, Gates was trying to call the police chief to report the guy. This guy Gates was using all his Harvard prestige to intimidate the officer.
Did this thing turn into a male dominance dog fight? I’m a Harvard Law Profesor and friend of Oprah Winfrey vs I’m an officer of the Law and you have to show deference?
Too bad Obama was too careless and arrogant to recognise he should stay the hell away from this story. But he keeps thinking that he is the fount of all rhetorical wisdom and must bless the nation with his wisdom. His presidency is paying a high price for it.
Many more of these stupid errors and he is done.
huxley: WordPress does seem to have more than its share of glitches lately. But fortunately (knock wood) they seem to last just a few seconds at a time. So just keep trying, and things should work out in short order. I trust they are trying to fix the problem, whatever it may be.
spoot: Maybe there were people there with cellphone and camera, but perhaps at this point they are too intimidated to come forward. In addition, Cambridge being Cambridge, they would be likely to be Obama supporters, and if the record goes against Gates they’d be very unlikely to want to make it public.
The picture that has hit all the wires looks like a cell phone picture, there could be more, hopefully some video….
Can we now make jokes about Black American Princesses? Of course not! PC dictates that such jokes would be evidence of (unconscious?) racism.
Our nation will take a step forward when we reject PC and make jokes about BAPs, i.e.
How many Black American Princesses does it take to change a light bulb?
Nine.
One to change the light bulb. One to scream out “racist society” to the neighbors. One to berate the black police officer on the scene. One to berate the Hispanic Police Officer on the scene. One to call the (black) Mayor. One to call the (black) Governor. One to call the (black) President. One to begin booking the talk shows. One to start production on the documentary film.
oh yeah: inclusion of “princess” means that such jokes are also sexist. But race trumps gender, as seen in the Barack v Hillary Presidential race. So, the joke is clearly racist more than sexist. Women can go back to the kitchen, for now, and can berate me when they have sufficient victim cred.
Here you go Huxley – for a little diversion and then we can get back to the discussion. The first is Bob Dylan with Blowing in the Wind before he started slurring lyrics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg
or if you prefer – the second is with PPM and Baez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt_fDuBjqqA
I’m getting tingles up my leg already 🙂
Note also that if we could remove THAT green apple, we’d find that our gracious hostess has the same sorta heavy eyelids that Dylan had /has.
# davidt Says:
July 25th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
When Gates saw a white cop on his doorstep he wasn’t outraged, he saw dollar signs.
You got that right, dollar signs and ”fame!!”
Call it, nostalgia for the simplicity of easy moral posturing.
“Opportunity” would be more appropriate than “dollar signs”.
JohnC: Thanks!
Not to worry. I prefer Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”; I just don’t feel nostalgic about it.
The man is a genius. I listen to any song he’s written, and love it or hate it or shrug it, it’s a fresh experience, not an occasion for nostalgia.
PPM? I still love ’em but they remain wedded to the timeline of my life.
I did the civil rights bit in Mississippi in 67 and 68. And, yeah, the lines were pretty clear.
Until I figured out that the “colored municipal pool” in Holly Springs was paid for mostly by white folks, the blacks not having enough to tax. Where I grew up, in a prosperous suburb of Detroit, we didn’t have a pool at all.
And the soft-serve, corn-dog stand across from campus was run by whites who were personable and friendly to blacks.
And in 1987, the sheriff, Osborne Bell, a black, was killed in the line of duty and there’s a plaque to his honor in the county building. You have to be somebody to get elected sheriff, so he was being somebody for some years prior to 1986, the latest he could have been elected. In Marshall County, MS.
Strange.
Still, nostalgia for good-guy, bad-guy clear lines and the self righteous feeling of being the former is powerful.
None of that matters to Gates. He’s more practical than that. Racism is his gig and it’s been very, very good to him.
Um. Gray, anyone?
Beverly, above at 3:50 AM, thanks for the link to the Chris Rock video! A great example of “It’s funny because it’s true!”
OB, Fish is at least partially right. In something more like English, he is saying the audience hears what it wants to hear. How else do you describe the OJ Verdict, the Gates Assumption, or Obamamania itself?
Remember the insight about Palin-hatred: people repeat the lies to justify the hatred. They need those lies to justify their feelings. Like the Global Warming (oops, Climate Change) crowd needs Mann’s temperature hockey stick to justify their policy preferences and utopian urges.
How can you say that Fish is not right in describing how people behave?
Neo’s site is dedicated to the idea that minds change when somehow new facts and insights break up the community and tribal “official truth.”
Oblio, I’m not saying Fish is wrong. I’m saying that he has restated a commonplace observation as a profound insight through restating it in an arcane, jargon-filled, and semi-grammatical fashion, e.g.,
Studies have shown that at 298 K the lightest of the congeneric group 16 hydrides exhibits a Reynolds number of 3.341 X 10^5, at the measured viscosity of 8.98 X 10^-4 kg/m-s (and assuming Newtonian behavior), consistent with the observation of interaction at the molecular level with non-lipophilic substrates.
In other words, water is wet.
Fair enough, OB. Pompous jargon, I’ll grant you, but not without meaning.
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Didn’t we already have this discussion about weasel-worded Dems about 10 years ago with the “It depends on what you meant by ‘No'” debate?
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> “I WILL resign tomorrow as president” If only we could get so lucky.
Are you sure that would be lucky? Note who that would make PotUS in his place. Probably not worse, but probably not much better, either.
I’m thinking more along the lines of simultaneous terrorist attacks that crash both Air Force One and Air Force Two into the Senate and the House, respectively, while they are in session.
That seems like the only way we could get “lucky”.