The Good & Bad: Sgt. Crowley Won’t Apologize to Gates (Good), Obama Still Making Stupid Remarks about Police (Bad), Pundits Smacking Obama for His Lameness (Good)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on July 23, 2009
Oops - Pres. Obama really made a mess of it during the health care press conference, criticizing police for arresting his buddy without knowing any of the facts
Yes it was, for so many delicious reasons. Magnificent in its meltdown with illogical POTUS ramblings, dodgings, and lengthy, painful non-answers to legitimate health care bill questions.
Embarrassing, really, for the dewy-eyed MSM and Obama supporters to suddenly realize the error of their presidential vote, to acknowledge their misplaced teenage-girl crush on a man, of whom they know so little about. Veil’s lifted. Not very pretty.
An inexperienced empty-suit, a man with a nice smile who can’t think or speak cohesively and intelligently without using a teleprompter.
Like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
And then, Pres. Obama went further down the Path to Stupid Ruin.
He dissed the police for arresting a professor friend of his, waking up the dozing press. Whoa, boy, did he just do that? No way! MUCH juicier than reporting on another snoozeville health care sales pitch. Gotta Twitter this pronto… And suddenly, the ObamaCare multi-trillion-dollar snake-oil sales pitch was abandoned for the wildly inappropriate Obama gaffe.
Pundits on the left and the right are going wild with this story. The victims, of course, are those whose lives have been forever changed by Obama’s thoughtless, biased comment.
He has inadvertently thrust regular people and their families into the MSM’s shark-infested, feeding-frenzy spotlight. (They’d been a tad worried when Sarah Palin decided to resign her governor position. Where would the easy, public-devouring stories come from now? Look no further than the Oval Office.)
Obama the Dope has screwed up. Again.
And now, a day after the first screw up, POTUS continues to defend his disparaging, uninformed, biased comment about the stupidity of Cambridge police and arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley when they arrested Harvard professor Henry Gates. He does this by making MORE disparaging, uninformed, biased comments about the stupidity of Cambridge police and arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley. When does this guy stop talking and start thinking?
Has Joe Biden passed his “King of the Village Idiots” scepter to Obama?
What can we expect from Obama when speaking, unscripted, to world leaders? What kind of nonsense does he utter with them behind closed doors? Is this why so many are mocking him behind his back? Cringeworthy and very troubling to consider.
Sgt. Crowley, Cambridge Cop to Harvard Professor Gates: “No Apology”
If Professor Gates had behaved and responded civilly to police from the get-go, rather than act like a raging, aging black activist begging for a fight, his subsequent arrest and national embarrassment would never have happened. Then again, if Obama had only kept his mouth shut and butted out…
Feedback from a few bloggers:
From Jules Crittenden:
OK, here’s the president of the United States, who acknowledges he doesn’t know the facts, and in his brief recitation of them makes that clear by omitting any reference to Gates’ disorderly conduct…
I’m not sure that the president making off-the-cuff judgments about complex and inflammatory racial situations he admits he isn’t up to speed on, and weighing in on the side of a personal friend, is particularly helpful.
I know the madness among most blacks in our country won’t end in my lifetime. That much is obvious. The race hustlers will still be around. The black racially cry babies will still be around acting embarrassing as usual. Speaking of an embarrassing, self victimized jack ass and all around fool, I would be remissed if I didn’t mention the antics of Harvard Professor Henry Gates. The media has been promoting Mr. Gates as a very influential black man. Besides being a scholar of African American studies at Harvard, I don’t see what is influential about him. Well Mr. Gates was arrested for taking racial theatrics to a whole new level…
From Patterico’s Pontifications:
Obama spoke out about the Henry Louis Gates arrest tonight. He pretended not to take sides . . . and then proceeded to take sides.
Obama swallows the Gates line whole: Gates just showed his ID and then got arrested for seemingly no reason. If it happened to us, Obama said, “any of us would be pretty angry.”
Oh, really? Gates was “angry” because a police officer had come to investigate a neighbor’s report that two black men appeared to be forcing their way into his home. Having just jimmied his way into the home, Gates should have realized that the neighbor had seen him and his driver — and that the cop was reasonably following up on a reasonable concern.
That would have made anyone angry? No.
According to the police report, which I find more credible than Gates’s account, Gates started screaming about racism right from the get-go. (If he didn’t, then why did he get arrested?) And why? Because a police officer was reasonably following up on a reasonable concern?
From Michelle Malkin:
Who’s surprised that President Obama trashed police officers as “stupid” on national TV and implied they were racist despite “not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that?”
This is Barack Obama, friend of cop-targeting domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose door sports a picture of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal.
This is Barack Obama, leader of the Democrat Party, which still embraces police-hater Al Sharpton.
“I might be a little biased,” Obama admitted before unleashing on the police.
We know. We know.
From Hot Air:
To be honest, from what little I know of the facts, it sounds like the only “crime” Gates was guilty of was being a douche to the cops. I’m not sure why that warranted arrest, but then neither you nor I nor The One was there, not that that stopped him from making grand pronouncements about the alleged stupidity of the police’s conduct. Self-serving exit quotation from his latest statement about this: “I think that I have extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do.”
I find it surprising that President Obama is facing some criticism about the comment that he made about the Cambridge police during his press conference last night, I thought that the media would bury this. But there are a few prominent people speaking out against Obama’s words, including Bill Cosby…
And now the president himself has said that he is surprised by the controversy surrounding his comments and I am sure he is. He is not used to the media actually reporting on anything controversial about him. From Reverend Wright to bitter gun clinging bible thumpers to his birth certificate to William Ayers to Saul Alinski, on and on the list goes and nothing was reported by the media except on the blogs. Now suddenly the press is covering a controversial story, no wonder he is surprised.
Rhetorical question: How would the media handle this if George W. Bush had done something so blindingly stupid to an African-American private citizen during a televised presidential press conference? Boiling oil? Guillotine? Drawn and quartered? Or, would they have defended him, like ABC News has? (stop laughing already.)
More on Obama’s inappropriate police-dissing gaffe and the ObamaCare press conference:
Hot Air: How not to win support from police unions; Update: Obama retreats; Update: Bill Cosby “shocked” by Obama’s remarks and Nuance: Cop who arrested Gates is an expert on … racial profiling and Obama: On second thought, it’s totally okay for Congress not to pass ObamaCare by August and Obama presser: What was the point? and Obama: To Save Healthcare, I must Impugn the Motives of those who Provide It and Open thread: Guy who “rescued” the economy going to “rescue” American health care too and Will the White House press corps be more adversarial tonight?
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: WHITE Police officers are ’stupid’ and ‘racist’ according to Obama
Sister Toldjah: Why won’t President Obama shut up about the Gates arrest?
American Thinker: If Obama Were My Friend
Autographed Letter Signed: Thursday Stitch N’ Bitch: It’s All Black and White To Me
The Smoking Gun: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Police Report -”I’ll speak with your mama outside,” Harvard prof told Cambridge cops
Boston Herald: White House qualifies Obama remark about arrest
Gateway Pundit: Bill Cosby “Shocked” At Dear Leader’s Attack on Boston Police Officer
Mary Katharine Hamm, Weekly Standard: In Which We Gather Facts About the Gates Arrest Before Opining Upon It
Michelle Malkin: The anti-police bigotry of the Left and The “Don’t taze me, bro” moment of Henry Louis Gates and Dr. Obama applies CPR
Rosita the Prole: Was the Harvard Professor Who’s Claiming Police Racism Trying to Get Arrested?
Stop The ACLU: Obama Attacks More Private Citizens During Prime Time Presser
The Uncooperative Bloggers: CNN’s Blitzer Surprised Giuliani Thinks Obama ‘Much Worse’ Than He Thought
Wake Up Black America: A Distinguished Gentleman or Distinguished Fool?
Jim Blazsik: President evades question about abortion and Obamacare
ABC EXCLUSIVE: Obama Defends Criticism of Cambridge Police
GOPMom: “Cambridge Cop Says Obama’s ‘Stupidly’ Comment Disappoints Him”
Bloodthirsty Liberal: The Cop Speaks [UPDATED]
America’s Watchtower: Obama is Feeling the Heat For His Comment About the Cambridge Police
The Substratum: ObamaCare In The Gallows – Quick, Get A Rope
About the author
I first wrote about this on Tues and basically said that Gates was a jack arse.
Now Obama opens his uninformed mouth and inserts his foot in it.
Gates said that Crowley didn’t know who he was messing with.
Perhaps Gates is the one who didn’t know who he was messing with.
Check out my take on it and the link to my Tue post. Also, please stick around for more good content.
http://libertarianhumor.com/2009/07/24/gates-2/
I read your post at your blog, Ed, and thought it was excellent. I’ve excerpted a bit of it for another of my posts on the subject.
Thumbs up on a terrific commentary.
We have three observations about the Harvard professor incident:
1. We find it interesting that the fact that this was the professor’s home was evidently not established early on way before the dispute escalated;
2. We find it fascinating that the versions of two members of society, who most would ordinarily view as responsible and honest citizens (this obviously does not include politicians), would vary so dramatically from a factual point of view.
3. Finally, considering that the reading and viewing public were not present at the scene (and thus have no first hand knowledge), and that there is no video tape to our knowledge of the sequence of events and what was said, how so many have formed conclusions, and made assumptions, about who did what and who was wrong.
There are some things which Professor Gates might have considered upon the arrival of the police, no matter how incensed he may have been.
I’ve been a cop for 33 years in Massachusetts. I knew there would be a backlash as soon as Obama made his statement, which to me was calculated and planned. He doesn’t understand, nor do any of the elites, that black and white relations in law enforcement is a “different animal”. Black officers and white officers would die for each other and there is a mutual respect and comraderie. Maybe they ought to take a look at police officers when they want to study “race relations”. There’s something about putting your life on the line for each other and/or sharing or seeing things that no one should have to see that puts things into perspective. We share each other’s pains or frustrations as if it were happening to us personally. If a black officer is belittled because of his race we all feel it. The same applies to the opposite situation and I think Obama and crew just learned that.
Well said, Dave. I correspond with many soldiers and Marines in the war zones of Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. I write to all races, religions, and ages. From what many have told me, there is no “white vs black” or “Catholic vs Jew” or “New Yorker vs Texas” mentality with these heroic men and women, either. They are a team, united in spirit and purpose, and disregard the superficial nonsense and focus on the important things, like integrity and team support and friendship and survival. I’m sure these are similar feelings for those who serve as our brave police officers and fire fighters.
Thank you for giving your input, and I hope you pop back in again to offer your insight when the mood strikes you. As a veteran cop, you can share experiences with readers that most of us can only speculate upon.
I would be happy to do so. I failed to mention that the female officers, especially minority female officers go through a lot of crap and deserve a lot of respect and admiration. They are especially sensitive to “no win” situations because they are constantly evaluated with the caveat they got their job because they are female or a minority or both. Minority male officers work every day with an albatross strapped to their neck that they really didn’t deserve the job or promotion. As a white police officer I want to state that personally I want to see the day when this ends. I believe that Law Enforcement will be the first environment where all this ends. Police officers recognize courage and honesty and covet those qualities. It was no surprise that black police officers, both male and female, spoke out in the Cambridge case. That’s because they are honest and courageous… the most important things to police officers. Color of skin means little to nothing once you’re in the profession if you’re a good cop. The black officers knew EXACTLY what happened and were as embarassed and hurt about it as white officers would be if it had been reversed. If the Sergeant had been a racist jerk then they wouldn’t have done it and he wouldn’t have gotten the support. There will be an improvement in race relations and it will start in the law enforcement community (and of course the military) and we will be all right.
Dave,
Your insight and appraisal of race and gender issues are refreshing and honest – you’ve given me much to think about, particularly about female officers and what so many are unfairly subjected to. This Cambridge incident has been turned into a regrettable media circus… Sgt. Crowley should never have been forced, like he’s been, to be harassed and maligned under the harsh light of public scrutiny because an elderly black professor, who happens to know the president, showed terrible judgment and had an unjustified race-baiting tantrum. Your point that had Crowley actually been a racist jerk, he would not have had the heartfelt support that he’s had from his fellow minority officers, is an excellent one. Sgt. Crowley has been humiliated and his reputation and integrity has been smeared – disgraceful what has happened to this fine man who was simply doing his job.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond like this, dear friend. Thank you. I know I’m a bit wiser now.
This issue isn’t a racial problem although I’m sure Professor Gates felt it was. I’m a middle aged white male and I can “guarantee you” the same thing would happen to me.
Unfortunately Officer Crowley isn’t “smart enough” to walk away from Professor Gates home once his residency was established. END OF STORY, PERIOD (unless of course he was threatened).
Cops “always harass”, & throw their weight around everytime they can! This happens to be everyday moron cop behavior. This isn’t a racial issue this is “typical rogue” cop “out of control” like ALWAYS!!!!
They only way this is going to STOP is IF Professor Gates SUES this cop and my sincere hope is that he does!
I don’t agree with you, Rob, but you are entitled to your opinion. I recommend that you read the other comments (see the comments for the article titled “Stop Already… Obama Defends His Biased Criticism of Cambridge Police Arresting Prof. Henry Gates.”) Knowing what a police officer goes through day in and day out to protect all people of a community is an eye-opener. If you choose to believe that all cops are racist rogues, nothing I can say nor the comments of another police officer will change your mind. But it seems bigoted to assume all cops are alike, just as it would be to blame all Jews or blacks or Asians or Hispanics or Greeks or Catholics or Muslims because you knew one who was a total jerk, who didn’t treat others civilly and fairly. I once knew a white guy who was a real ass. He failed a college class, and blamed the professor for his bad grade. He’s had a pretty miserable life, because he always blamed others when he himself screwed up. He has never been capable of taking responsibility for his short-comings or mistakes, it’s always been someone else’s fault. His relationships with women and other people usually were volatile and he will more than likely become a bitter old white man. His loss… unable to judge people for what THEY are, not by a preconceived notion. There ARE rogue cops, just as there are unscrupulous women, businessmen, doctors, teachers, ministers, mechanics, etc. But to live your life always assuming the worse of someone because of their occupation or gender or race is a pitiable way to live. Prof. Gates made the situation a thousand-fold worse than it needed to be – I do not blame Sgt. Crowley one bit, because he was there to protect the community, not just establish the identity of a man whom a neighbor thought could be a robber. Gates blew it by being a hot-headed, race-baiting elitist who was confrontational with the police from the get-go. It was HE who showed bad judgment, not the officer who was there responding to a 911 call. Expecting the officer to “walk away” would have been grievous, since someone agitated and yelling like that would make any rational person believe he could be capable of directing that wrath, after the police left, on an innocent neighbor. Gates was a jerk, pure and simple. Blaming the cop for doing his job, to protect and to serve, is ridiculous.