Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Barack Obama, The Post-Racial President

You've probably seen the headlines on this one...I'm a bit late to the party. But, hopefully something in here will be new for you.

This started a few days ago, during President Obama's latest prime time press conference to sucker the American public on his government health care takeover. The last question of the evening looked suspiciously planted, as a reporter asked Obama about the arrest of a friend of his, Cambridge professor Henry Louis Gates. Gates had apparently locked himself out of his house and was trying to get back in when Cambridge police officer James Crowley arrested him in the process. Gates went nuts, accusing Crowley of racism. Obama followed suit, completely demolishing all appearances of being a 'post-racial' President. Take a look:



Obviously, he was prepared for the question and wanted to address it. And, equally obvious was his desire to flame the police officer in the name of racism. Here's a rule of thumb: when you begin a statement with 'I don't have all the facts..." you need to just shut up right there. Of course, Obama proceeds to relate his version of the facts that he supposedly didn't know, accusing the police of 'acting stupidly' and throwing down the RACISM card.

Problem was, this Crowley guy was an officer held in extremely high regard, and was actually hired to teach classes about how to avoid racial profiling.

In response, there was immediate outrage from a lot of people, including Bill Cosby, for resorting to the accusations of racism. The most heat came from police officers, along with demands for an apology. Though he falls all over himself to apologize to foreign nations for all of the eeeevil perpetrated upon the world by America in years/decades/centuries past, Obama can't quite make himself apologize for essentially slandering honorable police officers. Instead, he offered this statement:



Translation: I regret the angst over my comments...but not my actual comments. It was an overreaction, and oh, by the way, whitey is still committing eeeeevil acts of racism everywhere, so that's why black people are sensitive about these things. Go away.

But Crowley's fellow officers are standing by him 100% (even the black ones). When pressed about the apology, Obama doubled down:



Once again, Obama admits he doesn't know the facts of the case, but he still pushes his version of the facts of the case, which then implies racism is doing its sinister, dastardly deeds.

Yesterday, we finally got some insight into the 911 call from the neighbor, and there's actually no real mention of race. Huh...! Also of note is the fact that Gates is 'belligerent', and Crowley is calling for backup. Huh...!

Rush Limbaugh has a couple points worth mentioning. First, he
makes a few suggestions about Gates' roll in all this:
Okay, folks, I have been gingerly dancing around the Gates business, but I've decided here that I'm going to tell you what I really think about it. In the first place, what we now know is that Gates was not arrested sipping tea sitting on his sofa legally in his house. He followed the police out of the house screaming at them. How else would neighbors know he was belligerent? That's when he was arrested. He wasn't sitting in a couch sipping tea daintily. He was screaming at the cop there to help protect his property. I've also learned that Gates' house had a history of having been broken into. This is why the neighbor called. There are a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood recently. In fact, there was damage done to Gates' door.

Now, here's what I think. The cops come, they find out it's your house, you're legally there, there's no reason to arrest you. Something happened. I think Skip Gates wanted to be arrested and provoked the cop. The only person who should really come under any scrutiny about the cops being there is Gates almost certainly liberal neighbor. I mean, we're talking Cambridge here. These houses are kind of close together. The neighbor didn't recognize her own neighbor, didn't recognize Gates, called the cops. When you live in a neighborhood with houses right next to each other, normal people recognize their neighbors. But the neighbor, no doubt being a liberal, probably racist, saw what she saw.

Once the cops show up, Gates instantly saw opportunity for capital "P" publicity, chance to get out from the shadow of his former colleague, Cornel West, there's a rivalry between those two guys. You have to go out of your way to be disorderly to get arrested, especially after it's been established that you are the owner of the house. And, by the way, Snerdley, let me check. We all know who Henry Louis Gates is. Do you know what department he teaches in at Harvard? What's his department? African-American Studies. What is African-American studies? It's an entire department devoted to creating racial friction. All of his academic writings are about racial issues. Something about this -- and then Obama jumping on that question last night, "Cops acted stupidly." This is how unfortunate things start and grow and snowball, and I'm not comfortable with it.
Then, he offers some conclusions on Obama's role and motivations:
Lesson one. Obama's instincts are those of a community organizer, not a president. Don't bother me with the facts; I have to play to the crowd here.

Lesson two: Obama can sound as if he knows what he's talking about even when by his own admission he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not what he says; it's how he says it.

Lesson three: When Obama is faced with a political setback, even one of his own makings, he plays the race card. This is something I have figured out watching ever since the campaign began. Anybody who wonders what Obama accomplished with that statement had better realize it reduced the focus on his failure before the August recess demand.

Now, I don't know that he was purposely trying to do that. I think he's genuinely revved up about race. You know me. I think he is genuinely angry in his heart and has been his whole life. And if any of you have learned that Obama cannot, will not ever acknowledge his mistakes, shame on you. In his world, he doesn't make mistakes. Cap and trade is not a mistake; stimulus wasn't a mistake. The health care is not a mistake. ... This is Obama's secret weapon.

...the race problem is not going to go away simply because we've elected the first black president. It's been exacerbated. Obama still smokes cigarettes and he's just thrown a lighted cigarette on a can of gasoline. And he did that at his press conference the other night and he's got this thing now -- here's the important political significance of the event. And at this point I will talk about the precious moderates who vote and the precious independents who vote. Trust me when I tell you that all during the campaign these precious moderates and independents believed that we were genuinely getting over the racial hump. Post-racial, so many, so many guilty people voted for Obama just to get that legacy of sin due to slavery out of our system to be done with it. They thought the election of a black president would accomplish this.

All of a sudden this guy that they elected who they thought was all of these wonderful, perfect things, is now behaving as a community organizer and is fanning the flames of race and is calling the police stupid, and I guarantee you those people -- we've all been waiting and asking the question, "When are these Obama voters going to wake up?" Well, this incident might be -- I don't know yet, a little early to say -- this incident might be the wake-up call for some of these moderates 'cause folks, don't doubt me. You know that there were a lot of people that voted for Obama out of pure guilt, hoping that his election would just wipe the slate clean, at least make them feel better about it. And this just destroys that.
These sentiments have been echoed elsewhere, so Limbaugh is not alone in thinking these things.

It's certainly not something that a post-racial President would ever do or say, and the whole thing stinks like crazy. You know, it almost makes one wonder if Obama was actually listening to and agreeing with Rev. Jeremiah Wright all those years in the church pew...

There's my two cents.

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