CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 4, 2009 – 12:01 a.m.
Of Suds and Substance
By Richard L. Connor, CQ Guest Columnist
“A guy walks into a bar . . . ”
It’s a timeless setup for countless jokes, only this time the bar is the White House and the bartender none other than Barack Obama .
The president — bartender? — invited a couple of guys in July 30 for a couple of brewskies. How quaint. How cool. How, so very hip and with-it. One guest is a cop. The other’s a Harvard professor, and a distinguished one at that.
They order beers, a Blue Moon for the cop and a Sam Adams for the professor.
“Hey,” the cop says to the professor, “last time I saw you I believe you were wearing handcuffs.”
The professor does not smile. He’s from Harvard. They only laugh at jokes about Yale.
“Easy now,” says the bartender to the cop. “Don’t start acting stupidly — I mean hastily — again.”
And so it goes . . .
The president had gone off script July 22 at a nationally televised news conference. Without his trusty teleprompter, he attempted to craft remarks when asked about Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s problems with the Cambridge, Mass., police.
Everyone in the country now knows the story well. Gates had just returned from a trip to China and had difficulty entering his home when a suspicious neighbor, Lucia Whalen, called police to report two “intruders.” Gates was already inside his home when Sgt. James Crowley arrived and instructed Gates to step out on the porch. Gates refused and was arrested. Little did Whalen or the police know that the “intruders” included Gates, who was trying to enter his own home. Some reports have indicated she told the police dispatcher the suspects were black. However, Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas confirmed July 27 that race was not mentioned on the 911 tape and said “it was very clear that she wasn’t sure” what the men’s race was.
Gates was charged with disorderly conduct, which was later dismissed.
The tape recording of the 911 call supposedly shows Whalen answered a question about their race by saying one of the men looked “kind of Hispanic.” She said that in a solicited response, not unsolicited, according to the tape. That’s an important distinction.
At his news conference Obama was asked how he viewed the incident of a black man being arrested for breaking into his own home. “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that,” Obama responded. “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’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
And, it turns out, Crowley has taught a racial profiling course at the Lowell Police Academy for the past several years.
Hoping to divert attention from this mistake, Obama wanted the nation’s attention back on health care overhaul so on July 24 he attempted an apology:
“I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately, I think, gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sergeant Crowley.
“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. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them was able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.”
To date, Obama has handled the media folks like puppets and enthralled the public with what is supposed to pass as candor and eloquence. He tried to wiggle out of this one by using the word “calibrated.”
Calibrate, however, is what you do with a carburetor or some other mechanical device. A message about either race or respect for authority, particularly police, is not so easily calibrated.
The president — with that one remark made flippantly without knowing all the facts — calibrated a setback for law and order in this country. It is a major step backwards for race relations. He could have healed many of the wounds by just admitting he spoke out of turn and was wrong.
This is a nation that remembers well the videotaped beating of Rodney King. We remember the stumbling performance of Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman in the O.J. Simpson trial.
We know there are instances of the police reacting poorly and illegally in certain situation of race and crime or suspected criminal activity. We know that some police officers are racists and jerks.
But in this country we are taught to respect and abide by the rules of law and the enforcement by the police. If police misuse their power and authority we can sue them and seek redress in the courts. That’s also what we are taught.
With one flippant remark, President Obama made it excusable to mouth off to policemen, especially if you are a minority.
Sorry, you just cannot do that. And you cannot make up for it with an insincere and ineffectual response by asking the fellas to join you for a beer.
When Obama invited the two to Washington for beer and conversation, Gates accepted immediately. Why wouldn’t he? No one proclaimed on national television that he “acted stupidly.”
Sgt. Crowley then accepted. He should have said “no thanks.”
The three, joined by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. , gathered July 30 for a round of drinks. At a news conference later in the day, Crowley said he and Gates plan to meet again in the future. He described the White House gathering as a “private discussion, a frank discussion” and one that was “very productive.”
Still, Obama as bartender-racial-peacemaker seems to have been a failure. Immediately afterward, Crowley said no apologies were offered. Why then did any of them attend, if no one was going to say “I’m sorry”?
Too late, too little, men.
Richard L. Connor is CEO of the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Publishing Co. and MaineToday Media, owner of newspapers in Portland, Augusta and Waterville, Maine. A newspaperman for 40 years, he has served on two Pulitzer Prize for Journalism nominating committees.
Comments
This 'teachable moment' is rapidly fading into the haze of the blogasphere. Yet, what have we learned? For me, it's that the chip that many African Americans carry for white police is glued on pretty well. That, and that the internet functions pretty well as a speakers corner when our politicians fail to live up to generally held ideals.
While I agree that President Obama could have chosen his words more carefully, no apologies were necessary from him. Officer Crowley let his ego get in the way of doing his job in a professional manner and that is acting stupidly. Further, no license to abuse the sensitive egos of policemen was granted by the president's comment. It is clear, Mr. Connor, that you are more than willing to take up the political right's banner and battle cries with your remark about the teleprompter. A so called journalist who lets his personal bias interfere with his news analysis and reporting is doing his job stupidly. Perhaps that explains why you have served on Pulitzer committees, but apparently never won one for yourself.
How did you get from a statement of facts to Obama wanting to divert attention from his mistake? Anybody want to take a wild guess how this would have gone down in Atlanta or LA? While the Pres is probably better advised to avoid comment on local incidents, Crowley's teaching the course doesn't preclude his acting stupidly!
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