Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams came up with a fine formulation, in the context of the Henry Louis Gates imbroglio: “But in this situation, the president spoke without the facts. And so you can’t have a teachable moment if it’s based on a lie.” Amid all the blather about “teachable moments,” I don’t recall anyone else making this simple but profound observation: “You can’t have a teachable moment if it’s based on a lie.” Another way of putting it might be to say that it’s not a “moment” that’s teachable, it’s the truth that’s teachable. So a moment in which everyone colludes to obscure the truth (which seems characteristic of most “teachable moments” in contemporary America) is not a moment of teaching; it’s a moment of deception, of misdirection, of obfuscation. Call it an obfuscatable moment.
picked up form www.HotAir.com – from the Weekly Standard
I am not sure common sense is teachable anyways.
I heard someone on http://weei.com call in and say that Gates was within his free speech rights to yell and swear at the cops . The caller said that the cops would have to feel like they thought he was a physical threat to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Was Crowley disingenous when he arrested him? Did he feel physically threatened? Maybe not so much, though an old man with a cane ranting about racism is as likely as anyone to act impulsively.
Even if there was only a slight risk that Gates was going to get physical, I think it made sense to arrest him with the option of later dropping the charges - no real harm done other than some hurt pride. The alternative was to let Gates escalate and risk him actually assaulting a police officer in which case they wouldn’t be able to drop the charges so easily.
Crowley has taken a lot of heat for making the safer decision and risking being called stupid and racist in hindsight. It took courage. That’s the lesson I take from this.
![[IMG_0867.JPG]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EWZisMDNquI/SmDE935qtII/AAAAAAAADtA/lwctJzI-TGQ/s1600/IMG_0867.JPG)
Gates and Obama lack common sense
July 24, 2009After my divorce, my kids met my gf’s little Yorkshire Terriers for the first time. One of them got nervous and snapped at my daughter. He did not bite her and there was no injury. My daughter told my ex-wife on the phone that evening. We we went to bed and at about 10 pm I awoke to banging on my door. I thought it was my ex-wife so I didn’t answer right away. She had a temper and I had reason to be nervous without going into our history. I was looking out the window for her car. I saw a police car instead. An angry female cop said it was the police and that I had to open the door. I opened the door and she was pissed as she had been there awhile. She had been called to check on my kids to make sure they weren’t injured. She was very rude to me in my apartment. It was humiliating to be treated that way in front of my kids. I didn’t want to get in trouble, and frankly, it seemed like she was itching for me to react. I did not. I didn’t get far trying to explain my delay in answering the door. She obviously didn’t care and thought she had me figured out already, it seemed. She was not there to listen, but to take charge and to make sure I was aware that she was in charge every second she was there. Thankfully for me, my ‘cooler head prevailed’, to quote Obama. I knew I would lose in that situation, and I wasn’t going to put me or my kids through that.
Nothing particularly remarkable about it.
Probably thousands of people every week in America feel that the police are rude or even perhaps baiting them to react so they can arrest them. Most Americans , if they are sober, don’t take the bait. Most Americans are pretty smart that way.
Apparently, Professor Gates lacks this common sense. He has educated himself right out of having to need common sense. In addition, he has a friend in the President of the United States, who also decided that it would be a good idea to call a Cambridge cop’s actions ’stupid’ right after admitting he didn’t have all the facts in the case. Obama looked real calm and cool when he said those words, but they were incendiary words. He wasn’t sitting in a bar chatting with his buddies, for God’s sake, as words in such a context would be harmless, but giving a press conference as the President of the United States. Our President. Officer Crowley’s President.
No common sense awards will be forthcoming for Obama here, as far as I can tell.
And that worries me, Obama’s lack of common sense, much less than whether or not Crowley was the bigger prick that day, and secretly hates black people.
Most Americans know how to survive cops when they act in ways that offend us, but we may not survive this President if he keeps speaking so impetuously. He certainly isn’t inspiring any police officers to behave more professionally, though he may be starting a trend for the populace to become even mouthier with the police.
Posted in Personal, Politics, Social Commentary, The Anger Habit | Leave a Comment »