I’m not even sure this is a racial situation because I don’t know if this cop is racist. But I have to say it seems to me more like a police situation. I think Henry Louis Gates was arrested for the crime of not kissing the behind of the police officer.
I might have to agree with that one as well. Thoughts?
I don’t care much for Maher, but I think he makes a point here. We’re dealing with an arrogant cop (Crowley) not necessarily a racist one.
People, or really pundits, misrepresent what Barack Obama said. While he didn’t know all the facts but he did know the fact that after establishing that HLG did reside in that house, he was arrested, and that is stupid. Period. I heard one TV pundit from Politico compare that remark to Bush 43 and WMDs!?! I mean, how much do these pundits miss Bush 43?
Amen
Here is my story. The summer after freshman year, I rented a house with some roommates and while I stayed in my college town, the rest went back to their respective hometowns. So there was no furniture in the place and hadn’t bought a bed yet so I was staying around the corner at another friend’s place with a bed for me. One weekend, my roommate came up and brought a some stuff including a pull-out couch and there was a party at my friend’s place and all the bed were taken so I decided at 2:00a.m. to go back to my place and sleep on the pull-out since my roommate had left already. I’m sleeping and I admit high and I think I can hear voices but then I bright spots on the wall and I know it was just pot and I’m not that high. Then two police officers walk through the side door. Then tell they’d gotten a report of a potential robbery. Realize, I’m in my underwear half-asleep and half-stoned and it’s bitch black and there two cops with flashlights standing in my new living room. So he asks me my story and I say I just starting renting the place. God only knows why, but the voice of a friend from high school who was doing police training kept running through my head; "When you’re asshole to cops, they’re assholes to you". So they’re really rude about what’s the landlord’s last name and what’s his telephone number and I have no clue. Then he asks for I.D. and I get my driver license and one of them asks me "Do you have a criminal record?" and I’m trying to run through any and all dealing with the police I’d ever had and before I answer "Don’t lie, because we’re checking it" so I don’t bother answering since he’s checking it anyway. It’s clear and then they leave and no apology but simple say "Don’t leave your doors open". I fall back asleep. The next morning, the landlord comes over because I agree to do work in the backyard with him. I honestly can’t remember what happened last night because I was half-asleep. Then the neighbor walks back and tells the landlord about how he was walking his dog at 2:00am and saw the side-door was open and so he called the police. Suddenly it all comes back to me and I realize that wasn’t a dream.Oh, if it matters, I’m as white as it gets. I mean I don’t even tan well. It’s either white or red for me.
I’ve called it the uppity negro syndrome…it was probably more class than race, but I think it was an added bonus that he was arresting a uppity black man…Crowley strikes me as the type with some class issues so…
According to some an article I saw, Gates is reported to have written the following on his Yale application, "As always, whitey now sits in judgment of me, preparing to cast my fate. It is your decision either to let me blow with the wind as a nonentity or to encourage the development of self. Allow me to prove myself." I applaud his self confidence but not the racial part which seems unnecessary.http://www.wtop.com/?nid=104&pid=0&sid=1725138&page=1
What I think is funny: Gates said something like "Don’t you know who I am??", which was the most arrogant, obnoxious comment — and yet — seems to have been right, LOL. He’s famous enough that Crowley’s patootie has been made totally publicly ridiculous for messing with him.
That’s the Bill Maher I like.
Thanks for that link, Scott. A good read.
Placing an uppity negro in front of any cop is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.I hope Skippy sues the Cambridge Police Departmentbtw- bill mayer is a mean-spirited opportunistic nincompoop whose smug moral compass is always pointed toward self promotion and agitation.@ Ryan, is your lengthy story in support or defense of what is being stated? what is the point?
Tucker Carlson also cited Gates’s Yale admission app essay today in a discussion he co-hosts with Ana Marie Cox-as evidence of Gates being a "cry race" kind of guy. One of the commenters pointed out, rightly I think, that the essay was written 40 years ago and therefore in a completely different racial climate than what exists now. One can only imagine what sort of epithets were leveled at him in the 60s. Now, if you’re saying that at 17/18 years old, during a decade in which black people were being assaulted by the police with dogs and hoses, that he should have been better than that, or above that, well, I guess that argument can be made. The hostility behind "whitey" within that historical context, without knowing anything else about his personal experiences with race leading up to that essay, is perfectly understandable to me, however.
I wonder if Obama will ask Gates privately if he really did say "I’ll speak to yo mama outside"; that would be a good chuckle.
I think what’s most telling about this interview is how far Wolf Blizter has fallen as a journalist since his Desert Storm days. Those questions were just one step above TMZ. And the equivocation on "we don’t know all the facts that went on in the house", that was just pathetic….but that’s our mainstream news media for you….completely worthless.
On this one I agree with Bill Maher 100%. He hit the nail on the head. This is one of the things I hate from the US, the authority of the cops and how they use it. In Europe we’re more careful with this because in the past it has led to abuses of the power as in dictatorships.
To the AStanding ovation for the Bill Maher comment too true.
Live Your Best Life. 
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