Gates & Crowley due soon at White House to have a beer with Obama...

Gates, Crowley Due Soon at White House for Beer (Update1)
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By Carol Wolf

July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and police Sergeant James Crowley will probably join President Barack Obama for a beer within the next several days, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

The pair was invited by Obama to the White House after the president made remarks about Crowley’s arrest of Gates on a disorderly conduct charge last week, Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”.

“The president believes this can be a teachable moment,” Gibbs said. “He feels he unnecessarily contributed to the frenzy. Cooler heads have prevailed.”

Reaction to the remarks threatened to overtake the president’s main message last week of overhauling the U.S. health-care system, David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said today on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I think he understood that the debate was veering off in the wrong direction,” Axelrod said. “He felt a responsibility to step forward and kind of cool the situation down and acknowledge that fact that he had, as he said, calibrated his words poorly.”

The incident occurred as Gates returned home after a trip to China. Police were called to Gates’s house after a passerby mistook his effort to open his jammed front door for a break-in.

Gates and the officers who responded to the call had a verbal confrontation, leading to his arrest. The Cambridge police department, in a statement released after the charges had been dropped, called the arrest “regrettable and unfortunate.” The president, at a July 22 White House news conference, said the police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates.

Obama later said he should have “calibrated” his remarks differently.

Gates is director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is one of 20 people at the school who hold university professor chairs, a title created in 1935 to honor “individuals of distinction.”

 

Wow, imagine that . . .
A President that actually admits when they were WRONG and made a mistake. What a novel concept.

I think that the only time that I ever heard Bush make a mistake was about his plan to privatize social security. He said that his timing was wrong.

Can you imagine what would have happened if that legislation had become law, given the "bloodbath" in the markets from Q4-08 to Q1-09?

 

I hope Crowley is smart enough not to let himself be used as a political prop by Obama. Obama took two swings at this last week and whiffed both times. He seems to have finally made contact now though. If Crowley says piss off, he looks ungracious. If he participates, he will be expected to make a ritual apololgy for police racism. Either way , he loses.

I wonder how much longer people can tolerate obama's insufferable attitude, his near constant patronizing and condescending approach. What qualifies him to deal with this situation? With any situation, really? Why is it even his concern, other than he sees everything in racial terms?

The only teachable moment here was already covered by Chris Rock in his video How Not To Get Beatup By the Police.

 

You may be reading too much into Obama's actions, then again, you may be right.

I think it shows honesty on Obama's part. He's trying to do something to address this faux-racism issue by stepping in to "talk about feelings"...

The way I see it is that the cop has a tough job and the professor was instigating. Regardless of the heated words, the cop did use his power deliberately and intentionally in a case where its questionable whether an arrest was *really* necessary. Would a white professor have been arrested after calling the cop names in the same situation? I would like to think so... this raises an even bigger question of how much power should the police have in making such subjective decisions about what constitutes "Disorderly Conduct". That, and if an angry older black male presents introduces any more/less bias into the cop's decision making process.

I would like to believe that if you mouth off at a cop - no matter your race/age/sex, you're going to get in trouble... But, a full blown arrest? That's a bit gestapo, maybe a citation or something less drastic would've made the point.

The police should always take the higher moral ground as they have the upper hand - they need to excersize restraint and civility unless the "suspect" is going to cause physical harm... reactive/emotional decisions/actions *always* have negative consequences, as we all know... It seems to me like this cop made an emotionally charged decision, which wasn't the wisest thing to do, but, he's only human.

Mike

 

You will have to "suffer" Obama for another 3 years +++...

LOL!!!

No worries though, this just gives you so many chances to feel self righteous, superior, put upon, emasculated, and whine like a little girl...

 

What's on tap, barry?

<img src="http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/06/hardees_badthings/image/colt_45.jpg" />

 

Good grief! Well I suppose someone had to bring Bush into this, and who else better than Lupus . . .

And Lupus, despite all his faults, Bush never interjected his personal biggotry (as Obama did on national TV!) into a dispute between the police and a colored person. Just what America should expect from a liberal biggot like Obama.

 

When did recalibrate words come to mean your wrong.

Recalibrate is one of those words the means anything to anybody. Each audience member will in their mind will put their owns words of what they think Obama would have said.

It is a trick of speech that shallow one minded people feel significant acheivment towards an apology was made.

In fact I feel Obama would have liked to recalibrate his words by inject more references to Honkeys and blue-eyed devils.

 

If what you said was right and understood as you meant it to be understood, there would be no need to recalibrate the words...

 

What is it about “He feels he unnecessarily contributed to the frenzy," that you are unable to comprehend?

That is an admission on his part that he should have kept his mouth shut. Period.

But given your 4th grade level of reading comprehension, I am not at all surprised by your response.