Obama more bartender than mediator at beer summit
The White House was working hard to lower expectations about Thursday’s beer summit, characterizing the president’s role as more bartender-in-chief than mediator.
So don’t expect apologies or even a rehash of the day Massachusetts police Sgt. James Crowley, who is white, arrested prominent Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, who is black.
In fact, don’t expect to hear much at all.
“I don’t anticipate sound at the meeting,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “The president is not going to announce anything tonight.”
Crowley busted Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct after a confrontation at the Harvard professor’s home. The policeman had been dispatched to the scene to investigate a report of a possible burglary in progress. Words were exchanged.
The 58-year-old Gates, a well-known documentary filmmaker who walks with a cane as a result of a childhood injury, had returned home from a trip to China to discover his door jammed.
A neighbor saw two men, Gates and his driver, trying to shoulder their way into the house and phoned the police.
Powell weighs in on Harvard case
Colin Powell says some “adult supervision” could have kept an altercation between Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard University professor, and Sgt. James Crowley, a white policeman, from blowing up into a “federal case” about race in America.
The former U.S secretary of state, who says he has been racially profiled “many times,” weighed in on the arrest of his friend “Skip” Gates on Tuesday evening, telling CNN’s Larry King that it was a fascinating story that unfolded in several acts.
Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and charged with disorderly conduct. Crowley had responded to the call when a neighbor reported a possible break-in at Gates’ home. Gates had just returned home from a trip to China and found his door jammed. This is how the two men came face-to-face.
“This is where act two begins. We’re not quite sure what the nature of their conversation was, but apparently it disturbed Sgt. Crowley and apparently Dr. Gates was disturbed by being challenged in his own home,” Powell said.
“Then it becomes a federal case when the president feels obliged to say something about it, ” Powell said.
The charges against Gates were quickly dropped, but Powell says the incident might have been resolved in a different manner had cooler heads prevailed.
The blacks serving in congress were very fast to get together and side with Obama, I would think that some whites were not impressed, at this unnessary act, and will cast a no vote on Obama health care in revenge, It becomming clear that Obama has split the USA, much more then Bush.
Drink orders in for Obama meet with policeman, professor
President Barack Obama’s peacemaking efforts with a Harvard professor and a Massachusetts police sergeant are still up in the air, but the drink orders are in.
Obama invited Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates to the White House for a beer last week as he tried to make amends for inflaming a dispute between the two men.
Crowley, who is white, arrested Gates, a prominent black scholar and documentary filmmaker, after going to the professor’s home on a report of a possible burglary in progress.
Gates had arrived home from a trip to China to find his door jammed and had difficulty entering. The two men got into a dispute and Crowley arrested Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct – touching off a debate over whether the incident involved racial profiling. The charge was later dropped.
Obama inflamed the situation at his news conference last week by saying he thought the police “acted stupidly” by arresting in his own home his friend Gates, a 58-year-old man who uses a cane to walk because of childhood injury.
Obama called Crowley and Gates last week to try to calm tempers. At Crowley’s suggestion, he agreed to invite the two to the White House for a beer.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday the White House was trying to organize the meeting for this week, but it hadn’t been set yet.
It’s interesting to note that no one mentions the black officer who was in the photo of Gates yelling. He backed up the police officer in question.
I suppose that is an inconvenient fact and no one wants to say anything about it because it screws up their story of racism.
I am one of the people who like the President, but he sure did make a big mistake in this case. As another contributor has noted, it appears that both the officer and the “suspect” overreacted. Mr. Gates does need to remember that the officer had been dispatched to a possible burglaryt-in-progress, and he really should understand that Crowley likely was a bit hyped up. Years ago I worked in both law enforcement and private security, and any time I was sent on such a call, I felt the way anyone normal does: on high alert. I gather Crowley doesn’t know Gates, so he can hardly be faulted for not recognizing him as the homeowner. On the other hand, once Gates did produce ID showing he was in his own home, Crowley would have been better off to just let the matter drop. Had he done so, there wouldn’t be all this brouhaha about it.