Harping What Needs To Be Harped

[from 7/29/09]

I've been frustrated by the coverage of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in Cambridge two weeks ago. I don't mind that the media took up the story and wouldn't put it back down while all the world's ills were forgotten. I don't mind that it took needed attention away from a deceased Walter Cronkite, a 40-year anniversary of a moon landing, a move to construct a national health plan, Sotomayor, or Harry Potter. I just wish the media would harp on the whole Gates story, and not just bits of it.

I mean, think about it. The man had just come back from a trip to China. Do you know how long a flight from China to Boston is? I don't. But I'll bet it feels like a gazillion hours. We've been told over and over again that the white neighbor called the police because it looked like two non-white men were breaking into Gates' house, which was true, only it happened to be Gates and his driver looking like they were doing so. But almost no air time or print has been spent on the question: "How many hours cooped up in a modern passenger airline does it take to drive a normally well-behaved Harvard professor berserk?"

James Crowley, the police officer who ended up arresting Gates, has previously taught fellow officers on racial sensitivity. But who in the Boston police department has proven sensitivity to tired, sore, miserable, globe travelers? Do they have a class for that?

You know that Gates hates to fly, because he came home with a backpack. There's only two kinds of people who fly internationally with backpacks. There's the ones that already had all their checked luggage lost one too many times. And there's the ones who'd rather walk, but the ocean was in the way. Since Gates walks with a cane, and since he's a big-shot professor, and since he's almost as old as I am, I'm guessing he's lost more luggage than you've ever owned, and you could get arise out of him just saying the words "airlines" and "luggage" in the same sentence.

Now, you've got a guy who's been on a plane for more hours than there are people in China, he hates flying to begin with, he finally gets home, and the f$*#ing door is jammed. S$* of a f$*#ing b$&%h. But he gets inside, and has just enough additional time to crack open a lager, land hard on the sofa, take one swig, and call the landlord about the broken door, when Officer J. "Racially Sensitive" Crowley pops his head in and says, "Pardon me, but we have reason to suspect that you are intruding in this house." What would you expect Gates to say next? Can you say "You've GOT to be sh*%&&ing me?"

The other aspect of the story that has not been discussed enough is the correct assignment of stupidity. We have heard that Obama shouldn't have called the police involved stupid. But there hasn't been enough attention to the question of who or what he ought to have called stupid.

Here's stupid for you. Boston police arrested an angry, surly, tired man for being angry at intruders (the police!) in his own home. OK, bad enough. But THEN, it took more than 4 days for the charges to be dropped by the prosecutor. How do you justify a charge of disorderly conduct in public, when the conduct that instigated the charges were only in public because the officer drew the man out to his front porch, in order to make them public? You justify it by being stupid.

More stupid: Please, everybody, stop telling me that this one incident proves that America is still racist. We know it is, and we didn't need this as proof. What happened to Gates could have happened to anyone. The point is, it happens more often to minorities, and we also knew that, and this only reminded us.