Obama, Gates, and Crowley Beer Summit a Snooze
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Following a mammoth media buildup of several days, the now-infamous beer summit came and went, and race relations in America seem to be the no better for it.
Sgt. Crowley told reporters afterward they spent more time talking about the future than the past. President Obama was more bartender than peacemaker. Not even Vice President Joseph Biden was able to perform his usual foot-in-mouth routine. What a snooze.
I was hoping for something meaningful to come of all this. I was hoping Harvard Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, Jr. would talk about his Irish roots and their shared ancestry with Irish-American Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley. I was hoping they might agree on one thing: that only in America could an Ivy League, wealthy, world-renowned, globe-trotting black man accuse a lower-income, less-educated blue collar white guy of racial profiling. I was hoping the brainpower at that summit would emerge from the meeting with something earth-shattering and meaningful to tell the world.
Instead, it was just a photo op of four "regular" guys who happened to be at the White House.
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Tags: Barack Obama | race
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Reader Comments
Pardon hogging three posts, but this is good commentary
This is what I forgot to post a link to, this story...
http://www.thefire.org/article/10918.html
Interesting.
Don't think they needed to go so far as to actually haul the caterwauling curmudgeon down to the station.
Note: Again, pardon the hogging of three post threads.
Oh, and check out Harvard's reputation with students who attend
Speaking of "profiling," by the way, there's been some news, recently, about some of the things that go on at Harvard with regards to their own campus judicial system (sometimes referred to as a kangaroo court, because of the way things are handled).
http://www.thefire.org
On some of these "elite" college campuses, people are sometimes harassed for speech or ideas that are not politically correct. One Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties attorney, tried to run for an overseer position over at Harvard.
Is Dr. Gates involved with the movement to open up free speech at Harvard? Would be interesting to know how that issue is being viewed by Harvard faculty.
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