Scott Spiegel

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0709/Rudy_Shut_Up.html

“According to the White House, Sgt. Jim Crowley prefers Blue Moon, not the first choice you might expect from a cop who patrols the mean streets of Cambridge… With this choice, Sgt. Crowley escapes the stereotype of a shot-and-a-beer beat cop and instead conjures the image of a striving Yuppie sipping an artisanal sangria…

“When asked to provide the brand of beer he’d like to drink, this brand-name Harvard professor made a list instead of a choice. Red Stripe or Beck’s… Either way, while both in the lager/pilsner/watery camp, these beers exist at the polar ends of the brand spectrum, suggesting a bifurcated sense of self… If a bottle of Red Stripe could talk, it would say: ‘Don’t worry—be happy!’ Your bottle of Beck’s might growl through its thick accent: ‘You will not worry! You will be happy!’…

“And then there is the choice of President Barack Obama… Which is why his choice seems so disappointing: Budweiser… It’s hard to imagine that too-cool-for-school, organic-garden-in-the-White-House Barack “Barry” Obama has a secret thirst for Budweiser, over a rich Magic Hat No. 9 or Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-28/the-beer-summit/?cid=topic:mainpromo1

“The President, who like every Ivy League Democrat must battle the public impression that he’s an effete snob, made the sensible political decision to go for an American everyman’s beer. But by choosing Bud Light rather than simply Budweiser perhaps he didn’t go far enough. Instead of just grabbing a brew at the end of the day he’s counting calories with a light beer, which might make sense if he were overweight. But he’s thin. So the light beer comes off as a little too fussy, dare we say, a little too girly-man.

“Professor Gates, of that elite Cambridge institution, also had to ground himself… The flipside of the serious academic is Spring Break, the seasonal ritual of debauchery, and Red Stripe is a party beer, associated (at least from a northeastern point of view) with loosening up the demanding strictures of academic life. It’s also from Jamaica, an island with a population primarily of African descent, so perhaps Professor Gates chose Red Stripe as an expression of racial solidarity…

“Sergeant Crowley’s selection is the most puzzling of all. Clearly, the police officer wanted to go against type. Instead of the shot-and-a-beer brew one might stereotypically associate with a cop, he instead went with something that sounds like a craft beer. Yet, as any craft beer fan will scornfully inform you, Blue Moon is made by Coors Brewing Company, and therefore lacks even a shred of craft-brew cred…

“Of course, each man may well have chosen the beer he likes best to drink, right?

“No way. Nobody would choose any of these beers because he likes drinking them.”

http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/a-cold-one-at-the-white-house/

“Henry Louis Gates, Jr. still needs an attitude adjustment…

“The only person who needs to learn a lesson from all this is Gates, and the syllabus for that course should include a few lines about the proper way to interact with police officers. I’m surprised that, with all the knowledge that Gates has acquired on the way to becoming one of the nation’s most renowned public intellectuals, he never learned how to talk to a police officer — and, more importantly, how not to talk to one.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/28/stop_calling_it_a_teachable_moment_97655.html

“Obama’s ill-considered lecture on the Gates arrest controversy during his Wednesday prime-time press conference was replete with ACLU misinformation about policing, misinformation that has been repeatedly refuted by the federal government itself…

“Virtually identical proportions of white, black, and Hispanic drivers — 9 percent — report being stopped by the police, though in 2005, the self-reported black stop rate — 8.1 percent — was nearly a percentage point lower than the self-reported white stop rate (8.9 percent). The stop rate for blacks is lower during the day, when officers can more readily see a driver’s race…

“Obama has only increased the racial paranoia that Gates put so vividly on display. Officers of all races say that the first thing out of a black driver’s mouth during a traffic stop for speeding or running a red light is often: ‘You only stopped me because I’m black,’ a reaction ginned up by decades of anti-cop agitating and now bolstered by Obama’s recycled fictions. The advocate-fueled resentment of the police in inner-city neighborhoods makes crime fighting more difficult and more dangerous.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTU4MGE4MDkwYzhiYjY4OTk2OWRlZjcyMWY0MjFkNmE=

“CNN’s Don Lemon speaks with several Cambridge police officers who pledge their support for Sgt. Crowley.”

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2009/07/26/nr.comrade.in.arms.cnn

“For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072701905.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

“The 911 caller who reported a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not mention race in the call, according to a statement issued by her attorney and backed up by Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas…

“‘She doesn’t live in the area. She is by no means the entitled white neighbor…  That has been the theme in the blogs and the implication in some of the mainstream news media.’”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090727/ap_on_re_us/us_harvard_scholar_caller

President Obama has invited Sergeant James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to the White House for a beer to clear up hard feelings over Crowley’s arrest of Gates for disorderly conduct two weeks ago.

Notice how, now that the facts have come out, no one is taking Gates’ side anymore; those who initially sided with Gates are arguing that both men are at fault and that we should all “learn from this incident” and move on.

If anyone still cares, the fact is that both sides are simply not at fault.

Here are a few myths about Crowley’s arrest of Gates:

Crowley overreacted in arresting Gates.

Not according to the Cambridge Police Department; the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association; the Massachusetts Municipal Police Coalition; the Cambridge Multicultural Police Association; mixed-race police unions across the country; Sgt. Leon Lashley, the black cop who accompanied Crowley; or black public figures such as Bill Cosby and Juan Williams.  Other than that, the experts are unanimous—he overreacted!

Gates’ behavior was not an arrestable offense; Crowley should have walked away after establishing his identity.

According to police protocol in such an incident, you leave the scene only once all actors are quiet and issues have been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.  You do not slip away while one party is still unhinged, screaming like a lunatic, insulting a police officer’s mother, badgering officers, and frightening neighbors who have gathered out of concern.  If the object of investigation shows no signs of calming down, it is not police procedure to leave such a raving maniac poised to cause additional mayhem.  The police have seen too many cases in which angry residents have gone on to cause further trouble; it’s foolish for anyone to second-guess the Cambridge cops and pronounce that they should have known what Gates would do next.  Gates had dozens of opportunities to cooperate with Crowley’s attempts to defuse the situation and back away, and every time he chose not to.  That is why he was arrested.

As a public servant, Crowley should have been more respectful of Gates.

Gates’ wealthy Harvard neighborhood had experienced a rash of break-ins in recent months, including Gates’ own home.  The job of a public servant in Sgt. Crowley’s position is to forcefully protect property owners—once they are definitively identified as such, which Gates made difficult to accomplish—from those who would aggress against them and their property.  That is what Crowley was trying to do.  Had Gates lived in a poor neighborhood and the two men trying to break in been real burglars, and had Crowley let the men get away without proving they lived there, his department would no doubt have been faulted for ignoring “black-on-black crime.”

Crowley arrested Gates for “disrespecting” him.

Crowley did not arrest Gates because Gates “dissed” him—he acted lawfully in response to Gates’ disorderly conduct, which involved Gates’ following Crowley to the porch, yelling epithets about Crowley’s mother, and startling pedestrians.

Crowley engaged in “racial profiling.”

Ignoring the fact that “racial profiling” does not, by definition, take place when an officer has been called to a resident’s home to investigate a burglary, there’s far more evidence that Gates is guilty of “class profiling”—singling out a working-class cop for abuse because he thought Crowley wasn’t powerful or confident enough to stand up to him.

Both men are prejudiced toward those from different backgrounds.

I can’t say how Gates feels about working-class cops, but Crowley had been hand-selected by a black police commissioner to teach a course on avoiding racial profiling, which he has done for the past five years.  I think that gives him just a smidgen of credibility in claiming he does not go around engaging in egregious on-the-job racial discrimination.

It’s Crowley’s word against Gates’.

Not having been there myself, I’ll nonetheless trust the judgment of a universally praised sergeant who taught an anti-racial profiling class for five years; the black sergeant who accompanied him in the arrest; the Harvard University Police officers who appeared as backup and witnessed the scene; the Police Department who trained Crowley and tracked his implementation of protocol; and Emergency Communications and 911 Center staff who received updates on the incident in real-time.  All of those parties support Crowley.

The police dropped the charges against Gates because their case was weak.

The prosecutor’s office, not the Cambridge Police Department, decided to drop the charges, most likely because of Gates’ status in the community and because he raised such a stink about it.  The Cambridge Police Commissioner has since publicly stated that he wishes the charges had not been dropped and Gates were forced to defend his actions in court under a strict examination of evidence.

Obama should have criticized both men for their behavior.

Obama should have refrained from making a summary judgment on a local case until he knew the facts.  He is President now, not a rabble-rousing community activist “promoting awareness” of social ills.

Crowley reports to the mayor of Cambridge, the governor of Massachusetts, and the President of the United States, and should have accepted their criticism without question.

Crowley was backed up by his superiors and his department.  He does not report directly to the mayor, the governor, or the President, and he is not contractually prohibited from speaking up and defending himself against spurious allegations by citizens he is protecting.

In any event, it appears that Crowley was big enough to agree to meet Gates and Obama at the White House.  In the meantime, he can look forward to the audiotapes of the arrest being released and clearing his reputation.

“What shocks me is how smart people actually buy into the notion that the administration can expand health coverage and that it will not—indeed, should not—cost most taxpayers a dime…

“American voters should feel insulted that their president apparently thinks they are so gullible as to believe that there is a health care free lunch…”

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_debra_j_saunders/it_won_t_cost_anything_and_it_won_t_change_anything