President Barack Hussein Obama Personally Calls Sgt. Crowley And Professor Henry Louis Gates On Telephone To Apologize Come Close To Apologizing To The Former
From ABCNews:
… “Because this has been ratcheting up — and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up — I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately… gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sgt. Crowley specifically,” the president said. “And I could’ve calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sgt. Crowley.” … – President Barack H. Obama
So, there we go. Sounds like an apology at its loosest definition to MOI (yep — part French). Good for the president; the president I took to task MAJOR LEAGUE in yesterday’s column for playing the “race card” in this whole fiasco involving an outstanding law enforcement officer responding to a possible home invasion in progress, the president himself and a racist Harvard professor by the name of Henry Louis Gates.
If you recall and I’m sure you do, President B.H. Obama stepped out of bounds yesterday when he indirectly accused Sgt. Crowley of “acting stupidly” by arresting his good ole’ buddy from Harvard for his disorderly conduct — conduct none of us “average folk” could have gotten away with either when Sgt. Crowley arrived to ensure Professor Gates’ residence wasn’t under attack by some “dangerous bad guys”. This is what the president was referring to when he said “And I could’ve calibrated those words differently” to Sgt. Crowley who was delighted by his personal phone call, by the way. Sounds like an apology to me and KUDOS to the president for making it. Of course, on the other hand, I’m addressing this from the point of view of a “regular guy” imagining one of my “regular guy buddies” choosing those words versus addressing it from the point of view of a partisan political hack and/or pundit. And that’s not easy to do when I do often meet the definition of the latter.
Last but not least, my hat’s off to Sergeant Crowley for doing what ANY great law enforcement officer would do — propose beers to act as the “peace pipe”. Bottoms UP, Sergeant.
***
Blogger reactions to the Obama “apology”: Conor Friedersdorf (filling in for Andrew Sullivan) at The Daily Dish perhaps correctly assigns a proportionate part of the blame on this whole episode upon we news junkies; Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic picks the perfect phrase I was trying to come up with — calls it “A Presidential Mea Culpa To Sergeant Crowley“; Greg Piper of The Moderate Voice is (rightfully) concerned about which beer is chosen for the 3-way “beerdown” at The White House and explains how important it is for the correct beer to be chosen for such a meeting; HughS of Wizbang doesn’t like the word “calibrate” used by Obama; Don Surber of The Charleston Daily Mail points out another law enforcement officer at the scene, a black LEO by the name of Sergeant Leon Lashley, completely supports the actions and decisions of Sergeant Crowley
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11:09 pm on July 24th, 2009 1
More like excusing himself rather than apologizing, Guns. “I made a mistake when I implied that the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley are racist. I sincerly regret and offer my apologies for my intemperat words.” Now THAT would have been an apology. “Yeah, I could have used different words to call them racist” doesn’t quite measure up.
12:19 am on July 25th, 2009 2
It is your decision to interpret the President’s words as such. You assume that when Obama brought up blacks and hispanics being pulled over more, that he was accusing the police of doing something similar, when perhaps he was trying to explain why his friend was frustrated.
Also consider this. What really defines “breaking and entering”? Was he rattling his key for a while before getting through an alternate entrance? I can tell you right now that had I spent a couple minutes trying to get in my front door, ended up unlocking my back door to get in and get settled, only to have a police officer show up later and demand ID from me, then enter my home when I went to get said ID, I’d be pretty upset too.
1:53 am on July 25th, 2009 3
Justin- It is a very good point what you say about interpreting Obama’s words. That is what slick politicians do. For all we know when Obama said he could have calibrated them differently, he could mean that he could have let loose with a bigger salvo than what he said. I think yesterday’s story hit me and perhaps millions of others so hard because we could see ourselves in the story. I didn’t need the facts because I just substituted my own experience of a man yelling that I was picking on blacks while I was doing my job as a security guard. My wife on the other hand “knew” the story without knowing it from an experience of answering the door when a policeman was knocking, and when she opened the door and he saw her (a black woman) his hand suddenly moved to his holster. So without knowing what happened we vicariously put ourselves in the story and “knew” the facts. Of course when I told my wife that Obama got his facts on the Gates story from 20 years of listening to Rev Wright, she didn’t take very kindly to that remark.
8:37 am on July 25th, 2009 4
Calibrate? In this context? What a weird choice of word…
Robin Tolmach Lakoff had a word for this type of trying to make amends without actually saying the words because apparently there’s a sense that if you actually say “I’m sorry,” you lose a fraction of your perceived power.
It’s called an UnApology.
9:11 am on July 25th, 2009 5
Re: Justin and “breaking and entering”
I dunno, Justin…but I think I’d be more upset if the police didn’t do their jobs (checking to make sure place and resident match up) and I came home to find out that my home had been cleaned out of everything of monetary value because the police had simply accepted it when the suspect said he/she lived there…
A friend asked me if I had an opinion on it. As I hadn’t heard anything about it, my response was simple: “I don’t know anything about the case, so I can’t give you an opinion.”
And frankly, that’s exactly what Obama should’ve said at the presser instead of implying “stupidity” on the part of the police re: a case he acknowledge he didn’t know much about.
10:54 am on July 25th, 2009 6
President Barak Obama had a JUDGEMENT…..
And of course it was WRONG!!!
3:28 pm on July 25th, 2009 7
President Obama finally said something off the cuff and is paying dearly for it. I felt that his press conference showed a man that is caught between his own passion on a subject and following the marching orders of his seniors. I can’t believe that the police commissioner was demanding an apology. We are talking about the President. He may not be correct in his interpretation of the incident, but he was sharing his opinion and he didn’t call the officer stupid, he said it was handled stupidly and it is hard to say it wasn’t. Why shouldn’t the officer and the commish apology to Dr. Gates. They are the professioals that should be able to take the irateness of the public and defuse it.. end of story, but instead they arrest the man, etc. The police are to “serve and protect” and I can’t see how they did either with this outcome.
The attitude of the commissioner is certainly a different flow that anyone had towards President Bush. I think the President is weak on being the authority that goes with the title and it is taking its toll. He certainly doesn’t need to apologize for his opinion.
6:50 pm on July 25th, 2009 8
The President is a human being and not Jesus to know how an honest expression of a situation explodes.
I don’t care what the Chief of Police says. When a 50+++ woman or man faces their brutality for no reason.
This particular case may not have been one of profiling because the police were called to the scene.
Do we know whether Gates and his neighbors could have framed Crowley so as to get footage for his documentary? Just a thought. This is America. Everyone is looking for a good opportunity to make the lute.
I myself, a 56 year old woman was racially profiled by my cops. I had parked my car for five minutes in a parking lot in front of a shopping plaza. My jeep was tinted. With my short black hair they probably thought that I was a black man. They followed me. Stopped me and told me that I was driving on an expired licence. They arrested me and took me to the station.
My car remained to be towed. I pleaded with the officers that I had a plane to catch to attend my mother’s funeral.
One of the officers querried whether they could not ticket me. The other replied that it was a discretion. They could let me go on a ticket or book me.
Eleven of us were put in a booking cell with only one toilet. Likely no one used the toilet. I was released after 5 hours.
The case was thrown out at the hearing.
All I can say is that the police in Canada, who let me go when I made a traffic error did tell me to let the American police know of it.
But, Prof. Gates should remember to give a key to his neighbor or somebody. Otherwise he should be calling the “Key Master” if he doesn’t want the police showing up at his door. Don’t insult people when you have attracted attention to yourself. As a professor, he should have known better that anybody seeing two men, “black” or “white” jimmying a door would become suspicious and probably call the police. Nothing racial unless he conspired with the neighbor and tried to frame the cop so he would have examples for his documentary.
I am an AFRICAN WOMAN who is so sick of these same black/white issues. We NEED JOBS. How about Chinese, Indian, Italian, Latinos and black men — all sexually harrassing black women. Who is doing anything about it.
Our black men need to go to school. Even Harvard is free on courseware. They can all study and start speaking the language of the mainstream Americans.
When black men will stop doing things that they do, then nobody will be treating them or their women the way they treat them today.
11:35 pm on July 25th, 2009 9
As I hear more about this issue I look at the Cambridge police department as being racist.Why did this white officer arrest professor Gates for anyway? being black? OOh,disordely conduct. If this was a white guy who couldn’t get into his house would he be treated the same way? I think Officer Crowley should be fired! Officers are supposed to protect and to serve!not teach people lessons.How can America respect the police when we always hear about how they are disrespecting law abiding citizens. I am ashamed of the Cambridge police dept.We should band together as citizens and take bake our country.
12:56 am on July 26th, 2009 10
mwaba nagua: Your story is compelling and I think you certainly were treated in a way that no one should be treated, especially because of race.
I believe that your last few statements are also very true and very insightful. It is through enlightened people like yourself that these things will eventually change. The reality of today in America is that you can say things that need to be said, and you can do things that need to be done.
Keep up the good fight and you’ll get your reward someday.
3:23 am on July 26th, 2009 11
Anson, once the officer had the bona fides, he tried to leave. The ivory tower racist followed him out of the house, berating him, causing a scene outside. What was the cop suppsoed to do? All the o, so tolerant professor had to do was shut his trap and close the door.
If I, a middle aged white guy, had acted the same way, likley I would have been on the ground with a knee in my back while the good officer cuffed me and read me my rights.
The cop was responding to a call by a concerned citizen of a possible breaking and entering. That gave him cause to enter. Once the professional victim supplied ID that showed he lived there, the officer tried to leave peacefully.
3:56 am on July 27th, 2009 12
[...] Obama commenting on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. As usual, some commentors feel he was too racially identified, while others feel he should have been more strident and used this opportunity to really talk about [...]
2:04 am on July 28th, 2009 13
I was shocked at how the liberal pundents (I consider myself liberal by the way) kept making excuses for Gates. One said “he had just come back from a trip to China and I’m sure he had jet lag”. Another one said “you only have to look at the man and know he’s not a physical threat because he’s only 5′5″ tall and slightly built.” Isn’t that profiling? I guess the short slightly built people don’t have as strong a lobby.
One last thing; From what I’ve read it appears Mr. Gates lied about a few things such as when he gave the information to the officer and if he was yelling at the police. How come I don’t see any outcry for an apology from Gates.
4:12 pm on July 28th, 2009 14
It is so easy to point the finger, but none of us were there to have a true understanding of what really happen. All we have is second hand information from various sources that are usually biased in one way or the other. In my opinion, all parties were to blame. They all took extreme measures in a situation that could have easily been handled through communication. They were both smart enough people to use a little common sense and critical thinging to resolve the situation, but it seems they both let there emotions and opinions get the better of them. We could play the what if game and come up with a hundred different outcomes, but whats done is done. It’s time they stepped up as role models and acknowledged that they both were wrong and move on. As far as President Obama’s statements, he took a personal stand in a situation he knew too little about. If anything I thing he’s going to be more “calibrated” with his words moving forward.
7:17 am on August 6th, 2009 15
I’ve been following the National Police Misconduct Research Project’s (Injustice Everywhere.com) bad cop news stories at
http://www.twitter.com/injusticenews
for a couple of weeks now and let me tell you it is disturbing how many criminals there are with a badge and the power of the state behind them. Please get the word out about this if you can…