0 comment Tuesday, June 10, 2014 | admin
But who's being taught, and who's doing the teaching? Is anybody learning anything?
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Does anyone else get the impression that this Gates incident is being used opportunistically to hammer us some more with guilt and to further instill political correctness in the population?
I was disgusted to see that it was all over the news channels today. Early in the day there was coverage of the Cambridge police press conference in which the White House was requested to apologize. Later on in the day we heard that the president had summoned Sgt. Crowley, the latest victim of this race-baiting scam, to a private conversation in which things were smoothed over.
Lou Dobbs, who is one of the more reliable news personalities (though not free of political correctness) said that the president was turning this into a ''teachable moment'', and I thought: uh-oh. That means more lectures, more guilt, about 'racism', 'Jim Crow', 'the legacy of slavery' and Dixie Peach pomade. Please, spare us from such ''teaching.''
So in this typically witty piece from Mark Steyn, we learn that yes, some of that all-too-familiar 'teaching' is part of the script that's now being written for our edification:
Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sgt. Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to "educate him about the history of racism in America." Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents remortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.''
Maybe Steyn is kidding, but I would not bet on that; it sounds too plausible, and nothing is too silly to be believed these last seven months. More from Steyn's piece:
For everyone other than the president, what happened at professor Gates' house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, "jimmied his way into the house." A neighbor, witnessing the "break-in," called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there.
[...]
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
[...]
In the Sixties, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice." Professor Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11: When Sgt. Crowley announced through the glass-paneled front door that he was here to investigate a break-in, Gates opened it up and roared back: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?"
Note: If there is no ''prejudometer'' in real life, I am sure there are even now some deranged liberals somewhere trying to develop one. Actually, I suppose it would be superfluous for White liberals and race-baiting minorities -- they already have a foolproof way of detecting 'prejudice': look for White folks, and there you have prejudice.
A side note: I wish 'Peter Simple's' columns might be published in book form; most of us have not had the opportunity to read them in the UK Telegraph over the years. Those of us who enjoy that kind of British whimsy combined with satire would enjoy his writings in book form.
Gates then told him, "I'll speak with your mama outside." Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show. But among his colleagues were a black officer and a Hispanic officer. Which is an odd kind of posse for what the Rev. Al Sharpton calls, inevitably, "the highest example of racial profiling I have seen." But what of our post-racial president? After noting that "'Skip' Gates is a friend" of his, President Obama said that "there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." But, if they're being "disproportionately" stopped by African American and Latino cops, does that really fall under the category of systemic racism? Short of dispatching one of those Uighur Muslims from China recently liberated from Gitmo by Obama to frolic and gambol on the beaches of Bermuda, the assembled officers were a veritable rainbow coalition. The photograph of the arrest shows a bullet-headed black cop � Sgt. Leon Lashley, I believe � standing in front of the porch while behind him a handcuffed Gates yells accusations of racism. This is the pitiful state the Bull
Connors of the 21st century are reduced to, forced to take along a squad recruited from the nearest Benetton ad when they go out to whup some uppity Negro boy.''
Does a grown, senior-citizen, college-educated, Harvard professor make comments like the 'yo mama' remark? I thought that was middle-school stuff. And yes, the policemen who responded to this call did look like one of those multicult TV commercials, with 'one of each' distributed among the group. It's absurd that we run our society on such a basis.
This incident might have, if handled rightly, represented a possible turning point, an opportunity for someone in a nationally-publicized case to refuse to cave in and apologize, to admit wrong where no wrong was done. What the ultimate resolution (if any) will be, isn't clear yet, but it appears that the White House and the race-grievance industry are manipulating this incident to their advantage. If we have to see more 'news' coverage, including the pompous, pretentious 'academic' holding forth on 'racism in America', while Whites once again sit meekly listening and offering mea culpas, I hope that it will perhaps be the cause of a few more people becoming fed up and finally proclaiming the PC emperor has no clothes.
Instead of feeble and futile protests of ''I'm not a racist!" I wish someone of note, someone with the world's attention, might break the ice and reject the whole rigged concept of 'racism' and all the cant and lies it has fostered over the last half century or so.
Labels: Ethnic Division, Grievance-Mongering, Liberalism, Media Bias, Media Manipulation, Political Correctness, Race Card, Race-Baiting, White Guilt