
 |
|
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole
in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to
have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 28, 2009
/ 7 Menachem-Av 5769
A teaching moment in class warfare
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and his friends - first among them President Obama - think the most celebrated arrest since Sacco and Vanzetti was all about race. Friends of Sgt. James Crowley think the incident off Harvard Square was all about law and order and a lack of respect for the cops. It's a shame they ruined a teaching moment by getting the fundamental fact wrong.
Everyone with a pulse and a working lung knows the "facts" by now, even if some of the facts are mere factoids, as Norman Mailer famously described assertions that "seem to be facts, are taken as facts, but in fact are not facts." A (white) neighbor called the police when she saw two men she thought might be breaking into the professor's house, a police sergeant arrived and got into an argument with the professor when he tried to find out what was going on and the argument grew to a public entertainment for a growing crowd of neighbors watching from the street. The professor was black, the cop was white, and alas, that's all it takes to get something started in America, circa 2009.
But what seems to be about race isn't always about color. Mr. Gates accused the cops of asking impertinent questions simply because he's black (or "African-American," in the current fashion). President Obama agreed. In the endless retelling of the tale, the white neighbor who called the cops told the police dispatcher that "two black guys" were trying to break into the Gates abode. A review of the police 911 tape revealed Monday that the caller actually told the dispatcher that "two gentlemen" were trying to get into the door; she subsequently referred to one of them as a "gentleman" and to both of them as "individuals." Nothing about color.
Ego, not race, was affronted. Credential, not color, was offended. Mr. Gates' warning to the police sergeant - "you don't know who you're messing with" - was about his imagined clout, not the color of his skin. The cop could see the color of skin, but not the heft of the professor's clout, whatever it turned out to be. (For his part, the cop could have given the professor a written citation, walked away and saved himself a headache.)
Mr. Gates, who sprang from hardscrabble origins in West Virginia, is proud of his considerable academic accomplishments, and he should be. But pride somewhere became what Southerners, black and white, sometimes call "side." A learned professor at Harvard might call it hubris. College professors live in a small world, and quickly become accustomed to small gestures of deference, and like a newly minted second lieutenant eager to pounce on a sergeant who doesn't salute smartly enough, are easily vexed.
Before all this Mr. Gates had never sounded like a man searching for racial slights. He married a white woman (to the disappointment of his mother, who Mr. Gates says "hated" white people), and he professes to own 77 episodes of the old "Amos 'n' Andy" television show. He recalled to interviewer Brian Lamb of C-SPAN that he watched Amos and Andy with his family as a boy in West Virginia. "[We] took [Amos and Andy] as typical of the human experience, rather than typical of black people."
But West Virginia, like Kansas, has given way to Oz. Mr. Gates told Travel and Leisure magazine two years ago why he vacations on Martha's Vineyard, the summer retreat of the Beautiful People: "I started going to [Oak Bluffs] in 1981, and fell in love with the light. It reminded me of the light in the south of France, near St. Paul-de-Vence, which for me was a deja vu experience - it evoked the summer of 1973, when I spent a wonderful time in France with James Baldwin and Josephine Baker … I spend every July and August in my house near Oak Bluffs. I love bicycling, and because of my hip replacement I had a couple of years ago, I had a 24-speed tricycle made by hand in Germany … ."
Stanley Fish, a friend of "Skip" Gates and a law professor at Florida Atlantic University, argues in the New York Times that the professor was singled out for not staying in his place. "It's a version of the same old story," he says. "[Mr.] Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because … he has committed the crime of H.W.B., Housed While Black … ."
Harvard Square! Summers on Martha's Vineyard! Bicycling! Handmade tricycles! Deja vu experiences! Don't they teach 'em anything in police manners classes? When you're a tenured Harvard professor with handmade tricycles and deja vu experiences, you shouldn't have to answer questions from an Irish cop.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2007 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|