Maggie's Farm

At last night’s press conference, President Obama epitomized what’s gone wrong among our country’s elites.

Without respect for the facts already known and in prejudgment President Obama declared his friend Harvard University professor Henry Gates innocent and that the police “acted stupidly” in arresting him for creating a public disturbance in the street in the middle of the night. (See ABC’s coverage.)  Gates is director of the Institute for African and African-American Research named after radical W.E.B. DuBois who in 1953 eulogized Joseph Stalin as “simple, calm and courageous…he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate….He [Stalin] was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been…”  Gates is another of President Obama’s unique friends with a chip on their shoulder about America.

In our democracy, the elites are not supposed to be anointed by God or hereditary, nor allowed any special governmental privileges, rights or exceptions from the laws that govern everyone else.  Elites in America should earn respect for their character, accomplishments and contributions alone.

Consider how far we’ve gone in another direction, toward self-selected groups flaunting their disregard of common morality and sense, and even the law, as if immune or above the obligations and restrictions necessary to maintaining a society and government of free peoples working in comity and decency toward individual and national advancements above personal benefits and pelf.

Even another liberal and racially defensive Black professor, who (in my opinion) was treated unfairly by blustering, bullying Bill O’Reilly, says of Gates and Obama’s behavior: 

I might be kicked out of "The Black scholars club" for saying this, but the truth is that I don't feel sorry for Henry Louis Gates. America is far more capitalist than it is racist, so a distinguished Harvard University Professor like Gates is likely to get more respect than the average White American. The idea that he is somehow the victim of the same racism that sends poor Black men to prison simply doesn't fly with me, and Gates should be careful about appearing to exploit the plight of Black men across America to win his battle of egos with the Cambridge Police Department.

 

There is no doubt in this professor’s knowledge and experience, nor in mine, that the poor and disheveled, and especially Blacks, are often profiled unequally and unfairly compared to well-dressed, articulate Whites.  There is, also, no doubt in this professor’s, nor in mine, that our police work hard under difficult and even life-threatening circumstances to enforce laws in hazy conditions in which they must act quickly and decisively.  When called out to investigate what may be a breach of the law, for those questioned to verbally or physically attack the officer is clearly unacceptable and illegal.

Yet, President Obama, as with the local Congressional wannabe whose host and guest did so and whom the local hack defends by waging a media campaign to diss the police, we see from high to low a behavior by a genre of political elite that defies the very basis of our democracy, and gravely undermines it.

This press conference comment by President Obama should not be seen as extraordinary or exceptional but as directly indicative of what’s off base generally with much of our newer elites in politics, education, business who believe they are above the law or morality, and when one examines their acts one too often finds that they have manipulated laws and programs to insulate themselves from the ravages they visit upon other citizens.

BTW, he’s not a racist cop. And, there was a Hispanic and a Black policemen at the scene.

Also BTW, compare to former President Bush's respect for the law.