OPINION/ANALYSIS:
“The Cambridge police acted stupidly.”
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That was the reaction from an admittedly uninformed President Barack Obama who didn’t know “all facts,” of the Henry Louis Gates arrest case, but chose to offer up his knee-jerk assessment nonetheless.
Here’s mine: Um.. 1) if I saw anyone of any color attempting to get into my neighbors house without anything other than a key, I’d call the police. 2) when did it become stupid for police to do their job?
I guess if someone had actually been breaking into professor Gates’ home and the police failed to show up, they’d be called racist for that too.
What is most surprising, if not, contrary, is that this statement comes from 1) the nation’s commander-in-chief, 2) a president who has prided himself on not wallowing in the racial muckity-muck he professes to detest; at one time he even warned against tackling race “only as a spectacle,” 3) he’s now thrown the Cambridge police department under his ever increasingly crowded bus, without knowing all the facts.
Certainly, Obama’s use of the term “stupidly” is subjective and a keen journalist will undoubtedly follow up for the president’s clarification. In the meantime, here’s one glaring scenario where the term might apply: Plunging the country into an astronomical amount of debt, raising taxes in the middle of a recession, attempting to convince us it’ll cost us more to spend less, and “fixing” a problem that a small percentage of the public has (no health insurance) without actually addressing what the majority of America really wants (choice and lower costs) - as this cartoon so artistically conveys.
How’s that for stupid?
-Tara Wall is a news anchor and political analyst at The Washington Times and editor of TheConservatives.com.
