When It’s Not About Race
When I worked as an LAPD officer twenty years ago, I received a routine “domestic dispute” call to a San Fernando Valley apartment.
When I arrived, I was met at the door by a friendly woman who identified herself as the renter. She explained that she and her estranged husband shared a dental practice and were going through a “messy divorce.” She insisted that there was “no problem” at her apartment and that her husband had probably made a false report.
Despite her reassurances, my partner and I stepped into her apartment and found her restrained husband and father-in-law, along with two serious-looking tattooed men who I suspected had not visited dentists in many years. We also found guns, knives, duct tape, detailed instructions and a briefcase containing $20,000 cash.
As it turned out, the wife’s two thugs had kidnapped the father-in-law from his home to her apartment where they forced him at gunpoint to lure her husband to the apartment. Had I accepted the words of the respected and attractive university-trained doctor, we would not have saved the lives of the two men who would have otherwise been murdered. The woman later confessed to wanting her husband dead to control their dental practice.
As a “community organizer” I don’t expect Barack Obama to understand how real police officers conduct investigations. As a lawyer, I expect Obama to assume that racially-belligerent anti-white bigots have the right to interfere with police officers who are called to investigate possible felonies at private residences.
Unfortunately for America, Barack Obama is a sitting US President. Not only did he opine that the officers had acted stupidly during the recent arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Gates, but President Obama made things worse by saying that he didn’t think the arrest was necessary. In this respect, Obama was half right – he didn’t think.
Interfering with police during an investigation is a serious offense. Hundreds of people are unnecessarily injured or killed each year when they innocently or not-so-innocently interfere with investigating officers. Gang members and career criminals practice the art of interfering. Interfering is so dangerous that an argument with a flight attendant or a joke about hijacking or bombs can get you a minimum five year sentence in a federal prison.
The problem is not that Obama acted stupidly but that Obama’s complexion is still too intimidating for the media to challenge his willingness to characterize professional law enforcement as something more complicated than a “racial incident.” In this way, Obama only perpetuates the kind of stereotypes that he ostensibly wants to end. Until the US media starts treating Barack Obama as something more than a well-mannered articulate black man, this presidential mediocrity will only continue.
Unfortunately for Democrats, President Obama has another 42 months to prove that Presidents Reagan and Bush may not be the stupidest presidents in US history after all.
July 25th, 2009 at 8:52 am
As a “community organizer”, I wouldn’t expect Obama to know how to be president of the United States.
And I haven’t been disappointed in that expectation, either.
If His Hollowness, for whatever reason, can get Gates and the officer to the White House for a beer, I hope it’s taped, and I hope the officer dumps his beer on the carpet, gets up and walks out. He won’t, he wouldn’t, because the officer obviously has more class than the Hawvud grad and the Hawvud prof combined.