Comments | aegiswings: Obama's got my back

aegiswings

Obama's got my back

Jul 24, 2009 14:04

I don't know if you read the paper at all this week but if you have at least once, you've seen controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. He was arrested at his own home by the Cambridge police recently. He had returned from a trip overseas to find that his door was stuck. A passerby noticed him struggling with the door ( Read more... )

Comments 6

No, he does not. pat_man_ta July 24 2009, 18:55:25 UTC

Nobody would care if this happened to you or any other white person which it undoubtedly has. This is only getting attention because a well connected black man is screaming about the man oppressing him at Harvard, which the press is eating up.

While I agree with the sentiment that 'no one should be arrested in their own homes when they have broken no laws' and further, Deval Patrick's assertion that "You ought to be able to raise your voice in your own house without risk of arrest" I have no illusions that they would make such grand public statements for me or for you. For me, THAT is what I am taking away from this fiasco.

The bigger issue here is cops doing things like that to anyone, not this guy's race, a card which he is most joyously playing to its fullest. Cops have been bending, breaking, abusing or skating the edge of the law for so long they think it's the norm.

I applaud and encourage your efforts to report the reprehensible behavior of that MIT cop.

Re: No, he does not. morbidiqua July 24 2009, 20:39:14 UTC

I bet what happened was... they came in yelling and screaming and raising a big stink and then he got PISSED and suggested they were a bunch of racists and they got mad and arrested him.

Re: No, he does not. pat_man_ta July 24 2009, 22:35:12 UTC

Gates totally looks like a muppet in the arrest photo.

The thing I find sickeningly funny about that photo is how the media has cropped the black police officer that was on the scene out of it.

Re: No, he does not. aegiswings July 24 2009, 22:01:37 UTC

Thanks for your support. You are correct. No one cared when I was arrested. I doubt this would have gotten any press if Prof. Gates hadn't played the race card. A Harvard professor getting arrested in his own home when police respond to an apparent break-in would make local news at best and then it would be over. Even if he continued to complain that the arrest was unfair, the media probably wouldn't have cared ( ... )

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