Obama Exacerbates Racial Divide

RUSH: This cop that has been criticized by Obama is a police academy expert on racial profiling. Now, Obama’s pulled back from the racial profiling. What we got from Obama at his presser on Wednesday night was not a presidential reaction. We got the reaction of a community agitator. We got the reaction of a community organizer. We got the reaction of an ACORN leader, and everybody asking, ‘Is the president going to apologize?’ ACORN members don’t apologize for what they do. ACORN doesn’t apologize, and the president was ACORN answering this question. He was not presidential. Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy. Academy director Thomas Fleming says that sergeant James Crowley is a good role model who was handpicked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, to run the profiling training program.

In the class, Crowley teaches officers not to single people out based on their ethnic backgrounds. Obama has said the Cambridge officers acted stupidly. He has backed that up even though Gibbs said he didn’t say it. A lot more has been learned about this, and one of the things to learn here is about that which happens right before your eyes rather than that which is spun by sharp political operatives and cooperating journalists. Take Obama’s reaction to the Gates incident, his instinctive reaction. One event, three learning experiences.

Lesson one. Obama’s instincts are those of a community organizer, not a president. Don’t bother me with the facts; I have to play to the crowd here.

Lesson two: Obama can sound as if he knows what he’s talking about even when by his own admission he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s not what he says; it’s how he says it.

Lesson three: When Obama is faced with a political setback, even one of his own makings, he plays the race card. This is something I have figured out watching ever since the campaign began. Anybody who wonders what Obama accomplished with that statement had better realize it reduced the focus on his failure before the August recess demand.

Now, I don’t know that he was purposely trying to do that. I think he’s genuinely revved up about race. You know me. I think he is genuinely angry in his heart and has been his whole life. And if any of you have learned that Obama cannot, will not ever acknowledge his mistakes, shame on you. In his world, he doesn’t make mistakes. Cap and trade is not a mistake; stimulus wasn’t a mistake. The health care is not a mistake. And I want to take you back. No, Bill Clinton said Obama played the race card on him during the campaign in South Carolina, and Bill Clinton was right. Bill Clinton said, (imitating Clinton) ‘Yeah, he played the race card on me. Here I am, the first black president, and that guy, son of a gun’s out there and he played the race card on me.’ They don’t like it. You know, Boxer doesn’t like it when blacks get uppity and don’t follow along, and Clinton didn’t like it when he had the race card played against him. This is Obama’s secret weapon. I want to take you back to this program and me February 22, 2008. This is months before the election.

RUSH ARCHIVE: ‘If Obama gets elected president, wouldn’t it be good to just get it done, Rush, then we could end the civil rights squabbles that we’re having.’ It wouldn’t do that. Folks, it wouldn’t do that. It might even exacerbate them. Let me explain how. It takes somebody like me who can read the stitches on the fastball. Let us fast forward to January of 2009. Obama has been inaugurated president and he proposes his first bit of legislation. And let’s say that it’s — I don’t know — some civil rights oriented thing and a bunch people start howling. You know that the race industry can’t wait for this. Any criticism of Obama, the first black president, is going to be met with charges of racism by the likes of the Reverend Jackson and Sharpton. It will make their race business all that much more prominent. It will operate on the premise that half of this country is seething, can’t believe this has happened and they’re going to fix this somehow, cannot believe there’s a black man in the White House and a black woman in the residence! That will be the theme that the race business operates on. It will be full of presumptuousness and projection, but it will propel —

RUSH: So I was wrong about the incident. I was wrong about the incident, but I was right that the race problem is not going to go away simply because we’ve elected the first black president. It’s been exacerbated. Obama still smokes cigarettes and he’s just thrown a lighted cigarette on a can of gasoline. And he did that at his press conference the other night and he’s got this thing now — here’s the important political significance of the event. And at this point I will talk about the precious moderates who vote and the precious independents who vote. Trust me when I tell you that all during the campaign these precious moderates and independents believed that we were genuinely getting over the racial hump. Post-racial, so many, so many guilty people voted for Obama just to get that legacy of sin due to slavery out of our system to be done with it. They thought the election of a black president would accomplish this.

All of a sudden this guy that they elected who they thought was all of these wonderful, perfect things, is now behaving as a community organizer and is fanning the flames of race and is calling the police stupid, and I guarantee you those people — we’ve all been waiting and asking the question, ‘When are these Obama voters going to wake up?’ Well, this incident might be — I don’t know yet, a little early to say — this incident might be the wake-up call for some of these moderates ’cause folks, don’t doubt me. You know that there were a lot of people that voted for Obama out of pure guilt, hoping that his election would just wipe the slate clean, at least make them feel better about it. And this just destroys that. Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman when he doesn’t know the facts of the case, admits he doesn’t know the facts of the case.

There’s a big police coalition press conference going on right now, and the police union, fed up, police officers, Fraternal Order of Police all over the country, they recognize the damage and the danger this puts them in when the president of the United States runs around and calls them stupid for just doing their jobs. It’s bad enough for the cops in this country as it is. This just exacerbates it.

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RUSH: Ann Althouse has a very interesting blog post on this whole situation with Sergeant Crowley and Henry Louis Gates. She says the article — talking about the New York Times article about all this — she said, ‘The article starts out with genuinely sympathetic stories about another black man who was arrested twice, then ties it to the Gates story. ‘[B]lacks and others said that what happened to Professor Gates was a common, if unacknowledged, reality for many people of color.’ … But that’s not my question about this article. I have a question about this: ‘The police and Professor Gates offered differing accounts of what happened after officers arrived. The police said Professor Gates initially refused to show identification and repeatedly shouted at officers.

‘Professor Gates said that he had shown photo identification to Sergeant Crowley but that the sergeant had not appeared to believe that he lived there.’ There’s a crucial, missing fact that the journalists, Susan Saulny and Robbie Brown, don’t seem to have any interest in.’ What Ann Althouse writes she’d like to know is this: ‘is whether Gates’ photo ID had the address of the house on it. Was it his University ID? My UW ID doesn’t have my home address on it. I have read elsewhere, not in this article, that Gates rented the house. Perhaps he had a driver’s license with a different address of his on it. If the ID did not show the address of the house that had been broken into, then Crowley’s continuing investigation into whether Gates really lived there was perfectly reasonable. (Or do you — did Gates? — think that affiliation with Harvard University should end the matter?)

‘Moreover, Gates’s belligerence and presentation of himself as a person too important to be questioned should have heightened Crowley’s suspicion that Gates didn’t live there.’ This next point, this is key. I try to put myself in the situation here. If I get caught, quote, unquote, ‘breaking into my own house’ because somebody down the street’s called it in and a cop shows up, and it’s my house, I’m going to do everything I can right there to prove it! I am not… You know, I know everybody has a different temperament and personality. But I remember being with my father when I’m ten years old and my brother and parents were all in the car. We were driving back home from someplace in Arkansas and it was at night and we got pulled over by state trooper.

And I remember the way my dad dealt with the guy. He just sirred the trooper out: ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.’ He didn’t argue, was not belligerent. He was totally cooperative. And whenever I’ve had any encounters like that, and there have been few, but, you know, I just don’t start yelling at people. It just doesn’t occur to me. It’s not in my makeup, especially if everything’s okay. I’m going to do what I can to prove everything’s okay and end the situation. Let the cops get on their way and let me get back in my house or whatever. This business of Gates continuing to yell as though he had some special privilege because maybe he’s a teacher at Harvard or whatever? This whole thing is just… Especially when you learn that the cop is trained in racial profiling. None of this makes a whole lot of sense.

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RUSH: I know that the way I look at something like this and the reason something like this might not make sense to me, is not a universal mind-set in the country. I know that there are people in this country who think that just because of their skin color that the cops are out to get ’em. I’m not denying that. I’m just talking about the way it’s dealt with. This kind of belligerence — and Ann Althouse makes a great point. Did this guy actually prove that he lived there? Journalists haven’t figured it out, and I’m also told that when all the brouhaha began the cop keyed his microphone and they have recordings of the incident. The cop turned on his microphone so everybody could hear what was going on, and they’re debating whether or not to release this. There’s no information about the words that were said.

I’m just talking about the mind-set. If somebody comes into your house thinking you’ve broken into it, you find ways to prove it and thank them for coming and get on the way. Now, I understand. Does Mr. Gates have a personal life history of the cops harassing him? Does he have an arrest record? Has he been falsely accused of things before? I don’t know. Is his life experience something that would explain his belligerence? Has he been falsely accused a number of times and he just broke and wigged out? I don’t know. All I know is that the way this kind of thing has been dealt with, the way Gates dealt with this is typical in many ways. And the aftermath is typical now.

Call the cop a racist, call police racists, call the cops stupid, threaten to sue the cop — and cop’s now threatening to countersue for defamation and so forth. All the talk on TV now about race. I guarantee you — I guarantee you, folks — that the moderates and independents that voted for Obama thought this was all over. That that’s what his election would mean. And he’s the guy that started this. You realize this would not be nearly the story it is had he not taken that question, had he not answered it the way he did? This is his story, and he wants it. He could end this story. But ACORN doesn’t apologize. Community agitators don’t apologize. I told you yesterday, this incident is lighting a flame. It’s not really throwing it on the gasoline yet, but the flame’s been lit, and it’s a dangerous situation, and it’s most unfortunate.

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RUSH: we’ve got some sound bites on this before we get to your phone calls. This is Obama last night on Nightline with Terry Moran. Moran says, ‘You were tough on the Cambridge Police Department. Do you regret saying that they ‘acted stupidly’?’

OBAMA (sped-up): I’m surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because I think it was, uh, uh a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don’t need to handcuff a guy — a middle-aged man who uses a cane — who is in his own home. Now, what I do know is, as I said last night: I don’t know all the details to the case. My suspicion is — is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed. That’s my suspicion. But I was asked, you know, did it make sense for it to escalate to the levels that it did (sic), and I said probably not and that uhhh, you know, it would have been more sensible for everybody to just, once it was established that Mr. Gates was in his own home, that, uhhh, we should just settle this thing down.

RUSH: Was he asked…? He wasn’t asked if it ‘made sense for it to escalate.’ Lynn Sweet didn’t ask him that. You know, there’s a character in recent news history that we could compare President Obama to. Does the name Nifong ring a bell? Mike Nifong. The prosecutor in the Duke rape case. This is the same kind of situation: Prejudging, without the facts, based on stereotypes, based on race, based on bias. The president of the United States may as well be Mike Nifong, folks. That’s the best way to understand the way this whole thing is shaping out. Moran says, ‘You think the Cambridge police ‘acted stupidly’?’

OBAMA (sped-up): Terry, I think this is a classic example at a time when we’re struggling about health care, energy, we’ve got two wars going on, uh, that, um, issues like this get elevated in ways that probably don’t make much sense. I — I think that it doesn’t make sense, with all the problems that we have out there, uh, to arrest a guy in his own home if he’s not causing a serious disturbance. It would have been better for cooler heads to prevail.

RUSH: Well, yeah, you know what? All of a sudden now all those things matter? You know, he did a big fundraiser in Chicago last night with a bunch of athletes and at the fundraiser — there were about 150 people there — he started whining and moaning about people who oppose his health care plans he’s having a lot of trouble dealing with people lying about his plan and he doesn’t even know what it is and doesn’t care about it. By the way, a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox whose name I don’t know how to pronounce, Mark Buehrle, threw a perfect game. Obama called the guy after the game. Obama said, ‘You know what, I think some of the credit…’ Remember, nothing’s about him. (interruption)

It’s ‘burr-lee,’ okay. Buehrle pitches the perfect game for the White Sox, one of the rarest things to happen in professional sports. Obama calls the guy and says, essentially, ‘You know what? I think the fact I wore a White Sox jacket throwing the first pitch out at the All-Star Game may be a factor here in your throwing a perfect game.’ He actually said something like that to the guy! It’s not about him. He did. He took credit, partial credit for the perfect game because he wore a White Sox jacket throwing out the first pitch — the girlie pitch, ceremonial first pitch — at the All-Star Game. Here’s Sergeant Crowley on Channel 7 in Boston telling his side of the story.

CROWLEY: I asked him if he could step outside and speak with me and he said, ‘No, I will not,’ and again words to the effect, ‘What’s this all about?’ And I said, ‘I’m Sergeant Crowley from the Cambridge Police Department, and I’m investigating a break-in in progress.’ And he responded, ‘Why, because I’m a black man in America?’ in very agitated tone and, again, I thought that was a little strange. My reason for asking that is twofold. First of all, there was a report that there was two individuals. I see one and it could be him, so where’s the second person? Or there’s two people in the residence that he doesn’t know are there. Either way, I wasn’t expecting his response, which was, ‘That’s none of your business.’ To me that’s a strange response for somebody that has nothing to hide, is trying to cooperate with the police.

RUSH: And Crowley continued. He explained the details of the arrest.

CROWLEY: I was leaving. As I reached the porch, I was aware that now he was following me because he was still yelling about racism and black men in America and that he wasn’t somebody to be messing with. He was the one that was being provocative. This wasn’t a back-and-forth exchange of banter or arguing. This was one-sided. That’s how far Professor Gates pushed it and provoked and just wouldn’t stop. I was a little surprised and disappointed that the president — who didn’t have all the facts by his own admission — then weighed in on the events of that night and made a comment that, you know, really offended not just officers in the Cambridge Police Department but officers around the country. I’m not a monster or the bigot or racist that he has portrayed me to be. This is me.

RUSH: Exactly right. But not only that. Not only that, folks. What happened here, you know, Obama’s sitting there saying, it ‘should not have escalated to the level that it did.’ Well, what happened here? Gates didn’t get shot. He didn’t get hit. He didn’t get kicked. Gates didn’t have hate speech hurled at him. Escalate to what? Who did the escalating? Gates did the escalating! Obama said, ‘That shouldn’t have happened. The police acted stupidly.’ But nothing happened to Gates. He got arrested. But he wasn’t treated in an abusive fashion. The cop was. He didn’t get kicked. He didn’t get hit. He didn’t get shot. He didn’t have any physical harm happen to him whatsoever — and he was not cooperative it sounds like when you listen to all this. One more Crowley bite before we go to the break, and this is… Well, let’s see. Da-da-da. I guess this is yesterday on the radio.

CROWLEY: What I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for. That somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level and berate me, accuse me being a racist or racial profiling and then speaking about my mother, it’s just… It’s beyond words. I treat everybody the same. I think, you know, that’s what I try to do. That’s what I have a track record of doing for the past 16-1/2 years as a police officer. Again, I think it’s just regrettable that the situation has gotten to this point.

RUSH: Yeah. It’s been elevated by two people: Gates and Barack Nifong.

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RUSH: I left something out of the pattern that I have learned watching and studying Obama. We will know when the heat gets too much to take, we will know when their internal polling on this is disastrous, because at that point he will throw Henry Louis Gates overboard, just as he threw his grandmother overboard, just as he threw Reverend Wright overboard, just as he did a Judas on Bill Ayers. ‘I don’t know the guy. He lives in the neighborhood.’ Whenever the heat gets so hot, he’ll throw these clowns overboard. He’ll call Gates, ‘Look, I gotta throw you overboard, buddy, you know, I’ll make it up to you somehow, but I gotta throw you overboard.’ And Gates will go out and say, ‘I understand the president has to be a politician.’ Just like Reverend Wright said, ‘Well, look, he had to throw me overboard, he’s a politician, he can’t be who he really is.’ That’s exactly right, except he is being who he is, except you just need somebody to translate it for you. So look for sometime next week Henry Louis Gates, distinguished professor, African-American studies at Harvard, to be thrown overboard by the White House, by Obama.

All right, to the phones. Tom in Waynesboro, Virginia. Great to have you with us. You’re up first on Open Line Friday. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Rush, when Obama spoke to the CIA a while ago, he pretty much told them explicitly that their job was going to become harder. Now, what he did last night, or what he did a few nights ago with the police officers in Cambridge was he made their job much harder. So why is he continuing to make our intelligence and law enforcement jobs harder?

RUSH: Why do you think?

CALLER: Why do I think?

RUSH: Well, it’s Open Line Friday. I’m tired of being the answer man. You tell me.

CALLER: Okay, here we go. Basically I think that you have foundations in society that in order to upend it or overturn it, they have to be chopped out. And that’s what I see happening. I see this is an opportunity for him to chop out the foundations and to create more wedges between people and groups, because, you know, Rush, he didn’t just mention blacks. He mentioned blacks and Latinos in that press conference.

RUSH: No, no. Blacks and Latinos.

CALLER: Latinos.

RUSH: Latinos. Latinas.

CALLER: Lets get our pronunciation right.

RUSH: Latinos and Latinas. I think you’re on to something. I think liberals in general have to destroy the institutions and traditions that made the country great and rebuild them. He resents what he’s inherited. This is my whole point to Greta Van Susteren last night. He doesn’t have admiration for this country. Put it on the table again. Do you ever hear him talk about the greatness of anything in this country? I guarantee you if you can think of him talking about the greatness of anything, it’s something government’s done. He doesn’t talk about the greatness of our health care. He doesn’t talk about the greatness of our military. He’s apologizing for us all over the world. He doesn’t talk about the greatness of anything. He doesn’t talk about American exceptionalism at all. I think chaos is his friend. Chaos and uncertainty are exactly what a guy like Obama wants, getting the masses demanding more and more government action to stop the chaos, whatever it takes. So I think old Tom here from Waynesboro, Virginia, you gotta put yourself in his shoes. Here he is calling the world’s foremost authority — me — he’s got this theory, he wants to know what I think and what did I do? I turned it back on him, ‘You tell me what you think, I’m tired of being the answer man.’ And he stepped up. He was there. He had the answer. I love it. Way to go, Tom.

Here’s Haya in Brooklyn. Hi, Haya, nice to have you on the program.

CALLER: Thank you so much, and I will say that ‘greatness’ is an adjective that belongs to you and ‘chaos’ to Obama, and I grew up in Boston, one of fourth generation going to Harvard, and I watched the decline of a great university whose symbol was truth and integrity, bring in people like Arthur Schlesinger and I took his course in modern American history in the 1950s, but he was extolling these socialist communes in the Berkshires, and degrading everything that was great about America. And this is why you now have a type of professor at Harvard who are socialist elites who consider themselves above the law.

RUSH: Yes. You know, I’m glad you said that. Because that’s essentially the point she made without using those words, Ann Althouse, on her blog. This is somebody that acts like he’s above the law: I’m at Harvard, I’m at Harvard, I’m a black guy at Harvard, I’m a black professor, who the hell are you to challenge me? It’s all understandable. I appreciate the call, Haya. Thanks much.

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RUSH: Texarkana, Texas, Natalie, you’re on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Can you hear me?

RUSH: Yeah, I hear fine.

CALLER: Okay. I’m sorry. I’m calling on a cell phone so I know you hate that. I just want to talk about the Gates-Crowley situation. Every officer that responds to a situation has no idea if they’re running into somebody with a weapon. They’re putting their lives on the line. I don’t know if the officer was married with children but he’s got a mother, possible sister. He’s got somebody depending on him.

RUSH: He’s got three kids.

CALLER: Yeah, and our president has the audacity to stand up there and say that this man ‘acted stupidly,’ simply because he was responding to a call. And I’m just embarrassed about that. I’m embarrassed for the rest of the world to see that.

RUSH: You want to know at the root level what I think this is really all about?

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: I’ll be happy to tell you, then. The cop shows up at the home of the ‘distinguished, highly respected, big, frequent guest of Oprah,’ Henry Louis Gates.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm?

RUSH: And the cop didn’t know who he was.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: Henry Louis Gates is thinking: How dare you not know who I am! I am the distinguished Henry Louis Gates Jr. I teach at Harvard! I am loved by Oprah. I’m a personal friend of the president, and you don’t know who I am?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: This is what he’s thinking. ‘And this dumb cop doesn’t know who I am? How dare you?’ He didn’t say this, I don’t think. Maybe he did. ‘Do you know who you’re dealing with?’ I think the root of it is that this guy’s got this out-of-control ego and thought the cop, upon seeing him, should have said, ‘Oh, sorry, Mr. Gates. We’re just trying to police the neighborhood,’ and then the cop didn’t know who he was. To these elites who think they’re smarter than everybody else — they’re liberals at Harvard types — that’s a supreme insult. And then you throw the race aspect of it on top of that that Gates introduced. I mean, the cop didn’t escalate this to anything. Gates single-handedly escalated it.

CALLER: Obama helped a lot.

RUSH: True. You’re right. You’re right. All right.

CALLER: If any local person — red, white, blue, or yellow — thinks that the officer thought he was responding to a white victim and that’s the only reason he went in there gung-ho, then, you know… I mean, I don’t know. They’re delusional. He was responding to a crime victim. The man happened to be black. Someone also could have broken into his home and he didn’t know they were there like he said earlier.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And the guy should be thanking him.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Not — not — I mean, I’m just embarrassed at our president.

RUSH: I know, but see, that’s not the attitude of the elites. The elites don’t thank their lessors! Elites don’t respond to their lessors. See, this is 180 degrees out of phase. That cop shoulda gotten down on both knees and apologized, once he saw the distinguished and respected Henry Louis Gates — and that didn’t happen. And of course then, ‘Well, it’s ’cause the cops are racist,’ and Obama said the cop’s stupid and this is how black men are treated, and so forth. I don’t know, but, as I say Henry Louis Gates wasn’t shot. He wasn’t kicked. He wasn’t hit. Nothing happened. He was arrested.

The charges were dropped, but he was not in any way harmed. Now he’s running around complaining that he’s got a mug shot and the mug shot is going to be all over. Well, join the club, pal! (laughing) You know, our local paper here… Do you ever go to the Palm Beach Post website? Well, you ought to one day. At the top of the website, before there’s any news, before there are any pictures, just up there — you know, with the top headline ban with the weather forecast and current conditions — are two mug shots. The latest arrests at the Palm Beach County jail. And you can click on it and see the mug shots. It’s everybody. I mean, before Obama’s through, folks, we’re all going to have a mug shot one way or the other.