White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs likes to use quips or one-liners to try to divide or distract the press corps from tough questions during his daily briefings. But Gibbs bristled a little when CBS' Chip Reid today teasingly said he had a follow-up question about the "beer fest" scheduled for Thursday night with President Obama and Cambridge, Mass., rivals police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.
Gibbs: "I wouldn't call it the beer fest. . . I know I'm usually the one who makes the jokes in here. I think it's a fairly serious picture."
It's hard to know what's the standard for serious though. Minutes earlier Gibbs had made the scheduled 6 p.m. gathering sound like mostly a photo-op. It's to be held at "the picnic table out back" of the White House, weather permitting. "There's no formal agenda other than cold beer," he's quipped. Gibbs also said the idea was for the men (Gates and Obama already are friends) to "get to know each other and step back from the circumstances that brought everybody together."
Asked what access the press would have, Gibbs said, "I don't know that we'll have any comments during it, but I think we'll certainly - set it up so you guys can see the picture. . . I think the picture alone will communicate that despite the incident, despite what happened, despite what was said after that, we can still sit down and discuss issues that are important like this. . . ”
After listening to the 911 tapes I feel that the caller was very clear in that this call was just to determine that the people inside were supposed to be there. There was no need for the officer to enter the home and begin shoving Professor Gates around. Any citizen has the right to ask for name and badge number of an officer who is questioning them. I am all for treating our citizens of African descent with the same respect that Caucasians receive. Also, tone down the Police attitude of "Make my day, just give me a reason to rough you up".
Posted by: R Hogan | July 30, 2009 at 02:39 PM
Crowley would do well to show up staggering, and drop a previously opened beer can on the lawn before he sits down, and explain that he wanted to get an early start on the drinking to make the meeting with these two arrogant, uppity "lesson teachers" ...bearable.
Posted by: Nukulir | July 29, 2009 at 09:28 PM
The idea that this officer deserves an apology from the President or Mr. Gates for carrying out a false arrest is laughable.
He, and any officer that conducts themselves in a similar manner, should be fined, sued, and washing cars.
Posted by: do not question my authoritaw | July 29, 2009 at 03:52 PM
There was no "racial profiling" concerning Gates arrest. To refer otherwise is just political grandstanding. What is really sad and alarming were the feeble attempts by first Gates and then Obama by blowing lots of hot air to make this out to be or into a political race issue.
Mr. Gates should take a course in both behavioural and anger management and the officer’s course in racial profiling for his obvious anti-white attitudes, which he clearly displayed during and after this incident. Only then will Gates himself learn a lesson from his own arrest and have a better understanding about racial profiling in America, from another prospective and which I am sure he would find enormously gratifying.
It was, it is and it shall remain all about Gates and his friend Obama. I, for one, have had enough of their racist attitudes, their victim mentality, their hatred and their need for revenge. The time has long past for Blacks to get the chip off their shoulder, live by the rules of law in the countries they were born and live in.
When these two (Gates and Obama) understand that they already live in a society in which ‘equal justice before law' is a lived reality and not go around with chips on their shoulders and display attitudes in attempts to place themselves above the laws, incidents such as this might not happen in America.
No beer vest or beer summit was or is required. What is and remains owing and outstanding is for Obama and Mr. Gates to give an open apology to the officer, police forces throughout the country and ALL the American people.
Posted by: peterclarke | July 28, 2009 at 06:07 PM