The Audacity of Hops

When did the first wheel fall off the healthcare bus?

When a self-important Harvard Professor met a self-important Cambridge police officer.

I love talking and writing about race relations. I believe that the more we study the topic the more equipped we are at dealing with it. But this is not a topic of race. This is a topic of self-importance and arrogance. The Harvard prof views himself as too important, too revered to be treated like a common crook – when his actions said otherwise. The officer feels the same because he spends his days and nights protecting ungrateful citizens from common crooks. The officer is self-righteous and arrogant because his profession requires it for survival. The professor is self-righteous and arrogant because his profession requires it for advancement. It is not always an issue of race when a black man is arrested by a white officer. Crowley is not a racist. He gave dying Boston Celtic Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth when Lewis, who happened to be black, collapsed and died on a court in Boston. For Professor Gates to claim racial profiling as he was breaking into a million-dollar Cambridge home that he happened to own is careless and reeks of the same vanity that he claims Crowley was displaying. Black police officers stood with Crowley and white Harvard profs stood with Gates because this was not an issue of race. Indeed, this was barely an issue at all.

And, finally, the pièce de résistance: Barack Obama decides to fuel the fire by calling the entire Cambridge police force stupid. My head fell into my hands as I watched these stupid words escape his mouth. He was making an issue of a non-issue. A man breaks into a house and the police went over and above the call of duty. Leave it at that. It was nothing more than a series of unfortunate events. What’s worse is that now Gates’ community is the best neighborhood in America to burglarize; who in that neighborhood is going to call the cops now? Then, to add to the lunacy, Obama has both men over for a beer. Genius! Let’s add alcohol to an already volatile situation. As a country we watched and waited with feigned alacrity until the weird beer meeting ended.

While Obama’s actions were sophomoric, that’s not what really upset me. What upset me was that Obama’s normally accurate foresight was blinded by his desire to come to the aid of his buddy Gates. As he was selling the country on his new and very needed healthcare reform he decided to tackle this non-issue. He diverted attention from healthcare to race and beer. By transmogrifying the issue of healthcare into Crowley-Gates-gate he diminished and tarnished the health care issue. All the steam he had was now quelled, so much so that healthcare reform is now pushed to the next session of congress. We as a country have too much to fix and accomplish for you to personally deal with a tête-à-tête between your friend and a cop doing his job.