The Smaller Picture

I’ll return to the larger picture, but before the battle of Cambridge fades entirely, let’s note that the only crime Obama committed at his news conference was honesty (always impolitic in Washington). He conceded he did not know “all the facts” and so wisely resisted passing judgment on “what role race played” in the incident. He said, accurately, that “separate and apart from this incident” there is “a long history” of “African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately.” And, yes, the police did act “stupidly in arresting” — not to mention shackling — “somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” If Obama had really wanted to go for the jugular, he might have added that the police may have overstepped the law as well. The president’s subsequent apology for his news-conference answer was superfluous. But he might have used it to acknowledge the one exemplary player in Cambridge, Lucia Whalen, the white passer-by whose good deed of a 911 phone call did not go unpunished. In his police report, Sgt. James Crowley portrayed Whalen as a racial profiler by saying she had told him that the two men at Gates’s door were black. She denied it, and the audio tape of her original call backs her up: she had told the dispatcher (only when asked) that one of the men “looked kind of Hispanic” and that she couldn’t see the other. Yet Whalen, who was pilloried as a racist because of Crowley’s report, received no apology from him and no White House invitation from Obama. That’s stupid behavior by both men. It’s also stupid to look at Harvard as a paradigm of anything, race included.

Aunt Nitsy's lad Frank does well even to suspect that there exists a "smaller picture." He's about the only national motormouth of his pigmentation who has made that much progress towards the heart of Gatesio-Crawleyan darkness. But unfortunately it is not a very useful "smaller picture" that the mouth of the motor zooms in on. As you can see for yourself, Dr. Bones, Mr. Rich wants to focus on Barák Husáyn XLIV Obáma [0]. In the course of Master Frank jiggering his drooloscope to get exactly the shot he craves, what I consider the true point of recursion does flash by, but only to be excluded preëmptorily: H*rv*rd, we learn authoritatively, is "not a paradign of anything."

Though alma mater is definitely not a taxpayer-owned utility corporation either, "not a paradigm of anything," is just silly, a silliness that every other national motormouth, at least, ought to see immediately. Wingnut City motormouths like Neocomrade B. Hume and Neocomrade G. Beck and Neocomrade Dr. R. Limbaugh and Neocomrade Lord Speaker Professor Doctor N. Gingrich--all four neospecimens bein’ eventually named in this very scribble--notoriously do not much care for the Crimson Octopus, so ‘paradigm’ is not the exact word they would apply, but ‘hotbed’ or the like will do just as well. The guruettes and gurus of wombscholarship may not recur to H*rv*rd Yard to emulate, but they do dearly love to drop by 02138 for an occasional sneerfest. If Nitsy's boy Frank genuinely believes that H*rv*rd is to be classified with the flowers that bloom in the spring for purposes of Gatesgate analysis, he ... well, let's say Mr. Rich is even more so than we have accounted him all along. [1]

Not to waste any more bartlettisms on how our picture-loving laddie might have focused his drooloscope better, let us examine how he did focus it. Surely "the only crime Obama committed was honesty" is an odd point for iconographic artistry to choose. The clowns and bozos of Rio Limbaugh and parts adjoinin’ have said a lot of very characteristic things about Gatesgate, but that BHO [0] was flirting with perjury when he used the word ‘stupid’ is not one of them. In context, the effective thrust of Mr. Rich’s drool is that he (Mr. Rich) agrees that it is stupid to arrest persons for being demonstrably in their own houses. Well, so do I, for what little that is worth. Why thinking so should be worth a little more when it is Mr. Rich's Class of 1971 littleness rather than Mr. McCloskey's Class of 1966 ditto is no great mystery. But let's face it, even in Master Frank's case, who cares?

With the Columbia University Class of 1983 not-so-littleness, the issue is different. Though I doubt Nitsy's boy saw the problem he was generating for himself, if ‘stupid’ is to be defended tooth and nail, a great many subsequent words from That One[0] will have to be examined very closely for sincerity. That One[0] has not abandoned his ‘stupid’ to the extent of formally apologizing for it and undertaking amendment of life hereafter. In a purely forensic sense his position is inexpugnable: not even a pluperfect Foxcuckoolander like G. Beck is go’n’ta claim explicitly that arrestin’ blacks and tans (or even citizens at large) for bein’ in their own houses is perfectly OK by him.[2] As a repudiation of a certain counterstupidity that has always been lurkin’ out in the fever swamps of the holy-Homelandic™ Right, ‘stupid’ is not merely defensible but admirable.

On the other hand, Dr. Bones, surely you must have got my own impression that ThatOne [0] feels a bit sorry he actually said ‘stupid’ out loud? And if so, don’t you, too, subtract a few points from Nitsy’s boy’s score for either pretending not to notice that point or--worse--for genuinely missing it?

(( More to come? ))

Happy days.

___
[0] May Father Zeus emanate His lofty pænumbra!


[1] It seems of late to have become literally impossible to engage qualified op-ed servants down on Manhattan Island.

Before saddling herself with Master Frank, did Nitsy attend to his C. V. closely? I wonder especially about the part of it rehashed by the learnèd wikipædiatricians as follows:

Rich graduated from Harvard in 1971, where he was editorial chairman of the Harvard Crimson, studied American History and Literature, and lived in Lowell House.

And the next thing to wonder, obviously, is whether such journalistic neocomradesses and neocomrades as read today's performance by Master Frank and then decide to advance the banner of Kiddie Konservatism by attackin’ it will exploit the obvious Lowell House opportunity.

How about "I knew FDR, and you, sir, are no FDR!"


[2] G. Beck probably does not even think privately that it is OK. It is a great triumph of the neocomrade's self-presentation, however, than nobody can ever be entirely sure.