President Obama: No apologies

If Barack Obama was one of your weed buddies, he'd be the the extremely inventive one turning a universal remote and a teddy bear into a serviceable bong. I'm sure the president truly regrets even answering the "Skip Gates" question honestly at all, primarily because of the focus that it took off of health care - but as we learned about the President from the race speech he gave in Philadelphia, the man sure is adept at turning a shit sandwich into fine cuisine. Despite the scripted nature of it all, the "Beer Summit" went off without a hitch: It was a great photo-op, the Sergeant expressed some warm sentiments for the president afterwords, and it gets this health care distraction off the front pages. But throughout this whole clusterfuck that just proved to us what we already knew, that this country is "Ramo" and the subject of race is the third rail(Beat Street reference)- I take extreme pride in the fact that the President never apologized. I love him for that. I mean, what exactly did he have to apologize for? Arresting a cane wielding middle aged man in his home after his identity had already been established IS fucking stupid, there's no two ways around that. Maybe Professor Gates could have handed things differently, but I know a lot of white people who would have been irate if some cop was in their home questioning whether they lived there of not.

As for Sergeant Crowley, I have no reason to think that the man is racist. Granted, the "he's not racist" talking points that his defenders trotted out had me throwing up in my mouth just a little bit: "He's not a racist, he tried to resuscitate a dying Reggie Lewis once!!"(As I've said earlier, that doesn't prove that he's not a racist, it just proves that he's not Satan) - "He's not racist because he taught a class on racial profiling for five years!"(I know a priest right now who is vaginally baptizing women with his "holy water". Enough said) But again, I have no reason to believe that the Cambridge Sergeant is a racist. I'm just of the firm belief that the officer made an improper arrest. I don't know what's in his heart so I would never suggest that the arrest contained a racial element, just a very stupid one.

That said, if there is one thing that I have learned from "Gates-Gate" and the masturbatory material racial arsonists like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck used it as - is that an intelligent black man scares the digested food out of a lot of white folks. That's what all the vitriol spewed by Limbaugh, Beck, and FOX news was all about these past few weeks, all they saw were two highly educated black men ganging up on a white "everyman". Said perception just added gasoline on top of their already smoldering insecurity about the fact that our black President, more times that not, is the smartest person in any room he walks into.

Black people have a shameful history of easing the fears of white bigots. My father was nowhere near being an Uncle Tom, but I noticed that he exhibited a rather accommodating tone whenever he dealt with one of his white customers at his car repair shop. Shit, I've done it! I've found myself in an elevator with a purse clutching white woman many times, and I've flashed a disarming smile and asked "How are you doing to day" just to make her feel comfortable - and I fucking hated myself for it afterwords. That's exactly why I'm glad the President didn't apologize, refusing to continue said shameful practice. People like Rush Limbaugh and Bill Kristol weren't mad at Obama because he didn't apologize for correcting what they perceived to be a wrong, but because he refused to go out of his way to make bigots feel better about themselves. To quote Ice Cube, "Take that motherfuckers!"