July 30, 2009 1:32 PM
Obama, Gates, Crowley - best I've read on Cambridge incident
Henry Louis Gates, professor of victimology, heads for Martha's Vineyard to lick his wounds
Stephanie Guttman
July 26, 2009Because of its proximity to Harvard University, Boston and New York City, Martha's Vineyard is the playground of certain kind of rich intellectual. The Clintons are regulars there, as is Alan Dershowitz. On the northeast side of the island is the charming neighbourhood of Oak Bluffs whose "big, sprawling homes with large yards and gorgeous architecture" (as one real estate website put it) are the summer home of "prominent African American leaders ... famous black writers, politicians, judges and artists", people like Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey. President Obama summers here too.
It is here that Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates will shortly repair to lick his wounds over what he calls his "deeply painful and traumatic" experience with a Cambridge police officer last week. He will work on a documentary, presumably for his regular venue, the taxpayer-subsidized Public Broadcasting Service, which he says will ask: "How are people treated when they are arrested? How does the criminal justice system work? How many black and brown men and poor white men are the victims of police officers who are carrying racist thoughts?"
You would think it would be getting harder to peddle this kind of victimology. Gates is a professor at one of the most elite universities in the country. For reasons that are unclear, he lives in a home owned by the university. (Is it a perk of his professorship; does he get a subsidized rental rate?) The white policeman who arrested him reported to a black police commissioner. Cambridge, Massachusetts is run by a black mayor (the second consecutive black mayor of the city), in a state with a black governor, in a country with a black president. Yet Gates will continue to make a living out of grievance.
Read entire article at the U.K. Telegraph.
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