It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.Now, let's think about this. What if everyone followed this Larger Meaning Doctrine? Something happens to an individual, and he could drop it or apologize or look into the particular details of the case, but instead he insists that his experience should represent some big problem in the world that people ought to be concerned about, that his case should be the jumping off point for something much more general, so that his problem isn't wasted but yields Larger Meaning for us all. Imagine how annoying that would be! And now think about how you'd react if these Larger Meaning adherents also topped off their demands by declaring "this is not about me."
And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS....
If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality.
I, for one, would probably freak out, cause a scene, prompt a neighbor to call the cops, get arrested for disorderly conduct, and... well, this is not about me but my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish the baneful effects of the Larger Meaning Doctrine.
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77 comments:
So he's still insisting that he was racially profiled.
If I were Crowley I'd be hanged if I'd have a beer with him.
but instead he insists that his experience should represent some big problem in the world that people ought to be concerned about
AND!!!! make money of of the experience. Woo hoo...how can I turn this into a buck!?!!! Yay me!!
There was no racial profiling. The police didn't go out and search for him or lay in wait until the neighbor reported a crime. Gates is a gigantic dickhead...something that crosses all racial lines.
What if everyone followed this Larger Meaning Doctrine?
Sounds like a world full of law students.
Ditto Laura. I would tell the President I was too busy filing my toenails. In addition I drink scotch.. Screw you and your beer.
Ditto again, Laura.
What an arrogant SOB this guy is. Well, I guess that's how he got to be friends with Mr. "teachable moment." They're gonna teach us crackers a thing or two!
During the Duke lacrosse scandal, wasn't there something similar that happened? I seem to recall that even after it was clear what had happened, one of the nutzo faculty (disclaimer- I'm a graduate of said institution) insisted that the Larger Meaning meant that somehow the white athletes were still guilty since they were white athletes.
Gates and Obama are two Harvard guys paddling furiously under the surface to try to re-instate the racial grievance industry that has been their only meaningful job for their entire lives. It is sad, yet it is also time to Move On.
If Crowley shows up, the pressure will be on him to apologize for his part in the incident, to make it appear that the good professor was completely in the right.
On the other hand, if he doesn't show up it'll be spun as a sign of his wrongness, thus proving that the professor was right.
It's a win-win situation.
Here's another interesting racial situation. Does this make sense to anyone:
Someone threw a brick through a boy's bedroom window with a note that said "Keep Eastside Black, Keep Eastside STrong."
The newspaper reported: "Police have not classified this incident as a hate crime...because hate crimes target an individual specifically because of an identifying characteristic, like race."
Let's include this at the boys' night out at the WH.
Is there a way we can determine how much PBS will pay Gates for his documentary? Was the documentary in the works before his arres? Or was it the result of his arrest?
Joseph Gusfield, in your very own UW Press's Contested Meanings, describes the route to political power, that being defining a public problem, and then taking ownership of it.
To "own" a problem... is to be afforded the recognition and obligation to have the claims to the existence of a problem and to information and ideas about it be given a high degree of attention and credibility. To "own" a social problem is to possess the authority to pronounce that a condition constitutes a "problem" and to suggest what might be done about it. It is the power to influence the marshaling of public facilities -- laws, enforcement abilities, opinion, goods, and services -- to aid the resolution of the problem.
p.21
Also, the Gatesquared incident had nothing to do with "racial profiling"? Am I correct?
The Larger Meaning of grievance posturing?
What about the Larger Meaning of Gates' own racial profiling of the white police sargent?
(Chris - you are correct.)
You're right about the "larger meaning" doctrine. Except, we do hear it all the time. Everytime I see a local news story about some personal tragedy (murder, car accident, tornado, whatever), the victim/family/friend declares that we need: 1. a new law so nobody else ever suffers again; or, 2. education of the public to avoid this behavior, so nobody else ever suffers again.
I think the larger meaning is that there is a group of people in the country that don't want racism to go away.
He's lucky he wasn't pumped full of electricity and beat with his own cane for sassing a cop. NOW he wants to glean some "meaning" from this? Ha! How bout "Yessum, this will never happen again". The only victim here is this poor cop WHO WAS JUST DOING HIS JOB of arresting and handcuffing a guy with luggage on his porch breaking into his home.
It's a teachable moment, but unfortunately neither Gates nor Obama realizes that the person who needs to be educated is himself.
I suspect that the Larger Meaning Doctrine is simply a sophisticated variation of the Clintonian doctrine of Attack the Attacker. Vast/nation wide + Right Wing/police authority + conspiricy/profiling = I am not responsible.
Larger Meaning Doctrine is for people with bigger egos.
"Larger meaning" is really "larger me"
Instead of a routine police investigation of a reported break-in, Gates escalated it into a national racial tension episode starring himself. <--Larger Ego
The larger meaning: Aim high in steering or you will collide with that big truck coming at you in the opposite lane.....Gates wished to prove that he was important but he did it in a low life way. He became the sort of person that he feared people would mistake him for.....The cop did not exercise perfect judgement, but Gates was completely off the wall.....I am glad to see that Althouse is sympathetic to the cop. My first reaction was that all the people who write books would compete among themselves to find and dissect new pathologies in the cop's behavior. But so far he seems to be getting a decent shake from the media.
So Gates is going to include this on one of his PBS specials? So we have a prominent Harvard University faculty member who is tight with the President of the United States and he is going to have every public television station in America to tell his side of the story. In the long run, this cop doesn't stand a chance (unless those 911 tapes definitively show Gates being an idiot.) This is really about power and class rather than race.
Vernon Jordan? The same Vernon Jordan who tried to help President Clinton make that Interngate thing go away?
"This is really about power and class rather than race."
Yes.
Gates complained that he was profiled by race but also complains that he was not profiled by class (I am a Harvard professor).
You could get whiplash trying to keep up.
Oh, and Gates is going to make some money off of it with the PBS stuff. It isn't going to be opening night Transformers or Harry Potter money, but it will be enough to put new doors on his house so he doesn't have any more problems.
Obviously Gates didn't orchestrate this nasty little episode; however, he is certainly pushing back to repair the damage.
Boy, we're sure getting a lot of mileage out of this, aren't we? Thank you, Crowley. Cheers.
There's only one thing possible to be learned in this teachable moment, and I expect you twelve hillbillies to fully agree with me. That is, how to behave when the police show up after a watchful neighbor called about seeing someone 'jiggying' and 'jimmying' to get inside a neighborhood house. That is all.
There is absolutely nothing racial about this episode, save for what was brought into it by the perpetually aggrieved, and by whom the perpetuation is valued.
The cops were maligned here and profiled ironically as profilers, but irony in the realm of race is beyond the affirmative action class and their supporters, apparently.
Incidentally, in spite of my own absurdly nefarious proclivities and clashes with enforcement, possibly because of them, I make it a point to deliver a genuinely cheerful "Hello!" like a trained parrot, whenever I encounter a policeman within hello-distance, as in an elevator, passing in a hallway, or like yesterday crossing at the automatic door in/out at Whole Foods. I treat police as welcome friends, and I've been cited enough to harbor umbrage, even had my drivers license revoked and made to earn it back.
One of my favorite shows is the cop program with the theme song "Bad boys, bad boys, what'cha gon'na do, what'cha gon'na do when they come for you?" That gets me singing right off. It kills me when a guy, it's always a guy, gets pulled over, steps out of the car and takes off running. Ha ha ha ha ha. What a f'n idiot! I would never, never, n.e.v.e.r, take off running. The other thing that kills me are the guys who get pulled over for a busted tail light, but then don't have a valid drivers license, no registration, no proof of insurance, open beer bottles visible in back seat, car smelling like burnt weed, doobies in the ashtray, weed in glove box, loaded gun under the seat, 10 pounds of skunk in the trunk.
Over, and over, and over again.
Frankly, I'm grateful the police are taking these dumb asses off the streets.
So Henry Louis Gates accepts Barack Obama's invitation to have a beer at the White House with Sgt. James Crowley.
Now picture all three men together in a circle holding "40s" and "pouring one out for their dead homies," Harvard Square style.
Here's the larger meaning I take from this:
If this is what happens when a white cop, who instructs in diversity/race relations, runs afoul of a black Harvard professor in the course of doing his job, then what hope do the rest of us have? Who, more than these two, should be able to defuse a tense situation and come to a common sense conclusion? They've got the smarts, the education, the training, the racial good will, and the motivation....yet they can't do it.
The message here is that we've been wasting our time with this crap. In spite of all the money & effort that's been thrown at the problem over the last 30 years, neither race has, does, or will ever understand the other. Time to drop the preferential treatment to "make amends" or whatever and simply treat everyone the same....at every level.
BTW, why wouldn't Gates expect preferential treatment? And why wouldn't Obama expect that he get it? Haven't they both, as minorities working within the affirmative action system, gotten plenty over their lifetimes? They simply expect it to continue.
Crowley should challenge Gates to turn over half the profits from his next "Docu-propaganda" film and book to the State of Mass. Police Dept's Widows and Orphans Education Fund. Or just donate his Inkwell slush fund to it. That would be fair. The scam of Bill Moyers and the other liberal trashers of traditional values for millions of dollars in tax free Foundation grants at last may become public. Let the sunshine in, as Crack Emcee would say.
Dudley Do-right --
"Who, more than these two, should be able to defuse a tense situation and come to a common sense conclusion?"
You cannot defuse a situation where the other does not want it defused. Gates escalated it on purpose and with purpose.
Imagine Ann will watch the PBS special.
People have not forgotten Rev. Wright. The trick doesn't work.
For some observers it ended with OJ.
As John Kobylt said of professional blacks on KFI last year, we don't care what you're angry about anymore.
What a teachable moment for Crowley.
While he sips the beer, he listens lectures about mid-passage, Nat Turner, the Scottsboro Boys, Bull Connor, institutional racism ,etc. by an 'eminent' scholar.
Obama will rub him on the head, pat him on the back, have him shake Skip's hand and tell him to "go now and sin no more".
Absolved and enlightened, Crowley professes admiration for Skip and issues an apology for being white and a police officer.
Oligonicella-
"You cannot defuse a situation where the other does not want it defused. Gates escalated it on purpose and with purpose."
OK, let's say that's true (and I think it is--I was giving Gates the benefit...). Then Gates must have an incentive to do so. And it doesn't take much to realize one incentive is the perpetuation of the "blacks as victims of racial stereotyping" dogma.
If that's the case, it's a second argument in support of abandoning racial preference policies. Whichever way you look at it (benign Gates or malevolent Gates), it argues against continuing racial policies as is.
Of course I'm of a mind that Crowley was simply doing his job. I've always understood that mouthing off to cops, whether you're right or wrong, black or white, can only lead to very bad and painful things. Gates probably did get preferential treatment...just not as much as he wanted.
Please, Dear God, tell me that Crowley isn't going to do it.
Synova -
I don't have the feeling that he's inclined to do so. From the tone he immediately took refusing to apologize, he recognizes that Gates is a race-hustling fraud and this guy tried to ruin his career and his life for personal gain.
I doubt Crowley is up to giving Gates a second bite at the apple.
Gates is just a less successful version of Obama.
The things you learn when you judge someone by their friends.
And I don't think it would necessarily reflect poorly on Crowley not to go. All he has to do is state that there is no reason that a public apology can't be made to him.
And garage... I *know* that you've no choice but to disagree with us. You have no choice, you *have* to.
The Larger Meaning thing is pretty obviously insidious.
If there is a Larger Meaning then no one has to take responsibility for their own actions or own up and ever *ever* say they were wrong.
I'm guessing if Crowley does go it will be because Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have found something on him.
I.e., blackmail.
And I don't think it would necessarily reflect poorly on Crowley not to go. All he has to do is state that there is no reason that a public apology can't be made to him.
Oh, of course it would. He would continue to show what a thin-skinned petty person he seemed to be on that day in question. He's already called a press conference and played the victim, hopefully his PR firm won't be as thick headed as some of the commentors here.
I'm guessing if Crowley does go it will be because Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have found something on him.
I.e., blackmail.
Yes, I'm sure ACORN has already infiltrated his police station with its black ops squad.
IM, if you see *Crowley* as thin skinned and petty, there is no hope for you.
I've never quite understood this idea that people are not supposed to be offended at being called a racist.
Like that is *nothing*.
I hope that the man has more personal dignity than to go bowing and scraping and toadying up to Obama and Gates just so his betters don't think he's too uppity.
BTW, remember that Obama did this same thing... acting like no one should be offended at being called a racist... during the campaign when he *pre-emtively* said that his opponents would use racist arguments against him... expect it!
And then when his opponents got angry at being called racists his sycophants loudly crowed, "See! They ARE racists!"
Because who would MIND being called a racist?
But you know what... people DO because it's about the worst thing that a person can be called by anyone.
For me, the biggest part of this whole teachable moment/larger meaning thing has been finding out from our liberal friends that white people in America routinely scream at police officers responding to 911 calls at their residence and never suffer any negative repercussions.
Turns out I've been missing out on a big part of my allotted white man/patriarchal oppressor privileges all these years. I'll have to remember to start acting crazy the next time I get pulled over for speeding or something.
Obviously Gates didn't orchestrate this nasty little episode
I'd like the Whalen woman polygraphed, please.
Crowley said he cried after people accused him of letting the basketball player die. Lightning (almost put an "e" in it) does strike twice.
Still reading the long profile of Gates someone linked yesterday. His mother sounds scary angry.
The conflict in Cambridge is a simple matter. Gates flew off the handle because he considered it beneath his dignity to identify himself to his social inferiors.
As for Gates being a black man, he owns a company that does genealogical research for African Americans who want to know more about their roots. His research into his own background, he says, has established that he is part Irish, part Jewish and more white than black. Gates wasn't offended as a black man when the officer asked for identification, given that he's mostly not black. He was offended that someone (literally) wearing a blue collar and making --what?--$60,000 a year?--could require someone of his eminence to identify himself. The problem here isn't race. It's that one of the parties involved had an ego as big as all outdoors.
Jason (the commenter) said:
"The things you learn when you judge someone by their friends."
Has anyone ever proven this tenet wrong?
"He was offended that someone (literally) wearing a blue collar and making --what?--$60,000 a year?--could require someone of his eminence to identify himself. The problem here isn't race. It's that one of the parties involved had an ego as big as all outdoors."
No kidding.
My husband is in law enforcement. Thank god, not out on the street. But he see this behavior all the time. Like the little shits that get brought in for drunk driving, who have actually said to the deputy, "Do you know who my father is." The deputies love this. Inevitablly, Daddy will bail Sonny out of this mess but not until Sonny has experienced the joy of sitting on a bench in a county jail with the great unwashed - and I do mean unwashed -- for several hours until he shuts his pie hole and shows some respect. Guys like Sgt. Crowley and others in law enforcement are putting their lives out there so you and I are safe. We have absolutely no idea what kind of crap they put up with, day after day, all day long. Gates is, to say the least, an arrogant ASS. I'm sure the debate about this will go on ad nausem, THANK YOU MR. OBAMA, and I am pretty sick of it all for a lot of reasons, but I'll stand with St. Crowley, and those of you who dont, hey, call a Harvard Professor the next time you need a policeman.
Gates wasn't offended as a black man when the officer asked for identification, given that he's mostly not black. He was offended that someone (literally) wearing a blue collar and making --what?--$60,000 a year?--could require someone of his eminence to identify himself. The problem here isn't race. It's that one of the parties involved had an ego as big as all outdoors.
Bingo. But because the ego also had a different skin color from the cop, he could also MAKE it about race. And Obama played right along (wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to opine on a case where "not all the facts are known", but there's a race buddy to defend).
How much longer until the vast majority of the voting public sees through this huckster?
@Invisible, let me add you to the list of people who need to be educated by this "teachable moment."
Here's a tidbit for you that deserves top of blog coverage:
Lucia Whalen is the Circulation and Fundraising Manager for Harvard Magazine.
http://harvardmagazine.com/contact/staff
Her email is delinked but easy to figure out from the format of the other linked email addresses on the page.
Harvard Magazine's address is 7 Ware Street. Gates' address is 17 Ware Street.
Google Maps, satellite view, zoom in. http://bit.ly/DzGe6
They were next door neighbors! They could have waved out the window to each other across the yard!
So...they were colleagues at Harvard. Harvard Magazine covers all things Harvard and Gates is supposedly some big rock star at Harvard. He has lived at that address for a long time--not new neighbors. Harvard Magazine doesn't know who their rock star, colleague, next door neighbor is? Then why should Officer Crowley know who he is?
This happened during office hours. I wonder if the whole office looked out the window and agreed a break-in was happening and Lucia was the unlucky slob to make the phone call. Her life will never be the same.
Couple of questions:
Why didn't Lucia call campus security? She was a university employee on the campus looking at a university owned building.
Did she call them? Did they tell her to call the Cambridge police?
Second question...more of an alternate reality if Gates had a functioning brain. If Gates eventually used Harvard Maintenance to secure his door, why not start with that solution? In the same situation, I would have dragged my suitcase next door (Harvard Magazine!) and asked to use the phone to call Maintenance and possibly Security to report a potential attempted break-in due to the damaged door. If Gates had done this, no incident.
With that satellite view, also note the dense population of people and buildings in that area. Crowley was prudent to arrest Gates to keep the peace, because a crowd was gathering and could have easily turned into an uncontrollable or ugly situation.
Good going, Crowley. I stand with you. And so do the Latino and Black officers who were with you during this incident. They think you conducted yourself professionally, did the right thing, and they support you 100%. Even if you knew the charges wouldn't stick, you got the inciter away from the crowd and defused the situation.
*applause*
Crowley should refuse to participate in the Presidential Sitdown Photo Op With Beers. He doesn't even have to decline the invitation himself. A lawyer can give a quickie presser saying that due to possible impending litigation, the officers will not meet with the President or Mr. Gates until all legal matters are concluded.
What's great about that is, Gates threatened a lawsuit on TV, so that laid the groundwork for this statement.
Then Crowley can turn around and sue Gates and Obama for defamation and win multimillions.
Suck on that larger meaning, Gates.
Yo mama did, last night.
Then Crowley can turn around and sue Gates and Obama for defamation and win multimillions.
I love those who proclaim how great Crowley is but want him to take the sissy way out by suing and not having the gumption to shake an outraised hand. You guys have an even lesser opinion of Sgt. Crowley than I do.
"As Professor Gates jeered at the officers, “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with.” Did Sergeant Crowley have to arrest him? Probably not. Did he allow himself to be provoked by an obnoxious buffoon? Maybe. I dunno. I wasn’t there. Neither was the president of the United States, or the governor of Massachusetts, or the mayor of Cambridge. All of whom have declared themselves firmly on the side of the Ivy League bigshot. And all of whom, as it happens, are African-American. A black president, a black governor, and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling. The boundless elasticity of such endemic racism suggests that the “post-racial America” will be living with blowhard grievance-mongers like Professor Gates unto the end of time."
From Mark Steyn
A caller to Limbaugh Thursday brings up a mooring that's missing, namely honesty. Obama's approval is falling because he's running a culture of deception.
Then you're of no use to anybody because nobody can trust you.
Gates passed that point long ago, apparently.
Lying is not really a mild offense.
Kentucky Liz:
Very good detective work.
The NYT should hire reporters with your tenacity and couriosity.
I would hope that Sgt. Crowley to ignore the circus this has become and get on with my life and my job. Suing would put him on the same level as Gates who hopes to cash in on this incident.
thx AJ. Or they could just use Google. LOL
Do "they" think we're stupid?
Google makes you smart. *g*
How much longer until the vast majority of the voting public sees through this huckster?
Inside the 50 yard line now and approaching vast.
Deb, sometimes the best answer to a lawsuit is a countersuit. Don't roll over and show the soft white underbelly. Start growling, using the nastiest cur of a lawyer you can find. Inspire a backdown.
shake an outraised hand.
Not if it includes a wagging finger...or middle one.
Invisible Man --
"I love those who proclaim how great Crowley is but want him to take the sissy way out by suing and not having the gumption to shake an outraised hand. You guys have an even lesser opinion of Sgt. Crowley than I do."
Bullshit. You want to see a cop humbled, no more. The sissy way out is to bow your head and shake the hand of someone who treated you like crap.
my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color
Anger management classes, anyone?
Not cashing his reality check?
What Gates just did (with the help of BHO) was discredit the cry of "racial profiling" for many, many people. (Cory Maye, anyone?)
Like the woman who fakes domestic violence, or parents who use kids by claiming parental sexual abuse -- it harms real victims immensely, and makes our job of being a civil society all the harder.
As a less than half black educator, Gates should be aware of this.
But Gates still BELIEVES he was racially profiled, so it must be true, because his narrative is -- his narrative. (Narrative = story. Once upon a time stories could be true or made up. Now everything is -- true.)
That says to me any "apology" from him, any "sitting down with a beer", would be totally useless. He still wants people to know he was racially profiled.
That's the larger meaning I get.
Gates needs to get back in the Ivory Tower, after he apologizes for misunderstanding and mischaracterizing the incident. Not to mention for the energy, time and money he cost the city of Cambridge, the police officer, Harvard University, and the state of Massachusetts.
Liz, i thought I heard or read that Gates was not going to sue. Maybe I'm wrong. Certainly, if Gates sues Crowley he should fight back. And drag President Shit for Brains into it too.
And stay away from the phoney love fest in the White House. Let Obama and Gates drink their beers and sing Kumbaya to each other.
Prof. Gates still doesn't understand he wasn't racially profiled. So not a good starting point for a "teaching moment" (someone tell Obama to stop saying this) on "racial profiling".
Who else thinks the police officer and Gates will have a heated conversation at the White House? I have a feeling it won't go down like the White House thinks it will.
Publicly, at least, neither Gates or Crowley's narrative overlap. Gates is going to have to say I'm sorry I think for that conversation to even begin.
I still have a hard time believing Gates was racially profiled in this very short incident. The cop got a call of a potential burglary. It ends up being Skip Gates. Has anyone seen the photo of Gates in cuffs? This is an elderly black man wearing a salmon colored pull-over polo shirt and nice slacks. He was on his way back from a trip to China so he probably has his luggage with him. What sort of profile is this?
Ethnically speaking I'm Asian.
How do I get in on this scam ... schtick ... larger meaning?
Sorry about that. I am multi- tasking and something got sent that shouldn't have.
Anyway -- what the hiroglyphics said was:
As for the tapes -- Harvard probably wants the CPD to sit on them too.
My guess ... Gates was "yelling" as in sounding like a raving lunatic, not just a loud voice. And my guess is also that Sergeant Crowley was dead calm.
I could be wrong. But my gut says not.
Gates, Obama, the left in general, won't rest until they have morphed this situation into what they want it to be as opposed to what it actually was.
So, ol' Vern's taken a break from finding corporate management jobs for presidential bimbos, has he?
Still strivin'? Man, but these organizer types have a long half-life!
I fully agree that this situation is a learning experience:
If you're an obnoxious ass who is famous in an academic discipline that has paper-thin intellectual backing, you might not want to act like you're God when the police are called and are trying to do their job to protect your worthless property.
...but I'm betting he won't get THAT message. Because that would require a DIALOGUE and not a MONOLOGUE and he really doesn't want one of those.
"I love those who proclaim how great Crowley is but want him to take the sissy way out by suing and not having the gumption to shake an outraised hand. You guys have an even lesser opinion of Sgt. Crowley than I do."
What Deb said... only if Gates sues. And that was when Crowley even brought it up... *after* Gates said he'd sue. And in that case it would be the right thing to do. People need to stand up for themselves.
But shake an outraised hand? What outraised hand? Is someone saying he's sorry? No? Then what you seem to think is so admirable is meeting an "outraised hand" in a posture of submission and making an action that will be interpreted as public contrition.
It's one thing to be a humble person. It's another to be humbled.
Invisible Man: "I love those who proclaim how great Crowley is but want him to take the sissy way out by suing and not having the gumption to shake an outraised hand."
Crowley should never shake the hand of a man who gratuitiously insulted his mother. He certainly shouldn't have a beer with him either. Obama and Gates will skin him alive. He should politely decline the White House's invitation, saying he's very sorry, but he has to re-arrange his sock drawer that night.
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