Learnable moments
Jul 28th, 2009 | By Nunzia Rider | Read more in: Politics
I don’t know about you, but I’m always up for learning things. And lately, I’ve learned a lot. Cops really don’t like it when you turn around rather than approach a DUI checkpoint, for example, even if you turned around because you thought all the flashing lights were an accident you wanted to avoid and hadn’t been drinking at all. When you do that, they will chase you down. It’s a good thing to know.
But there’ve been more than a few “teachable moments” in our very recent history, some of them not so mundane as police officers looking for drunk drivers.
Some of those moments, of course, have not so much been new information learned as simply reiterations of things already learned, just in case we were thinking that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t really true after all. But alas, it is all too true that there are those amongst us who either willfully twist the words of other people to mean something completely different or else lack the comprehension skills necessary to understand what they’re hearing.
We see this all the time in the halls of Congress. Congressman A says that his bill will do X and cost the taxpayers less money than they’re paying now. Congressman B comes along and says A’s bill will bankrupt the Treasury. Usually in such cases, the truth is somewhere in between. Or, either one of the congressmen could be right and the other completely wrong.
The Henry Louis Gates affair reiterated to me that we still have a long, long way to go in this country before we can say we are a post-racial society. You probably noticed that too, because regardless of whether you believed Gates’ side of the story or the Cambridge police sergeant’s side, there was virtually no middle ground. If you believed the sergeant, Gates’ story was bullshit. If you believed Gates, the police report was bullshit. And both sides ignored information that played against their views. Considering only Gates, some cops and a few neighbors were actually at the scene — and that much of the story took place inside Gates’ home between Gates and the sergeant — the rest of us frankly don’t know what actually happened. But that doesn’t stop us from acting as if we personally videotaped the event and have been watching it ever since.
Then of course there was the reiteration that my colleagues will focus on anything at all to avoid dealing with the real issues. That, too, came courtesy of the Gates affair. President Obama called the incident “stupid,” which it was, and my dear colleagues were off and running … ignoring the real debate we should be having as Congress prepares for its August recess without having passed any health care reform bill. And on top of that, my moronic colleagues have the temerity to say that it’s Obama’s fault they were focused on his Gates comment to the detriment of the health care debate, as if they had no fucking choice but to spend hours upon hours discussing whether his comment detracted from the matters at hand.
It’s not that my colleagues, especially those who work in Washington, are stupid. Well, some of them are. But it’s really that they’re so caught up in the twirlings of politics inside the Beltway that they have no clue what the rest of the country cares about. Sort of like federal politicians, actually.
Other things I’ve learned recently:
Some people cannot readily discern the difference between hate and anger. If I say, for example, that Mitch McConnell is an obstructionist or that Rush Limbaugh is the Supreme Leader of the Republican Party, it doesn’t mean I hate them. I actually don’t give enough of a shit about them to reach that level. But I am angry that their bullshit is fucking with our lives.
Humor is a complicated thing. Satire is often too sophisticated for huge portions of the population. Conservatives put out racist cartoons and jokes and then tell us they’re not racist, we just don’t get their humor. That just kinda reminds me of 15 year old boys who think that every fart and mention of boobs is hysterically funny. I don’t get either. Is it just me? Maybe, but somehow I doubt it. Conservatives don’t think it’s funny when I refer to them as teabaggers either. But then, they kinda brought that on themselves. I understand that. I am the queen of setting myself up and walking headlong into jokes on me. Ask anyone who knows me. The difference is that I may make a little noise about “ouch, that hurt,” but in the end I’m gonna laugh along.
I also learned this week, from Conan O’Brien no less, that the reason we’ve been unable to comprehend Sarah Palin all these months is that we’ve been trying to make sense of her words as prose, when in fact, Sarah Palin is a poet. Now, she needs some work on her delivery, but Conan took care of that by having William Shatner come by and dramatically read part of Palin’s good-bye to the governorship. Very 50s beatnik. She makes much more sense now.
Who knew? Maybe we could have saved ourselves a lot of grief during the campaign if we’d just understood. Like when Katie Couric asked if she’d ever been involved in negotiations with the Russians, it might have made more sense if we’d transcribed it like this:
We have trade missions back and forth
We do
It’s very important
When you consider
Even national security
Issues with Russia
As Putin rears his head
And comes into the air space
Of the United States of America
Where do they go?
It’s Alaska
It’s just right over the border
It is from Alaska
That we send those out
To make sure
That an eye is being kept
On this very powerful nation
Russia
Because they are right there
They are right next to our state.
Just for the record, I don’t hate Sarah Palin, nor am I, as some conservatives seem to think we liberals are, afraid of her. I do think she’s a bit of a pathetic creature, a perfect symbol for a pathetic segment of society that has long since outlived its usefulness but refuses to just fade away.
Finally, I’ve learned in recent weeks that good friends may not be many in number but they more make up for their scarcity in what they provide, that saying upfront what you’re thinking or feeling can avoid much trouble on down the road and even if the police officer doesn’t like what you just did, a little levity and a little respect, along with a thank you for doing his job, can help you avoid a citation.
Unfortunately, if you’re not a coupla white girls just ridin’ around, none of that is likely to matter much.
AWOP contributing editor, politics
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I’m struck by the juxtaposition of your run-in with the law and Professor Gates’ ordeal. Makes me wonder if things wouldn’t have gone differently for you if you’d not been a couple of white females, but instead two black or Hispanic or Middle Eastern males. Actually, I don’t really want to think how it might have gone down in that case.
Yeah, the second President Obama gave a direct, apparently unscripted answer about the Gates affair, I knew the entire remainder of his presentation was going to have to take a backseat. It’s not entirely the fault of the news media. It’s the result of having a dumbed-down society that would rather marvel the fantastic than explore the complex. And that’s something we aren’t going to fix anytime soon, I’m afraid.
Love the Palin thing, and must hurry away to post that video!
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Yup, you know it woulda been different. For one thing, it woulda lasted a lot longer and the lack of a registration card would have loomed much larger. Plus I’d probably not be sitting in front of my computer right now.
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Funny, my middle kid, a black young man raised in a white home by a crazy lesbian activist, is about to get his driver’s license. The crazy lesbian activist, me, and the black young man had a conversation which has been reiterated by me so many times, it probably makes both of us sick – that he better follow EVERY rule of the road ALL the time – use that signal to turn, don’t drive around places for no reason, and if stopped, “Yes, Sir” better be the only thing out of his mouth no matter what. Because I KNOW that he will be stopped because he’s black. I KNOW he will be held to a different standard of why he’s there or where he’s going than my oldest boy. I KNOW that if he’s driving his first car, which will most likely be a beater, in the wrong neighborhood he could end up dead if he doesn’t keep his head when stopped. I was raised by a cop – he wouldn’t have done that, another thing I KNOW. But, the thing is, I don’t know the rest of them and I do know what happens to young black men and I don’t want my son taking a chance with his life. Sounds dire, but really, ask the black community if they agree.
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I love the article and it has made me think, historically speaking, of precedents. Oddly enough, the American populace has not really ever been all that well informed on subjects and thus is never ready for a serious, soul-searching debate predicated on the merits; it’s true. Most of the time, the populace believes what it wants to believe about an issue based on their “gut reaction” – this is true about emancipation of slaves, the various “red scares” of the 20th century, and even the infamous fictional speech where George Smathers asserted his opponent had a “thespian” sister and regularly practiced “celibacy.” Conservatives, particularly neo-Conservative chickenhawks, have actually perfected the art of “gut twisting” – motivating people by twisting the fear that a complex society is being manipulated by forces unseen and in the end (if they’re not careful) Big Brother will win. For perfect proof, one need look no further than the pro-war lobby of the Bush II era; While Geo. Jr. DID serve (albeit in the National Guard) the list of war-eager beavers includes Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz all of whom committed young men and women to war when they themselves never served a day in service. The one person who did speak a word of caution about War – Colin Powell’s “you break it, you buy it” comes to mind – was essentially marginalized and eventually resigned in disgust. And how was the American public “gut twisted” into war in Iraq? With “cherry picked” information and the simplistic mantra of “a smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud” which was repeated not only by the Bush White House, but by media outlets such as Fox News, CNN, and others. The result was a populace whose fear of “the Other” – dusky-skinned people of Middle Eastern descent – was twisted into supporting the war. To prove this little thought experiment, we need only look at the reaction of the Bush II administration to another member of the Axis of Evil; North Korea. By comparison, the response to Kim Jung-Il is muted, restrained, and sedate – even before N. Korea detonated their nuclear weapons – while “all options are on the table” for Iran. Weird, isn’t it? An unstable dictator whose missiles could rain nuclear fire down on Japan is given the soft sell while an unstable regime who has NOT YET developed nuclear missiles and would find them useless against a nuclear armed Israel is greeted with the rattling of sabers? Only one explanation comes to mind; it’s easy to tell a dusky-skinned “Middle Easterner” from other groups but more difficult to discern the difference between Korean, Japanese, and Chinese…And the former make better headlines than the latter anyway.
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I don’t know about race – I think the police officer was just being a dick police officer, like most of them are.
They don’t like anyone questioning their authority or doing anything besides obeying their every power-tripping whim. I’m a white male, and have had run-ins with cops based solely on their power trip and my failure to acknowledge their power. I think Gates probably was in the same boat.
Not to dismiss the race issue, but I’m just saying it may not have been there this time (at least in the beginning – it surely is there now).
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News Writer
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July 29th, 20092009-07-29T05:42:59ZF jS, Y at 1:42 am2009-07-29T05:42:59Zg:i a
Entirely possible. We really don’t know for sure, because none of us were there. But you’re sure right that a lot of cops are dicks. Fortunately for us two white girls, the cop who pulled us over wasn’t, and we weren’t about to give him a reason to be. I just wonder if it might have been reason enough, in that case, if we had been something other than what we are.
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So it seems the teaching continues. According to the AP in a story released at 4:21pm on 29 August, the original 911 caller never mentioned race and, when pressed, she siad that one of the men might be Hispanic. She also contradicted the arresting officer by saying she never said there were “two black men with backpacks” as the arresting officer stated both to the media and in his official report. Instead, the original caller said the only words the officer said were “stay right here” and went off to find the perpetrator(s). Full story:( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32203737/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity )
I think that the lesson here is a) the Cambridge police acted stupidly b) Professor Gates overreacted c) the President might have handled it better (or stayed out of it) and d) race is still an issue in America, especially when cops are looking for “criminals.”
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Amen to that, Michael. In fact, the 911 caller’s version of the story was corroborated last week — by the release of the 911 call itself.
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Old Injun been learning so much lately that my brain hurts. Before this even hit the Media, my pal in Boston, who happens to be a pretty biased, ultra Catholic, shithead when at work, sent me an e-mail saying the shit was about to hit the fan because a Cambridge cop over-reacted. My pal is a detective, still on the job at 61, and a GREAT friend & family man who’s welcome in my lodge anyime. So, what you say about ‘hate’ isn’t just on the money, it’s near perfect. Only thing I think you missed is that you can heartily dislike a person’s politics, religion, and actions at work that I’d never have tolerated, and still LIKE the person. Taking Mary & James Carville into account, ANYTHING is possible if we only try.
As for cops being dicks, a lot of that comes from several causes and is often just a protective facade adopted to surive dealing with the worst society has to offer. Some is ‘institutional’ memory passed down from the ‘Old Guys’, and a lot is just due to being subjected to repeated stress induced adrenaline rushes every shift. At least, like in the military, counselling is more available and, rather than taboo, is usually mandatory and heavily promoted. Any position that engenders more than normal power and influence carrries the risk of abuse. The hardest part of my personal work was to refrain from using force in favor of discourse and cooperation.
Last item from Mouthy Injun concerns the ‘Birthers’ and Obama’s right to the presidency. When I went to fetch the little Irish gal from the hospital I happened to wander onto an FM station airing a super-right wing fringe host talking about the issue. As a result, I learned my daughter, who was born in a Chinese Hospital in Beijing when she arrived a tad early, isn’t really a citizen by their (il)logical reasoning(?). I always thought she wanted to see the Great Wall & used a business trip to our Embassy there to see it. Now I realize she’s really part of a Manchurian Candidate style conspiracy ginned up by the damned Commies!! Puts me in a real bind as she’s been considering running for office, but I think the fact she resides in Manila, Philippines (being married to a Pillipino Doctor) will play a minor role in solving my dilema if she does run.
Sorry to ramble on so. Go back to DVR’d shows about removing a group that’s ‘invaded’ your country and taken control at the point of a rifle. Old Injun maybe become ‘Freedom Fighter’ & take back Country, except South Carolina, not want them. Bad influence on Tribal peace quest;)
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