When McNamara died this month, many recalled his status as Exhibit A of what David Halberstam labeled “the best and the brightest,” the brilliant and arrogant Kennedy-Johnson team that blundered into a quagmire. Far less was said about how McNamara, at his height, wielded that image to spin a dazzled Washington press establishment on his misplaced optimism about the war. The Washington Post’s obituary, pointedly or not, included a photo of a smiling McNamara enjoying cocktails with a powerful syndicated Post columnist (and Vietnam apologist), Joseph Alsop. The obituary also noted that McNamara served on The Post’s board — a sinecure he was awarded after he had helped send some 50,000 Americans to pointless deaths.
[….]Watching many of the empty Cronkite tributes in his own medium over the past week, you had to wonder if his industry was sticking to mawkish clichés just to avoid unflattering comparisons. If he was the most trusted man in America, it wasn’t because he was a nice guy with an authoritative voice and a lived-in face. It wasn’t because he “loved a good story” or that he removed his glasses when a president died. It was because at a time of epic corruption in the most powerful precincts in Washington, Cronkite was not at the salons and not in the tank.
On a more surprising note, MoDo adds a rare note of sanity to the Gatesgate debate:
As we reflect on the arc of civil rights dramas from Jim Crow to Jim Crowley, my friend John Timoney, the police chief of Miami, observes: “There’s a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, ‘Don’t make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave.’ ”
As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I’m struggling.
No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.
But maybe her reaction isn’t so surprising. I doubt police detectives have much patience for cops who waste time dragging people to the squadroom for talking back.
Punchy
Dowd is such an idiot. Doesn’t she know that Gates is black? That means, of course, that the cop’s life was in danger!
Tom
I’m glad you picked up that Rich piece. It was outstanding. I liked this:
The whole column is a must-read.
amk
The real test is how a journalist responds when people in high places are doing low deeds out of camera view and getting away with it. Vietnam and Watergate, not Kennedy and Neil Armstrong, are what made Cronkite Cronkite.
You tell them, Rich.
General Winfield Stuck
No, he wasn’t, but he did initially support a ground war in Vietnam, and only turned against the war after Tet. This is the problem with judging characters of history 40 years down the road. After the 1962 missile crisis, nearly every American lived in abject fear of “The Red Menace” and generally supported efforts to contain it. The problem with Vietnam was that it was misread by the Johnson crew as a fight against hardcore spread of Communism. When it was almost entirely a nationalistic movement for north south re-unification and to throw out foreign armies that had occupied the country for a long time.
In fact, Ho Chi Minh initially after ww2 and before, tried to partner up with the US and the west, but was rebuffed for even having of whiff of socialist intent. This belligerent reactionary rejection of any country or leader that wasn’t hardcore capitalist was repeated by American governments across the globe, from south America to Cuba (Castro also reached out to Washington) to Africa and had long term disasterous results for our national interests. Some of which we still see today with lingering hostility of these countries toward us.
geg6
That Rich column is a thing of transcendant beauty. I can’t remember the last time I found myself yelling “Hell yeah!” out loud after reading a pundit. I don’t think even Krugman, whom I adore, ever elicited that reaction. And, yes, on the MoDo. Much as she is abhorrent almost every other day, she was unusually intelligent and thoughtful today. It won’t last. She be right back to being a shallow idiot in no time. But kudos to MoDo today.
Martin
Having quite a few police and firemen in the family, easily their biggest gripe was how the public viewed them. They all recognized that a poor public image (NYC in the 70s/80 – nobody had a worse public image than police and fire there) made their job MUCH harder and MUCH more dangerous.
They talked about it all the time and commented how hard they individually worked to help change that image, but as individuals they couldn’t get very far. My unbelievably white godfather (the firefighter godfather, not the cop godfather – yeah, it works like that) lived in Queens but volunteered to work a station in Harlem. Even on his days off he’d respond to calls. He’d recount what the drive to the call was like when he was in the engine – people would throw rocks and bricks at the truck. Stations in black neighborhoods were terribly understaffed, and often by crews that didn’t want to be in that neighborhood. There weren’t many black firefighters at the time and the community constantly suspected the companies responded to fires in white neighborhoods first, or fastest, or would let buildings in black neighborhoods burn, or set the fires themselves. I don’t doubt there was some isolated truth to that, but my godfather worked there to help change that. There just weren’t enough like him and it took a LONG time to make any headway.
I know that worry about the public attitude hasn’t changed, at least in NYC. Based on that, I imagine quite a few cops have little patience for that crap. Does anyone think that it’s easier this week to do the job in Cambridge than it was last week? That’s the bottom line to these guys.
Charity
MoDo is the most inconsistent columnist I’ve ever read. She has moments of actual insight, but it’s drowned out by weeks of utter dreck. Feh.
Glad to hear she nailed it today though. And count me in for another “Hell yeah” on Mr. Rich.
Comrade Darkness
Obama is pulling a 1984 with the beer at the white house between Crowley and Gates. In the book the way the government negated the power of the head or symbol of a movement was to co-opt them to the government’s side. It was far more damaging than ignoring them, and far more productive than making them martyrs.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I just find it an under appreciated part of Orwell’s book and am always surprised it isn’t used more.
Derelict
I still think Jon Stewart really pegged it with his interview with Brian Williams. Williams was going on about how Cronkite was his hero, his role model, the newsman everyone aspired to be. That prompted Stewart to spit out, “How’s it feel to come up so short?”
Comrade Jake
On Friday NPR had a segment where they interviewed two police chiefs. Both clearly implied that the officer should have taken his lumps and walked away after establishing there was no break-in. Good cops don’t let personal insults turn a lousy situation into an out-of-control spectacle.
Brick Oven Bill
There are 7 Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These are the studies that freed us from the autocratic rule of the Catholic Church and brought on the Enlightenment. The study of racial profiling is not a Liberal Art and, in my opinion, does not warrant study outside of police departments.
Nonetheless, the networks are backing up Gates’ work and trumpeting a statistic that blacks are incarcerated at 7 times the rate of whites, and implying that this is because of discrimination, which is, of course, a bad thing.
In either case, here is a paper on the subject, and the black 2005 incarceration rates are reportedly not 7 times, but 5.6 times the rate of whites. It breaks down the rates by states.
What the paper does not address, and I wish it would, is why Washington DC, with a justice system run by blacks, has a black incarceration rate of 19.1 times that of whites. Perhaps Henry Gates will delve into this issue on his book/movie tour.
Interestingly, in the worst state ever, Alabama, the black/white incarceration rate ratio is only 3.5:1. In the best state ever, Vermont, the ratio is 12.5:1. I believe that this may be because Vermonters are closet racists.
Montysano
@Comrade Darkness:
For Obama to admit that he spoke poorly, and then invite Gates and Crowley, is Smart Politics 101. Bush was simply never that smart, nor would his ego allow him to admit error. I don’t really get the conflation with 1984.
Bob In Pacifica
First, JFK said the if the war was to be won the Vietnamese would have to win it themselves. Then he issued NSAM 263 which ordered troop withdrawals from Vietnam. Then JFK was bumped off. Then the week after that LBJ signed NSAM 273, which laid explicit groundwork, a la a Gulf of Tonkin-type incident, to get a troop surge going there. And E. Howard Hunt forged State Department cables in order to make it look like JFK knew of and approved Nguyen’s assassination. ‘Nuff said there.
Two, I’ll leave Cronkite hagiography to others.
Three, Crowley set up Gates. Compare and contrast Gates’ description of events and Crowley’s police report and see which one is more surreal. Both are linked to my analysis here:
http://southofheaven.typepad.com/south_of_heaven/2009/07/habitating-while-black.html
As far as the invite for a beer strategy, I think it’s a perfect strategy for Obama. On the surface he looks magnaminous. But I really doubt Crowley will show up, which will make him and his supporters look small. And the reason Crowley won’t show up is because the White House knows what I lay out, beginning with the whole driver’s license scam that Crowley does in the report. Crowley knows he’s dirty and will be exposed with any real examination of his version of events. If played right Crowley’s superiors will be sputtering trying to explain how they said Crowley went by the book when he violated state law and was dishonest in his police report and lured Gates out of the house to slap a phony disorderly conduct charge on him on his own porch. Then the question to Crowley will be, “If not racism, what?” It’ll be a “When did you stop beating your wife?” teaching moment.
What Obama needs to do is have someone besides the White House lower the boom on Crowley. The governor of Mass., the mayor of Cambridge, the ACLU. Someone else takes the political weight of the investigation. But that’s my take.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill:
There are 7 Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These are the studies that freed us from the autocratic rule of the Catholic Church and brought on the Enlightenment. The study of racial profiling is not a Liberal Art and, in my opinion, does not warrant study outside of police departments.
It’s been clear for some time that wingnuts typically regard history not as a study or a discipline, but as an exercise in imaginative free-association. I’d always thought this was an accident, now it turns out, it was policy.
Doesn’t explain why wingnuts also phail in Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music though. Must be from putting all their eggs in the Geometry of Triangulation basket…
A Mom Anon
@Montysano:
It also actually defused the situation pretty much for everyone but the wingnuts (big surprise). It gives the cops nothing to bitch about,allows for conversation with Gates and Crowley to learn from each other,and makes wingnuts look like immature brats for keeping it going with their whining. What’s not to love? Gates and Crowley were both doubling down with refusals to apologize,Obama got them both to accept an invite to sit down together.
Funny how someone with some maturity can problem solve,isn’t it?
jenniebee
@Montysano:
Obama did the same smart politics move when he made a point in his press conference of thanking Republicans for their help on the health care bill and mentioning that even if their votes weren’t cast for the bill, their ideas had been included in it. For years, Democrats have been spluttering on the sidelines as Republicans out-Calvinballed them. Obama gets how to play Calvinball and get what he wants out of it.
Bob In Pacifica
By the way, anyone else wonder why Sergeant Crowley, first on the scene of an alleged break-in by TWO black men, probably criminals, maybe armed, strolls up to the front door without waiting a minute or two for his backup to show? In the real world that’s the way a cop gets killed.
Crowley knew before he walked up to the door that there was no break-in, no danger. That makes everything after the cop getting out of his car just Crowley gaming Gates.
Bob In Pacifica
A Mom Anon, I missed Crowley’s acceptance. Link?
tgs
So what does a pushback against corporate media look like? As much as I like John Stewart we proles are screwed if he’s our champion.
BOB, you know those things called “projects?” Maybe the AA community would be a little better off if we hadn’t thrown them
into concrete reservations after reconstruction.
Davis X. Machina
There are 7 Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These are the studies that freed us from the autocratic rule of the Catholic Church and brought on the Enlightenment.
Strange that for the best part of a millenium you had to go to a Catholic university to study them. To the best of my recollection, Oxford and Cambridge, the Sorbonne and Montpellier, Bologna and Pisa, Salamanca and Kracow weren’t run by the Methodists, or by Ministries of Education.
A Mom Anon
@Bob In Pacifica:
I don’t have one,I either heard Obama say it during his impromptu press conference (on Friday? )or in the media chatter afterwards. I can’t get linkage to work for me here,but try the Cambridge Paper or Boston.com
geg6
Davis X. Machina FTW.
Bob In Pacifica
Mom Anon, I thought I heard it too. But I didn’t. My Girlfriend thought she heard it. We searched but we could never find it in any story. I think that there’s a presumption here. But I bet he doesn’t show. After what he did he can’t. His best hope is hiding behind the right-wingers who won’t discuss the facts of the case, just their own anger.
Incertus
@Comrade Jake: On Friday NPR had a segment where they interviewed two police chiefs. Both clearly implied that the officer should have taken his lumps and walked away after establishing there was no break-in. Good cops don’t let personal insults turn a lousy situation into an out-of-control spectacle.
There was a piece in the Times yesterday that did much the same thing, only they got comments from police who backed Crowley up as well. The difference in the language between the two groups is striking. I think that some cops don’t get that whole “respect my authoritah!” bit was making fun of them.
wilfred
Now there’s a good question. I’d say something like this, not this blog in particular, but blogs in general, the last best hope for a Habermasian public sphere.
The country is polluted with factionalism dsiguised as politics at the moment – egged on by corporate media and their soulmates/henchmen in the blogosphere. That will take at least 10 years to run itself out, I’m afraid, during which the next generation will grow up with and into communications forms that bypass traditional news media.
Besides, It’s not corporate control of media that matters but corporate control of politics. Radical change in the process of politics, plebiscites for example, is inevitable with increased electronic communications systems/networks.
kay
@Bob In Pacifica:
“beginning with the whole driver’s license scam that Crowley does in the report. ”
Be careful with that. I noticed that Gate’s lawyer says Gates offered both the drivers license and the Harvard ID, “both have his picture on them”.
What we don’t know is if the driver’s license has a current address. I feel as if Gates lawyer would have said that, because that’s just determinative. If the address was on there, Crowley has to go. Done.
People don’t update their address on their driver’s license because it’s a pain in the ass, and you have to get a new one before the usual expiration date, and pay for that. It’s a really common problem.
The practice here is to ask for a piece of mail if there’s an address mismatch: utility bill, something from a service provider or state entity.
We might have to wait and see who gave what to whom, and what information was where. If you can find me something that says the current address was on there, you’re right.
HRA
“I doubt police detectives have much patience for cops who waste time dragging people to the squadroom for talking back.”
I believe wasting time was one of the motives for the police in this case. The other one was saving face in front of the onlookers and the campus police.
Martin has put it very well. I have to add when we had the 1st Black policeman in the small city where I finished growing up and later lived, they had to take him out of the predominantly Black ward. He suffered constant vocal abuse and threats. It was sad to see. It eventually ruined his health by becoming alcoholic and he died at a young age.
I, too, have law officers (local, state and federal) in my family. All of them said it was over when Gates showed his ID and it should have been followed by an apology to Gates before leaving the premises.
A Mom Anon
@Bob In Pacifica:
According to the Cambridge Chronicle,Crowley did accept. I’m sorry,I’m a technology retard,I can’t give you a link,but I just read it.
SiubhanDuinne
@ Bob in Pacifica / 12:24 pm
That’s a very good point, and I confess it never occurred to me until you pointed it out, that Crowley must have known there was no danger b/c he didn’t wait for backup.
The word “disingenuous” comes to mind . . . .
Brick Oven Bill
Another interesting statistic from the paper is that the worst place for a Hispanic to face the justice system in America is in the liberal Northeast. In the bad southern states, there is no real difference between white and Hispanic incarceration rates.
The Northeast is thus the get off of my lawn part of the country. This is where the wealthy Democrats live.
Incertus
@kay: What we don’t know is if the driver’s license has a current address. I feel as if Gates lawyer would have said that, because that’s just determinative. If the address was on there, Crowley has to go. Done.
If my memory serves, Gates is pretty much a fixture in Cambridge–he’s been at Harvard for a while, so I don’t think it’s much of an assumption that his DL would have the correct address on it.
Montysano
@tgs:
That’s the question, eh? Some sort of Starve The Beast strategy: do not watch their programming for any reason, period, and a boycott against any and all advertisers who support the MSM.
This would require the majority of the citizenry to be engaged, thoughtful, and post-partisan. There’s yer problem.
DougJ
@Martin
Thanks. My take is that there a lot of policemen who feel the way your family does about this.
lovethebomb
For an ex theatre critic, Rich is a hell of a writer, often the best out there. Maybe I should study the theatre and get some of that mojo. He is also excellent on TV. He’s the new Cronkite IMO.
Evolved Deep Southerner
OT, but can any of you computer people tell me why BJ is coming up all funky-looking this afternoon? Looked fine this morning. Now it looks like somebody is typing the whole thing on an old Underwood and transmitting it out.
Anybody else having this problem?
Edit: And I’ll be damned, as soon as I posted my comment, it came back up looking normal. Nevermind. Maybe. Also.
geg6
Evolved Deep Southerner: No, no problem here but that may be because I’m on the CrackBerry.
DecidedFenceSitter
@A Mom Anon:
Were you referring to this article?
skippy
i don’t remember, what beer did they drink in 1984?
ratskeller? st. thought police girl? memory hole heinekin? sam adams ignorance is strength seasonal ale?
Hammy
Here’s your link:
Axelrod optimistic about Gates-Crowley beer meeting
It seems likely that the much talked about White House meeting between Henry Louis Gates and his arresting officer will come to fruition, White House senior David Axelrod said today.
Martin
I think it looks like every major print news publication going bankrupt and the major network news desks getting strangled for ratings.
Cable is doing okay, but anyone can survive there – witness HGTV’s 24/7 showcase of watching people buy houses.
I don’t see how this blog can bitch about the death of the newspaper and demand a pushback against the media at the same time. And let’s not pretend that the papers are that much better at it – NYTimes and WaPo are the top two names in Iraq war cheerleading, doing more damage than even Fox News managed.
Brick Oven Bill
Victory Gin.
While there is no data for the worst and best states, Alabama and Vermont, there is data for Georgia, which is a pretty racist State, and Connecticut, which is a pretty liberal idealistic State. You are more likely to be incarcerated as a white than as a Hispanic in Senator Chambliss’ Georgia. In Senator Dodd’s Connecticut, you are 6.6 times as likely to be incarcerated as a Hispanic than as a white.
This is actually pretty interesting stuff. Right along the lines of the Democratic leadership denying school vouchers to kids from the Washington DC neighborhoods, to keep them away from the political class’ children.
kay
@Incertus:
It’s University housing, and Harvard owns the property. He may have lived there for years, and that may be reflected in a current address on his driver’s license, but I just don’t know. It’s a public record. No big deal to find out.
If that isn’t true, then Crowley was in this position: Gates has just handed him a driver’s license with a different address than the one on the house. That changes the situation, and puts it back on Gates to provide an address that matches. It’s nitpicky as hell, but it probably matters.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
“This nails it…”
No, actually, it doesn’t.
“‘McNamara served on The Post’s board — a sinecure he was awarded after he had helped send some 50,000 Americans to pointless deaths.'”
The 50,000 American deaths served their intended purpose. Three million indochinese were murdered and their countries received the most intense bombing in world history. Decades later Vietnam is only barely getting its head above water, and Laos and Cambodia are still basket cases. The lesson is obvious; follow Washington’s orders or receive the biggest collective punishment imaginable.
“‘at a time of epic corruption in the most powerful precincts in Washington, Cronkite was not at the salons and not in the tank.'”
Jesus Christ, YES HE WAS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/cronkite-and-vietnam-beyo_b_241311.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon07202009.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5CF5pfVzLI
The video is only the trailer, but contains a brief clip showing Cronkite in full Dubya regalia looking forward to a little of the old ultraviolence on the helpless peasants below. That was 1965. By early 1968 he had decided that the carpet bombing of peasants was mired in “stalemate”. That is to say, he had finally adopted what was by then a very popular position; achieve maximal victory or go home.
How long does someone have to be dead before we can stop making up stuff about him?
Tony J
Did I really just see a clip from CNN where Howie Kurtz and a panel including Roger Simon from the Politico don’t just slam the Birthers as racists, but also accuse the GOP and the MSM of giving these people credibility and airtime because they don’t want to talk about the important issues facing the country?
I think I did, but apparently I missed the meeting where it was decided things like that were allowed to happen on American TV, so I’m doubtful.
It looked real, though.
Hammy
Skip Gates says his license has his home address.
My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering. He said ‘I’m here to investigate a 911 call for breaking and entering into this house.’ And I said ‘That’s ridiculous because this happens to be my house. And I’m a Harvard professor.’ He says ‘Can you prove that you’re a Harvard professor?’ I said yes, I turned and closed the front door to the kitchen where I’d left my wallet, and I got out my Harvard ID and my Massachusetts driver’s license which includes my address and I handed them to him. And he’s sitting there looking at them.
me
Worthless statistic. The paper says black prison rate is 3797 per 100000. The census bureau says in 2008 estimated pop is 621270 and in 2007 0.8% of them are black. That makes ~5000 black people in Vermont and ~250 of them in prison. The sample is too small to be valid.
kay
@Hammy:
Thanks. I looked for “current address” in the lawyer’s account of what happened and couldn’t find it.
Martin
What’s more, the lack of diversity across New England is a long established problem. The difference between northeast liberals and southern conservatives is that the liberals recognize that there’s a problem and are trying to address it, while the conservatives recognize there’s a problem and decide to put up a bigger confederate flag to make clear that they like it that way (or repeatedly demand to see birth certificates, because there’s no way a darkie could be fairly elected).
Unfortunately, wingnuts can’t seem to come to terms with the notion that incarceration rates in DC and incarceration rates in Vermont suffer from entirely different problems. Rather than offer up any kind of solution, they just say ‘keep it rolling’ while decrying any other effort to address the problem as a failure because the things that worked in Oakland didn’t have a corresponding effect in Minnesota, and the things that help African Americans weren’t helping Latinos (because all brown people are interchangeable, yo).
Brick Oven Bill
New Hampshire- 9.22:1
Mississippi- 3.46:1
Just Some Fuckhead
In keeping with BIP’s fiction, I believe it will eventually be proven that Crowley killed Reggie Lewis and planned to kill Gates before his backup arrived. He won’t go the White House because he’d never be able to kill President Obama while in the national spotlight.
As I’ve indicated several times now, there is no evidence of racial bias on Crowley’s part. There is no evidence racism played a part in any of the events that transpired. I am willing to consider the argument that Gates acted in a prejudicial manner by judging Crowley’s procedural police actions on the basis of the color of his skin but even if such a thing were ultimately proven it simply does not matter and it’s not the sort of bias most of us are looking for here anyway.
The arrest of Gates (by two white officers and one black officer if what I read on the AP wire was correct) was a pretty typical “contempt of cop” arrest. Unnecessary and unjustifiable, certainly, but a very common occurence in the police state we live in. There’s no reason to fictionalize the events to polarize the situation on race. A national moratorium on cop power abuse and overreach is a benefit for all of us regardless of race.
amk
@Brick Oven Bill:
bob, If you’re trying to paint dems as racists by citing some inane and unfounded statistics, you’re stupider than I thought.
Ailuridae
MoDo is an idiot of immense proportions especially dealing with white ethnicity and class issues. Everyone knows this because before he lost his greater shit* Somerby created the blog itself by (in painstaking detail) pointing this out.
Its interesting that when Dowd agrees in this instance it is “this is so obvious even Maureen Dowd can see it” instead of “why am I agreeing with Maureen Down when I know her to be an ‘idiot of immense proportions especially dealing with white ethnicity and class issues'”
A Mom Anon
@DecidedFenceSitter:
No,there’s a shorter version where the last sentence says Crowley accepted immediately. That article has a link to the one you’ve got there.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ailuridae:
That is a very clever point.
Tokyokie
SiubhanDuinne
@ Bob in Pacifica / 12:24 pm
That’s a very good point, and I confess it never occurred to me until you pointed it out, that Crowley must have known there was no danger b/c he didn’t wait for backup.
The word “disingenuous” comes to mind . . . .
Crowley knew that there hadn’t been a break-in when he looked through the window on the door and saw an old black man inside. Burglars don’t bust down the front door in broad daylight (at least in that neighborhood), and old black men don’t fit the profile of housebreakers.
Brick Oven Bill
The Democrats loves the votes. And then deny DC school vouchers. The Republicans support school vouchers, believing that education can equalize outcomes.
South Carolina- 4.47:1
Massachusetts – 8.13:1
I think we had better lay off the racist southern/Republican white people comments. They do not appear to be fair.
Bob
Cronkite was a corporate, insider newsman. Not a liberal, not a conservative. The right’s seething hatred of him seems to have misled a lot of younger liberals into believing he was one of them. He wasn’t. His reporting in WW II – while brave (he really was on the line of fire some of the time) was pure Army propaganda. I’m not sure I’d blame him for that – it was the only acceptable format for the time. Still, I ain’t gonna laud him for it.
Tet was his come-to-Jesus moment in Vietnam, and frankly, it sums up everything that was wrong with him. All his hand-wringing about being misled by the Army brass while true, certainly raises the question “wft was he reporting up until then?” He had accepted Army PAO at face value. He didn’t turn on the war because of the horrible cost extracted on the Vietnamese people and America’s young; he turned on it because he was shocked that anyone had had the nerve to lie to him. It was about him; not Agent Orange; not carpet bombing; not any of the human waste. Were he half the journalist those lauding him today seem to think he was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution would have been the tipping point for him.
Here’s a real journalist writing two weeks after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution:
http://www.ifstone.org/weekly/IFStonesWeekly-1964aug24.pdf
Now it’s not a 100% accurate by what we know today accounting of what actually took place. Still, note how Stone digs in and asks questions, refusing to accept the official version of what happened. This was available for all to peruse for 15 cents. For 15 freakin’ cents Cronkite could have been spoon-fed the lies being pushed on the American public. Yet not until Tet – 3 ½ years later – did it dawn on Cronkite that there might be something a tad amiss vis-à-vis our little war in Vietnam.
Hammy
Crowley knew that there hadn’t been a break-in when he looked inside and saw the older gentleman on the phone. Gates says that he was talking to the Harvard property managment and the police report says Gates was on the phone. Burglars don’t break into homes and start making phone calls on the home phone.
SiubhanDuinne
@ Brick Oven Bill / 1:11 pm
You say that Georgia is a “pretty racist state” and you refer to “worst” and “best” states. These terms are subjective and I’d be grateful for a reality-based definition. By the way, I’m not taking a position that Georgia either IS “pretty racist” or is NOT “pretty racist.” I’ve lived in Georgia for 25+ years, and there’s no question the state has a history of racism, and that some parts of the state — and some Georgia residents — are more racist than others. But racism (or indeed, any “-ism”) is not easy to measure, yet by tossing around these terms in a series of posts bristling with statistics, you imply that racism is quantifiable.
A Mom Anon
@Brick Oven Bill:
You do understand that school vouchers pay a small percentage of the cost of going to a private school don’t you? It’s like a coupon for percentage off the grand total. Private school tuition is more expensive than alot of colleges. In my neighborhood the tuition for private high school is 15-18 K a YEAR. I could get maybe 6 K off that if I’m lucky with a voucher. That’s still more than sending my kid to state college. Giving someone 5K off a 15-20K a year tuition doesn’t mean alot if you’re poor(or even middle class) in the first place. All vouchers do is suck money away from public schools into private ones. Why you keep bringing that up when it has zero to do with anything being discussed here is beyond me.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
I’ve lived in both the Carolinas and Mass. To handwave Mass, or New England in general, as some sort of liberal utopia for African Americans is beyond laughable. As I put it to some friends, “at least in South Carolina, I know when someone’s pissed about my race.”
Brick Oven Bill
Racism is I’d argue quantifiable by viewing incarceration statistics of a new population, namely Hispanics. By this measure, the south is not at all racist. The homeland of racism, per the statistics, is the Northeast.
The numbers suggest that the most racist place in America is Washington DC, where white people do not run things.
I hope that Professor Gates is honest about this in his book/movie tour. Perhaps he can come up with a line: ‘this is what it feels like to be a black man in the Washington DC justice system’.
zorch
on the tv news last nite, there was local video of crowley getting into his car to go to work, cornered by reporter and camera. reporter asked if crowley was satisfied with obama’s latest, and got an emphatic ‘yes’. next question: going to the beerfest? … got a mumbled ‘not likely’.
Hammy
@zorch: I saw that news clip too and the reporter asked Crowley if he was going to Martha’s Vineyard for the beer. His response showed confusion because the invitation for the beer was not to go to the Vineyard.
SiubhanDuinne
@ BOB / 2:19 pm
I agree that incarceration rates MAY be ONE measure of institutionalised racism (although other posts upthread take issue with the validity of the data). But “racism,” “sexism,” “ageism,” “classism,” “looksism,” and “-isms” of all stripes, are — as you are surely bright enough to know* — more nuanced and subjective than mere data allow.
SiubhanDuinne
@ BOB / 2:19 pm
I agree that incarceration rates MAY be ONE measure of institutionalised racism (although other posts upthread take issue with the validity of the data). But “racism,” “sexism,” “ageism,” “classism,” “looksism,” and “-isms” of all stripes, are — as you are surely bright enough to know* — more nuanced and subjective than mere data allow.
* (I’m pretty sure there’s going to be blowback on this.)
Ailuridae
@SiubhanDuinne:
I actually think the extent of racism et al (which is pretty vast) can be pretty accurately quantified through statistics. BOB is just deliberately cherry-picking data.
I am sometimes surprised that people assume states with major urban centers like Chicago or NYC presume the entire state is that way. The famous quip that PA, for instance, is basically Alabama between Pittsburgh and PHI is very accurate not just for PA but for the Northeast and Midwest broadly. You can basically look at a map of NY and if you are not in the NYC metro area and not withing 30 miles of the Hudson or Mohawk you don’t want to be anywhere in that state if you are African-American, Hispanic, Muslim and I would argue Jewish.
Screamin' Demon
@Bob:
Yeah. The non-liberal corporatist who advocated for the leftist’s fondest dream of a world government in his autobiography. Writing about how the world can avoid a third world war:
World government…yielding up sovereignty…world executive and parliament of nations…sounds more than vaguely communistic to me.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill: You know, BoB, only you could take a paper that shows that the ratio of population percentages of African Americans and Hispanics incarcerated to population percentages of Whites incarcerated is 5.6:1 and 2:1, respectively, and insist that it proves the absence of racism.
Or scratch that, it probably isn’t only you, more’s the pity.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
“World government…yielding up sovereignty…world executive and parliament of nations…sounds more than vaguely communistic to me.”
Well, no, it’s not exactly communistic. Cronkite was more like a grandfatherly version of the voice in Donald Fagen’s “IGY” than anything else.
Bob
@ Screamin’ Demon “World government…yielding up sovereignty…world executive and parliament of nations…sounds more than vaguely communistic to me.”
Oh, come on, you can’t be serious. The old gasbag said a lot of shit. I all but puked during one of the TV eulogies where they showed clips of him at various times to include in retirement. He was asked what one lesson he felt he had learned over the years and said (paraphrasing from memory) “that the American people are capable of tackling any problem with their can-do spirit.” How’s that for a deep insight? Sounds like something Jonah Goldberg would have coughed up in an anti-Obama screed. So that means Walter was a hard-right winger?
He was on TV every for several decades. Did he ever use the power of that position to challenge American hegemony? To promote a world government? To demand we yield our sovereignty?
Bob
@ Screamin’ Demon “World government…yielding up sovereignty…world executive and parliament of nations…sounds more than vaguely communistic to me.”
Oh, come on, you can’t be serious. The old gasbag said a lot of shit. I all but puked during one of the TV eulogies where they showed clips of him at various times to include in retirement. He was asked what one lesson he felt he had learned over the years and said (paraphrasing from memory) “that the American people are capable of tackling any problem with their can-do spirit.” How’s that for a deep insight? Sounds like something Jonah Goldberg would have coughed up in an anti-Obama screed. So that means Walter was a hard-right winger?
He was on TV every for several decades. Did he ever use the power of that position to challenge American hegemony? To promote a world government? To demand we yield our sovereignty?
ksmiami
Hmm – how to disempower the media – quit watching, work hard and threaten their advertising. In other words, it comes down to MONEY MONEY MONEY. I want Murdoch to die in penury with a spiked instrument up his __s
ominira
@Derelict: I felt bad for Brian Williams for five seconds after Stewart said that. That must have hurt a bit.
iluvsummr
Bob In Pacifica
I still have my doubts that Crowley will show up. As others have pointed out, Gates said he handed over his license and it had his address on it. No cop investigating someone’s identity would not ask for a driver’s license. Mass licenses have photos on them.
Another thought, and someone suggested it to me, is that many police departments now have their squad cars equipped with computer terminals which are hooked into the DMV. They can cross-check home addresses with driver’s licenses. If Cambridge has that kind of system then it’s possible that Crowley already knew Gates lived there and knew what he looked like before he got out of his car.
Comrade Mary
@Tony J: It’s twoo! It’s twoo!
Comrade Mary
Ah. And I see you were already in that thread. Never mind (but it’s still a nice video for anyone else to watch).
mclaren
Since this site no longer recognizes A HREF inline references correctly, it’s no longer possible to link to other news sources.
Too bad.
That makes comments much less useful.
Comrade Darkness
@mclaren:
Will it blend?
Huh?