Roger’s Rules

July 25th, 2009 8:00 am

Calibrating Your Equivocation

I am as sick of the Henry-Louis-Gates-Sgt.-Crowley-Obama triangle as anyone. I hope they’ll soon convene at the White House for that beer Sgt. Crowley recommended and patch up the whole mess. Advice to Professor Gates: refrain from acting on your offer to “educate” Sgt. Crowley about the history of racism in America: the sort of patronizing grievance mongering that works with Harvard students won’t go down well with a forthright, no-nonsense chap like Sgt. Crowley. (How do I know? Watch this interview and then ask yourself how well Sgt. Crowley would take to Prof. Gates’s efforts to “educate” him.)

I also have a bit of advice for President Obama: lay off the English language. You made a big mistake when you said on national television that the Cambridge police department “acted stupidly” when it arrested Prof. Gates. The real stupidity, as you must now realize, was yours. And you only made things worse when, attempting to extinguish the firestorm of criticism you sparked, you went back on television and offered this preposterous non-apology:

Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently.

“Calibrated those words differently”? What can that possibly mean? One thing it assuredly does not mean is: “I’m sorry. I said something stupid about an issue that, as President of the United States, was none of my business anyway.” Here’s what I think “calibrated those words differently” means:

I, Barack Obama, just put my foot in it but I can’t quite bring myself to admit that. I know there’s been a lot of talk about my election signalling a new “post-racial” chapter in American history but, really, I am as obsessed by race as my old preacher Rev. Wright. Nevertheless, I had to say something after the unwise outburst. I know that to speak about “calibrating” my words differently is just a bit empty nonsense, but it will at least assuage outlets like The New York Times, which can wave the phrase about and get on with the job of exonerating me.

Will it work? I don’t know. Sgt. Crowley seems to be doing everything he can to defuse the situation and move on. (Take a look at that interview I linked above.) The President clearly wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. I suspect that with his “recalibration” he has just shoved his foot a bit deeper into the presidential maw, especially since Prof. Gates is doing his Al Sharpton imitation traipsing about accusing everyone in sight of racism. He looks completley ridiculous, but people are used to Ivy League Professors making fools of themselves. There will be a bit more of the snigger factor at work whenever anyone mentions Henry Louis Gates in the future, but that’s no big deal. The person most likely to suffer most if Gates manages to keep the controversy alive is Obama. His popularity is already in free fall, and this little masking-dropping episode will only spread the gloom.

A final bit of advice for Obama: the next time this happens, instead of calibrating your words differently, just suck it up and apologize. Here’s John Cleese to show you how it’s done.

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31 Comments

1. Donald Pittenger:

I notice that you and someone else (on Commentary’s blog?) used the word “diffuse” similarly.

I think you need to write “de-fuse” as when in the process of bomb disposal.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:09 am 2. Roger Kimball:

#1: you are absolutely right! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Now fixed.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:14 am 3. J.J. Sefton:

I should only hope that if Crowley does decide to meet with Gates (and I honestly hope he respectfully declines) it should exclude the president so as to not allow this to become a media circus.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:24 am 4. bibio44:

Ah yes, Roger, how wearisome indeed is “patronizing grievance mongering.” Your post reminds me of another piece by Alexander Cockburn, a total knave but, alas, excellent writer (his style reminds me of yours, but he wears his learning more lightly). Writing about the seemingly endless furor that followed Prince Harry’s misdeed of wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, Cockburn, thoroughly wearied of the seemingly endless attempts of patronizing grievance mongers to “educate” the prince about the Holocaust, quipped that Harry be ordered to do ten laps around Auschwitz.

Let me try to educate you, Roger: Some people take the history of American racism VERY seriously.

Jul 25, 2009 - 10:03 am 5. Kitty:

What would be really ironic is if some bad guys break into the house the next time Prof. Gates goes out of town. I sure don’t wish that on anyone, having had it happen to me, but it would be pretty ironic.

Jul 25, 2009 - 10:58 am 6. afsb:

An example of an excellent real apology was recently given by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, regretting the action the company took in withdrawing illegal copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from purchasers.

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:00 am 7. hinckleybuzzard:

Henry Gates has gone around saying that if he were a white man this wouldn’t have happened. I have read some of Gates’s “scholarship” and I have news for him: if he were a white man the closest he’d ever have gotten to the Harvard Faculty lounge would have been as a janitor emptying the wastebaskets. The man is not quite a phoney, just the next thing to it–a lifetime beneficiary of the race panderers of the eastern liberal establishment.

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:05 am 8. MainStreet:

It is getting so attending an Ivy League school is more of a liberal indoctrination than a balanced education. Where do they teach common sense and common decency. Sgt. Crowley was responding to a possible break in, home intrusion. It is a stressful situation and all the learned professor did was make it worse. As a person with some common sense, I would have complied with the Sgts. request and thanked him for his quick response.

But then, I’m white and can’t play the race card.

What about the 87% of blacks that voted for Obama including Colon Powell? Is there some racism there?

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:07 am 9. tanstaafl:

A final bit of advice for Obama: the next time this happens, instead of calibrating your words differently, just suck it up and apologize. Here’s John Cleese to show you how it’s done.

Hmmmm, useful, that one

Jul 25, 2009 - 2:03 pm 10. Strawman:

Calibrate diversity?

Jul 25, 2009 - 2:31 pm 11. Strawman:

“Calibrated those words differently”? What can that possibly mean?

Teleprompter has a sense of humor?

Jul 25, 2009 - 2:34 pm 12. aloysiusmiller:

Did you really use the word “snigger”?

Jul 25, 2009 - 2:57 pm 13. Mifty:

I noted that you used the term “snigger factor” in reference to Professor Gates — using a word that is only one letter away from an extremely offensive term.

You could have written, say, “smirk factor” or even “giggle factor,” but instead chose a word that was at best insensitive but more likely an expression of deep-seated racial hostility.

Have you no sense of shame, or fitness? Heavens, man, you might as well have called the president’s grudging non-apology “niggardly.”

Jul 25, 2009 - 4:00 pm 14. Strawman:

Looks like the scripts have been busily searching for their substrings, and finally found a match. Good job, kiddies.

Jul 25, 2009 - 7:18 pm 15. Celt:

Seems people can not even use the English language correctly without someone looking for a racial context. Snigger is a perfectly good word and is niggardly. Speak and listen without looking for some secret evil meaning. President Obama should have spoken clearly and said he should have stayed out of it because he had no knowledge. I would imagine a large part of the population heard “calibrated my words” and wondered how what he was saying had anything to do with brakes?

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:17 am 16. hubbub:

“Having Barack Obama as president doesn’t make America colour-blind
The arrest of an African-American professor and the vilification of a Latina woman judge show that prejudice lives on in the USA” by Patricia Williams in the Observer is a good example of poor commentary and shading the facts to fit a predisposed position. Like the president, Ms. Williams should not comment on situations if she is not in possession of or unwilling to confront the facts of the case. It is reporting and commentary like Ms. Williams’ distorted version that heighten and prolong these sorts of incidents far beyond their significance.

All her efforts go to proving her point, not to arriving at a just and fair decision about what really occurred. And a noted publication gives her space to exercise her grievance-mongering. Like Professor Gates, she has no shame.

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:44 am 17. Strawman:

Speak and listen without looking for some secret evil meaning.

That’s an interesting insight. PC hypersensitivity comes from the same part of the brain as conspiracy theories.

Jul 26, 2009 - 9:21 am 18. MrMaryk:

“Calibrated those words differently”

It’s the same as his use of “inartful” during the campaign. It makes him SOUND like he’s sorry about SOMETHING – just not the substance of what he said. Frankly, Obama probably doesn’t think what he said was wrong, only how he said it.

Jul 26, 2009 - 9:25 am 19. Nick:

Obama’s snobbish tin ear shows again. Problem with the cop? Invite him for a beer. That’s what those blue collar clods drink. Show my comradery and solidarity with the working stiffs. Ah Sincerity!

Jul 26, 2009 - 9:39 am 20. Strawman:

The arrest of an African-American professor and the vilification of a Latina woman judge show that prejudice lives on in the USA” by Patricia Williams in the Observer is a good example of poor commentary and shading the facts to fit a predisposed position. Like the president, Ms. Williams should not comment on situations if she is not in possession of or unwilling to confront the facts of the case. It is reporting and commentary like Ms. Williams’ distorted version that heighten and prolong these sorts of incidents far beyond their significance.

I gave up on trying to reason with people like that a long time ago. When an arrest or criticism of a public official candidate are not just evidence, but proof of racism, there’s nothing left to discuss. The woman simply is not rational.

If the larger society is going to ever move past race, people like that are simply going to have to be left behind to wallow in their fantasies just like the white supremacists. We’ll never stamp racism out, we’ll just force it into the margins. People like that will die in the margins, because they don’t have the psychological wherewithal to evolve.

Frankly, I think out POTUS (and certainly his wife) will also go to his grave believing that whitey is out to get him. Don’t waste your energy on them.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:57 am 21. Donna V.:

Let me try to educate you, Roger: Some people take the history of American racism VERY seriously.

They sure do, because it’s their bread and butter. Others take it VERY seriously because the wonderful feeling of moral superiority and self-righteousness they get when they call others “racists” is too delicious to give up.

I can guess which category bibio fits into.

Jul 26, 2009 - 11:18 am 22. Donna V.:

Oh, and Cockburn “wears his learning more lightly” because that old Stalinist managed to ignore all negative reports about Communism until the Wall came crashing down in 1989. It was fun reading him then. He was in a very sour mood for quite some time. The proles were not following the script.

Fortunately for Cockburn, collectivist thinking never lost its appeal among our intellectual “elites” and so he still has a job.

Really, are you saying Crowley – a man who has taught classes on racial profiling and has been universally praised by his colleagues, including *ahem* “persons of color,” – needs to be lectured to by Gates? Should Crowley run laps around a cotton field in Alabama to pay for sins he did not commit?

Your analogy is so stupid I can only assume you teach at an Ivy League university.

Jul 26, 2009 - 11:31 am 23. NC mountain girl:

I take the history of racial injustice in America seriously, too. That is why I protest when a poseur and over petted attention seeker like Gates smears a cop who was just doing his job in order to generate a market for a documentary for PBS.

If you want a current example of injustice in America, let’s talk about the Chicago Sun Times series last fall about ongoing physical abuse of students in the Chicago Public School. None one in the national press cared. No one called then CEO of the school system Arne Duncan a racist or even a hypocrite. They applauded when Obama named him Secretary of Education.

Then there is the earlier example of how Obama and his buddy Bill Ayers used grant money meant to help improve academic performamce to promote a system of community school boards that placed the race of principals over competence and the ability to maintain discipline in the schools.

The biggest remaining racial issue in America is how black academic achievement has declined despite the large fortune thrown at the public school system. Maybe, just maybe, the crap being pushed by Afrocentrists like Gates and so call educators like Duncan and Ayers has something to do with thsi decline.

Jul 26, 2009 - 4:24 pm 24. Mifty:

Seems people can not even use the English language correctly without someone looking for a racial context. Snigger is a perfectly good word and is niggardly.

Um, Celt? I was kidding.

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:08 pm 25. Broadsword:

Curious the prez got this one so wrong when he calibrated that the police “acted stupidly”. He himself is an expert in acting stupidly.

Jul 28, 2009 - 5:02 am 26. william:

http://strongerthandeathhq.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/kelly-king-and-a-real-teaching-moment/

Jul 28, 2009 - 7:17 am 27. william:

Karen Kelly does a real teaching moment!

Jul 28, 2009 - 7:25 am 28. Professor Guvinoff:

Don’t worry, a wise Latina will soon be re-calibrating the US constitution, and we will never have to worry about unequal opportunity racism anymore.

The prospects for peace in the Middle East might have improved if the president had brought a six-pack to the Saudi monarch. perhaps someone in the state dept objected about whatever it is that tastes so bitter even in the finest brews, and the project was cancelled at the last minute?

Jul 28, 2009 - 9:34 am 29. Thalpy:

I’m not sure that the most magnificent one has a proper apology within him. Any reason for an apology would be completely lost on him. It’s sad for us all, really–there is so little reason for his arrogance.

Jul 28, 2009 - 9:43 am 30. Dissenter:

Not that anyone in this thread cares, but a transcript (http://tinyurl.com/mw4nlf) of the 9-1-1 call made by the woman many of Roger’s readers days ago praised and defended indicates that she did not identify the “intruders” as black men with backpacks, as Sgt. Crowley noted in his police report. Ms. Whalen, the caller, also speculated that the house was, in fact, Gates’s residence.

Jul 28, 2009 - 12:05 pm 31. Firefighter:

Sgt. Crowley is a fool if he meets with Obama and Gates without a witness.

Jul 28, 2009 - 3:48 pm