By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Month: July 2009 Page 2 of 8

Drink beer for glory of Dear Leader!

For your amusement, GlobalPost offers a North Korean beer commercial, clocking in at two and a half minutes. I didn’t even know they had televisions in North Korea.

What did she say and when did she say it?

Both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald today lead with the news that Lucia Whalen, the woman who told Cambridge Police on July 16 that two men were trying to enter what turned out to be Henry Louis Gates’ home, never mentioned race.

Yet I come away from the stories as perplexed as ever. It appears Whalen may have said one thing in her 911 call, and another when she spoke with Sgt. James Crowley outside Gates’ home. It doesn’t help that we’re hearing not from Whalen but from her spokeswoman, well-known Boston lawyer Wendy Murphy.

Here’s the relevant section from Crowley’s arrest report:

At approximately 12:44 PM, I was operating my cruiser on Harvard Street near Ware Street. At that time, I overheard an ECC [Emergency Communications and 911 Center] broadcast for a possible break in progress at [redacted] Ware Street. Due to my proximity, I responded.

When I arrived at [redacted] Ware Street I radioed ECC and asked that they have the caller meet me at the front door to this residence. I was told that the caller was already outside. As I was getting this information, I climbed the porch stairs toward the front door. As I reached the door, a female voice called out to me. I turned and looked in the direction of the voice and observed a white female, later identified as Lucia Whalen. Whalen, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of the residence, held a wireless telephone in her hand and told me it was she who called. She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of [redacted] Ware Street.

The Globe story, by John Ellement and Matt Collette, focuses on the 911 call. Cambridge Police Chief Robert Haas confirms that Whalen did not mention race in her call, and speculates that a reference to “two black males” ended up in Crowley’s report as part of information collected during the investigation.

But Crowley’s report is much more specific than that. He claims directly that Whalen told him at the scene that the men she saw were black. Crowley tells Herald reporter Jessica Van Sack, “Obviously, I stand behind everything that’s in the police report. It wouldn’t be in there if it wasn’t true.”

I’m not sure how important any of this is. It’s been pretty clear from the beginning that the police were merely responding to a call, and that the caller may or may not have been motivated by race. From that perspective, we know as much (or as little) as we did before Wendy Murphy was heard from.

The two questions that should have been put to Murphy (and if they were, that should have been made clear) are: (1) What did Whalen tell Crowley when they met at the scene? (2) Why can’t we talk with your client?

John Timoney on the Gates arrest

From Miami Police Chief John Timoney, formerly the police commissioner in Philadelphia and a former top police official in New York:

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.”

Via Maureen Dowd.

Tweaking comments

I’ve extended the time for commenting back out to seven days.

Fountain and Kennedy on Cronkite

My Northeastern University colleague Chuck Fountain and I discuss the legacy of Walter Cronkite in a webcast posted on the university’s Web site.

A couple of Gates-related odds and ends

I want to make it clear right up front that I know neither of these tidbits speaks directly to the matter of Professor Henry Louis Gates versus Sgt. James Crowley. But I’ve been thinking about both of them, and have decided they’re worth passing on as being indicative of a certain cultural mindset.

First, can we agree that 1999 wasn’t that long ago? Good. Because it was during that year that the Cambridge Chronicle discovered the Cambridge Police Department was training its officers to believe Mexicans and members of other ethnic groups who routinely eat spicy foods were immune to pepper spray. Apologies ensued.

Second, why on earth would Crowley give his first major interview to John Dennis and Gerry Callahan on WEEI Radio (AM 850)? The officer was trying to make the case that he’s not a racist — and yet he talked with two guys who were once suspended for comparing black kids to “gorillas.”

I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that Crowley is a racist. On the other hand, the evidence that he’s “clueless,” as Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker put it yesterday, continues to build.

As for President Obama, his week was like the Red Sox’ — really bad, ending on an upbeat note, but leaving you wondering whether he can shore up some fundamental flaws (lack of message discipline, combined with a disconcerting habit of having to revise his remarks) that weren’t evident when he was winning.

Payback time for Couric

“CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric rips New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley for her error-riddled tribute to Walter Cronkite. As the Huffington Post observes, Couric must have enjoyed herself, as Stanley has been one of her tormenters. (Thanks to WBUR’s Steve Brown.)

Stanley’s butchery led me to make an error in my Guardian piece this week, as I relied her piece in asserting that Cronkite did not overcome NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report” in the ratings until Chet Huntley retired, in 1970. We’re supposed to run a correction, but it hasn’t been posted yet.

Gates comments now closed

I have changed Blogger’s settings so that any comment made to a post more than a day old will be moderated. That will allow me to delete any further comments to posts on the Henry Louis Gates arrest. This will not apply to any new posts I might write on the Gates matter. But we’re now up to well over 200 comments, mostly from the same small group of people. Enough.

Obama, Gates and racism

President Obama stepped on his health-care message last night when he said more about the Henry Louis Gates arrest than he should have — especially since, as he himself admitted, he didn’t know the facts.

But critics who tut-tut whenever Obama reminds us that he is indeed an African-American who has experienced his share of racism might want to consider the debilitating effects of crap like this and this.

Must-see TV

“Greater Boston” has posted the video of Emily Rooney’s interview with Boston Globe editor Marty Baron.

Page 2 of 8

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén