Back in 2003, in one of my very early blog posts, I related the story of a man who got scammed on eBay. He sold his PowerBook for $3000 to someone who turned out to be a serial con artist. As is sometimes the case with Mac users, he was not willing to let it go, and became relentless in hunting down the guy who stole his goods and left him in the lurch. He reported it to the police, who did nothing.

Eventually, he learned pretty much everything about the criminal: his name, address, telephone number, and evidence of other crimes. All the police had to do, literally, was to go to the address and arrest the guy. They brushed him off. He tried the police where he lived, where the criminal lived, the FBI, even the Secret Service on the off chance that counterfeiting involved could be in their jurisdiction. Nothing. A citizen had all the goods on a criminal guilty of larceny and fraud, served him up on a platter, and several different enforcement offices gave him the brush-off.

Fortunately, this guy caught a break–the criminal used a new address at one point which was in the jurisdiction of a smaller police precinct, which did what any police authority should have done–drove over and arrested the guy, who was in possession of more than $10,000 in counterfeit checks at the time. A few hours’ work, and a serial criminal was behind bars. It doesn’t often get easier than that.

I was reminded by this when I saw of similar case in the news today. Over the years, there have been many such stories–people with Apple gear go to lengths to get it back, often with the help of good security software and/or the Mac community–but this one caught my eye because it echoed the 2003 case regarding police attitudes.

A guy in Oakland, CA, Joshua Kaufman, had his Macbook stolen in a home robbery in March. He reported this to the police, who quickly did nothing. Fortunately, this guy had been prepared: he had purchased a $15 app called “Hidden,” which lurks in the background on your computer, and, if stolen, can snap camera images and screen shots, and give network information leading to the location of the person in possession of the computer.

Sure enough, Kaufman started getting this data. With the information provided by the app, he was able to inform the police of all they needed to know: the address of the person with the stolen device and photographs of him using it. Certainly enough for a search warrant, at least.

The police did nothing. Citing a “lack of resources,” they could not be bothered to send a single car to the address and pick up the person.

So Kaufman went a different way: he started a Tumblr page on May 27, telling the story and posting images of the person using the computer and sleeping in front of it, and screenshots of activities suggesting guilt, like deleting the previous user’s account. A few days later, on May 31, a tweet he posted caught fire, and the media started paying attention. (It might have helped that one of the images showed the guy shirtless in bed using the computer, for what the rightful owner did not want to know.)

Where were the police? Ready to spring to action! Uh, only after Good Morning America called them and asked them why they were sitting on their asses when low-hanging fruit was just sitting there.

When they got that call, they finally did what they should have done weeks earlier, and arrested the guy.

How did the police explain their inaction? The case was “incorrectly closed.” Right. The officer went on to say, “It shows that when the system works, it works great. The diligence of Mr. Kaufman is exactly what we need – people who are engaged and are making an effort to reduce crime.”

No, what we need are police who will act on reports. Kaufman was engaged, the police were not.

Now, I understand that police are bogged down. They have more important things to do than to track down lost wallets or follow up on petty theft reports. But I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect at least some effort, even the smallest amount, in response to theft crimes. Hell, if I were a criminal, I would probably feel like I could get away with anything, so long as I didn’t steal from someone too wealthy or influential.

Seriously–when police are given the name and address of someone and proof of the crime committed, even photos of them in the act, but cannot be bothered to do the least that is possible for them–drive over and arrest the person who has been fully identified–then what’s the point of even making theft a punishable offense?

Rand Paul:

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.

I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

By this logic, one’s right to religious belief enslaves clergy; the right to keep and bear arms enslaves gun dealers; the right to legal representation enslaves attorneys; and, I suppose, the right to free speech enslaves, well, anyone who you want to have listen. While we’re at it, don’t we all have a right to life? That makes slaves out of everyone who does anything that keeps people alive.

Apparently Paul does not quite understand the meaning of the word “rights.”

Marilyn Davenport, a Tea Party activist and Republican Party central committee official representing the 72nd assembly district in Orange County, sent an email with this photo:

The image was accompanied by the tag line, “Now you know why — no birth certificate!”

When news of the image got out, Davenport became defensive:

Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people–mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it.

I’ve heard this many times before, and probably you have as well. People clearly cross the line in terms of expressions which are clearly inappropriate in terms of race, and then deny any hint of racism. All too often, the standard “some of my best friends” defense is used, which in itself is rather telling.

Part of the problem is in the exact use of terms, and part is in the misunderstood nature of racism.

First, it is within the realm of possibility that Ms. Davenport is not in the least bit racist. And yet, the image she sent was clearly racist. For this to be possible, we simply have to assume that Ms. Davenport simply is clueless as to racial sensitivities; she would have to be almost completely ignorant as to the history and nature of racism, what offends people, and why such things offend people.

For example, I might hear someone use a term which is racist, but I have never heard it before, and I don’t recognize any racism in the context of the utterance, so I just think it’s a general term not related to race. Then, at a later time, I use the term myself, and am accused of saying something racist. I can claim that I am not a racist–but I would also have to admit to being ignorant about the nature of the term. In this case, however, Ms. Davenport would have to be pretty damned ignorant not to know that depicting black people as chimps has no racial connotations.

Then we have the misunderstood nature of racism. There is a general impression that for a person to be racist, they have to pass a certain threshold of knowing, overt hatred and contempt. That’s not the case. It is entirely possible to be prejudiced and yet honestly believe yourself to be a tolerant person. And yes, you can even have friends who are black and still do things which are racist.

Perhaps the most common expression of racism is in terms of comfort zones, most likely at the unconscious level. The impressions and connotations we collect over a lifetime of experience lead to certain emotional and even informational biases which we take for granted as normalcy. We don’t even think about them most of the time, and often don’t recognize them when we use them as factors in coming to a decision.

Take the act of hiring a person for a job. We tend to think of this as an objective task, based on training, qualifications, and performance under a strict set of professionally determined parameters. However, a great deal of what we judge will be based upon our subjective impressions of how this person will work in the job. Doubts might surface with people we have been prone to discriminate against which would not arise with people we are more comfortable with; confidence may emerge concerning a candidate who looks more like an “ideal” person than it would with someone we are less inclined to trust. We believe that these impressions are purely a result of what the candidates present, when in fact they come from within ourselves–a result of a lifetime of conditioning. Worse, since we sincerely believe that we are not racists, we refuse to believe that these impressions could be racist in nature, only strengthening the conviction that they are rational and objective, and therefore justified.

I experienced this firsthand once. As an administrator at a conversation school in Japan many years ago, I was involved in the hiring process. It was my duty to field phone calls from prospective candidates, weed out the ones who were not qualified, and make phone calls to the ones who might be acceptable. Over the phone, I would gather impressions based on spoken presentation, gather more background information, and make a further decision as to whether the person should come in for an interview in person. Other administrators would then give the interview and make final decisions about hiring.

One person I spoke to over the phone seemed like an ideal candidate. His resume was good; it was well-written, and he had training and experience related to the position. Over the phone, his voice was clear and pleasant, and his demeanor was calm and agreeable. I came out with a strong impression that this person would be a very good teacher, so I approved him for an interview slot.

After the interview, however, he was turned down. Surprised, I asked the guy in charge, the one who made the decision, as to why. The response was that the candidate was distinctly unfriendly, that his manner was too aggressive, and students would be intimidated by him. I was taken aback by this, but understood that sometimes people come across differently in person, or they just might be in a different mood at the time of the interview.

However, I later asked the other person who attended the interview, a young woman who was a junior staff member, and asked her if she had gotten the same impression. She looked around to make sure the other guy wasn’t there, and then quietly shook her head. Her reaction told me two things: that the first guy’s impression of the candidate was probably not objective, and the staff member thought the other guy was unreasonable. So I went back and checked the person’s file, which included a photograph we asked people to bring in when they came for an interview. Sure enough, the candidate was black.

The administrator in question had never said or done anything previous to that which would have led me to believe that he was racist. I was pretty confident that if I confronted him and suggested that race had played a role in his decision, that he would deny it completely–and would probably be offended by the suggestion. Nevertheless, it seemed pretty clear that his personal biases, probably wholly unconscious in nature, led him to feel intimidated, influencing his judgment of the candidate.

This is the problem: these people thoroughly believe they are not racist, and so get angry and defensive when it is suggested, even indirectly, that race was involved. Because they see racism as an all-out attitude, that their image of racism is one of a person who overtly believes people are inferior because of race and are generally contemptible, asinine, and even evil, they cannot accept the idea that they could be associated with that group. They fail to see that racism can be subtle, and can issue from people who genuinely see themselves as unprejudiced. This misunderstanding, unfortunately, only perpetuates discrimination of the type most common in this day and age.

However, to those who are even more defiant about race, it can be overt and still they’ll deny racism. I once knew someone who felt that, as a businessman, he could consciously refuse to hire any black people on the grounds that statistically, black people were more prone to crime–and he insisted that this was not racist, and he was completely tolerant.

And yes, he had black friends.

It’s a common fantasy repeated endlessly by gun enthusiasts. When you get a crazy person who walks into a crowd and starts shooting people, some of us begin to question the overly-lax gun laws and start suggesting that at least some reasonable, even ridiculously mild form of gun control–you know, like allowing clips that hold only ten bullets instead of thirty so crazy people can only shoot a more limited number of people. At which point the enthusiasts disagree (some vehemently), and that’s when they bring up the fantasy.

“It’s too bad that one of the victims wasn’t armed, or better yet, all of them,” they lament. They envision a scenario in which a shooter would immediately meet return fire and be taken down before many people got hurt. After the shooting in Arizona, local congressman Trent Franks deplored, “I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson.”

The reality is much more complicated. The fact is, there was an armed citizen nearby when Loughner began his shooting spree in Arizona; the man immediately grabbed his gun, ran to the scene of the shooting–and very nearly shot one of the people who was subduing the gunman. This was not some frazzled dimwit, but someone who seemed to know their way around a gun, who seemed completely reasonable and responsible.

As if to back up the point, in Detroit yesterday, a gunman walked into a building filled with people and opened fire, shooting one man in the back and hitting three others before someone returned fire and killed the man. You might think that this is the fantasy situation fulfilled–that there was an armed person nearby who was able to return fire. In a sense, this is true: the building was a police station. There were lots of armed people there. And yet, four people got shot before someone returned fire, and the situation was less than controlled:

“Utter chaos and pandemonium took place,” Police Chief Ralph Godbee said at a news conference. “We have a number of officers who are shaken up.”

Even when nearly everyone in the room is armed, a gunman can still do a great amount of damage. Even trained, experienced police officers do not always react like the hero-fantasy expects. If a room full of professional gun-bearers reacted like that to random gun violence, can we really expect randomly armed citizens to do much better?

Also keep in mind that in the Detroit case, the gunman did not even have as deadly a gun as Loughner did. Furthermore, these are scenarios where the gunman comes in and starts firing with no thought to protecting himself. If the gunman has even the slightest ability to plan ahead and work out a scenario more complex than “walk in and start shooting,” he could potentially employ strategies that would allow him to do even more harm against rooms filled with armed people.

As for arming everyone, let’s also remember that there are few places which require a gun owner to train in the use of the weapon or to take even rudimentary safety instruction. Is it ever a good idea to suggest that more untrained people go around armed? We would not imagine allowing people to drive cars without going through at least basic instruction and testing, and most Americans value their right to own and drive a car more than they would to own a gun. Yet few question the wisdom of training, licensing, and registration where motor vehicles are concerned.

As has been pointed out:

A panel of criminology and statistics experts with the National Research Council the National Academies published a study in 2004 that found no reduced crime in states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws.

A 2010 study from Stanford Law School found that “the most consistent, albeit not uniform, finding to emerge from the array of models is that aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted.”

Now, before anyone gets on their high horse, I do not advocate gun bans. (Most gun enthusiasts immediately jump to that conclusion even when the opposite is clearly pointed out; it’s the knee-jerk straw-man argument.) But I do advocate firm, reasonable gun control, of a nature that minimizes any impact on the law-abiding citizen but maximizes impact on those who would purchase guns for illicit use. As has been pointed out, at the very least, we know that lives would have been saved had Loughner been restricted to a 10-bullet clip rather than a 30-bullet clip; the larger-capacity clip had been banned before the Republican congress let it die, and let’s face it–it is the epitome of the reasonable gun control law. No hunter or home protector needs a 30-bullet clip, it’s an accessory for people who are either too lazy to reload more often, or for people who want to kill the largest number of human beings before they have to pause before killing more.

I also question the legitimacy of the assumption that simply putting more guns in the hands of more people more of the time–especially when there is no mandatory safety training–will result in less violence. Something about that just doesn’t ring true for some reason.

Right now, a lot of the people who would still defend preventing even eminently reasonable gun control measures say that it’s about controlling the gunman, not the gun. The problem is, Loughner should have been denied the ability to buy guns and ammunition–it’s not like his unbalanced state was a secret or anything–but the same people who fight reasonable gun control measures also fight against laws which would, in fact, control the crazy people who fire guns at crowds of people. Background checks, mental instability provisions, efficient networks to register and keep track of such individuals, and other checks that could have at least slowed Loughner down are just as hated by the gun crowd, who argue that such laws either inconvenience them or could be abused by the government to disarm normal law-abiding folk.

Having armed people nearby could–potentially–save lives, if those people are properly trained. It almost certainly did in the Detroit police station. However, having more guns around is not always the best way to deal with the problem, and reasonable gun control laws are probably a much better idea.

Can anyone explain to me, aside from there being a catchy jingle, why “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” continues to be such a popular Christmas story? Even as a child, I remember being disturbed by this tale–perhaps it was because I was bullied and excluded quite a bit as a kid, and upon hearing the story, found its message to be shallow and insulting.

A child has a physical deformation, and so is laughed at and excluded by other children. But instead of the other children learning that it’s wrong to ridicule and punish someone for being different, the child is instead left to prove some special utility to the community before he can be accepted. Not even the authority figure, Santa, recognizes the child’s innate value as a living being. Instead, the authority only helps the child because he can get something out of it, while the community only accepts the child because the authority recognized him. The child, starved for love and attention, happily accepts all of this. Yay!

Seriously, if I were Rudolph, I would have told Santa to go screw himself. You don’t teach the other kids how to treat others with respect, and let me wallow in misery until I’m of some practical use to you? Go light your own way, you selfish prick. The Spirit of Christmas, my ass.

Some see the story as anti-bullying, but I cannot see where they get this. The idea lies within the concept that you better watch who you bully, because they might just be an important person one day. I don’t see this in the tale, because we never saw the bullies change their ways. Yes, they eventually accepted Rudolph–but only after he demonstrated utility, and never showed remorse for their past behavior. Their acceptance was entirely conditional. And what if Rudolph had never showed any special value, but was just a normal kid with a deformed nose? The song does not show that he would have been accepted at all–just the reverse. That doesn’t discourage bullying, and sends the completely wrong message. Kids who bully get the message that until someone shows a special value, it’s open season on them. Now, had his nose been of no use whatsoever–like high beams in fog–and yet Santa loved him and convinced the other reindeer to do so as well, admonishing them for making fun of someone for being what they were, that would have been a good story. But as is, the story is a terrible one for children to learn.

It does not surprise me, therefore, that Rudolph, like the current physical portrayal of Santa, is a commercial gimmick thought up by a marketer, in this case one working for Montgomery Ward. He was asked by his supervisor to come up with a story for a coloring book to promote the store. A recent version of the story changes it into a sappy tale of a man crafting a loving story for a four-year-old girl to accept the loss of her mother to cancer–but that version is fictional and has been debunked. Not that it would make the song less terrible.

Seriously, the song ought to be trashed.

The Internets strike again:

It always astonishes me how baldly people against same-sex marriage can continue forward despite the blindingly obvious logical fallacies inherent with their position. That somehow, gays getting married will ruin the definition of marriage, when a two-thirds divorce rate, sham marriages, spousal abuse, adultery, and so many other ills among heterosexual marriage apparently are not as difficult as problems–at least not so bad that these people would suggest banning marriage for those who cause these problems. No, it’s just the gays, apparently, that need to be stopped.

That the form of “traditional marriage” can be defined as “one man, one woman” when for so much of history it was not, or that its purpose can be defined as being for procreation, when for so much of history it was not. Words like “tradition” and “procreation” seem like excuses, terms of convenience, ways to define marriage so as to specifically exclude gays, rather than to sum up a consistent view of the institution. If I do not intend to have children, should my marriage be banned? Or as a heterosexual, do I get a bye?

Sadly, they do seem to be right in one sense: historically, in the United States, at least, marriage has often been defined by exclusion, as a way of shutting out those people and practices that the “less progressive” disapprove of. (Shhh! We can’t call them “bigots,” that’s intolerant.) Slaves were not allowed to marry (even though they were one-man-one-woman and usually bonded with procreation as a result), and interracial couples were not allowed to marry (same note in this case as well). One consistent tradition of the institution of marriage as defined by the “less progressive” has been its use as a social weapon, reserving it only for those we want to include in our little club.

Which is how Jesus intended it.

Despite the Florida group’s decision to cancel their Koran-burning event, one protester near the NYC Islamic center site did burn some pages from the holy book. Now, had he said, “if they can build a mosque near Ground Zero, I can burn the Koran,” both would have been true in terms of what rights each group has, but the statement would have been a false equivalency; building a house of worship and interfaith community center is not comparable to defiling a book of scripture.

But that’s not what the guy said; he said something that sounded much more reasonable. He said, “If they can burn American flags, I can burn the Koran.” Now, that’s easier to identify with. The double standard does get pretty galling sometimes; angry groups in the Middle East do seem to regularly get out and burn our sacred symbols a lot, as well as our leaders in effigy–but if we do something like a Koran burning (or even a Mohammed cartoon) back, they get furious. One could, I suppose, draw differences between national flags and holy books (maybe they would not mind it so much if we burned their flags), but with the “you can’t draw Mohammed” issue, the standard does not seem to be a tit-for-tat but rather a requirement to observe what is most sacred to each group. And the American flag is pretty damn sacred to a lot of Americans. The people who burn them don’t seem to care, or perhaps that’s why they burn them.

First, there is the point of who is being hurt. Lots of people in the Middle East have burned American flags. But hardly all of them, not even a large percent. Burning pages of a Koran, however, hurts millions of people worldwide who did nothing to offend, who were probably even in opposition to that offense. Many have wondered recently how all of America could be held responsible for the acts of a tiny church in Florida with only a few dozen members. Well, that’s how–we tend to do the exact same thing.

It is easy to forget, however, that the real issue here is one level higher: doing the right thing. Being a good person. One of our biggest flaws as human beings is our ability to rationalize an immoral act based on someone else doing something we don’t like. Punching someone in the face is wrong; but if another person says enough provocative things, we feel justified, as if that person’s wrong actions somehow justifies our own. The guy who burned the Koran in New York may have felt justified, but what he did was still wrong. In one sense, he just burned paper like it’s burned all the time. But that’s not the real meaning of what he did, which was instead to carry out an act he knew would cause disrespect and anguish to others. And while that’s legal, and while he has that right, it doesn’t mean it is a moral or correct action to take.

In recent weeks, the example has been, “if we can’t build a church in Mecca, they shouldn’t be allowed to build a mosque near Ground Zero.” This, however, is based upon the same fallacy. Yes, they are wrong to deny people religious freedoms. But no, that does not mean we should follow their example. It’s the same with what many feel justifies the death penalty–why should the murderer get “life” when the victim got death–but my own primary objection is that whatever the criminals did, we should not feel justified in doing the same wrong action. Most would see this the same way in light of the analogy that we do not rape rapists–although far too many people would at the very least be satisfied with such a thing happening, and at the most would go so far as to promote it.

This follows a scriptural moral code that many embrace: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Tit for tat. However, this was superseded by the New Testament morality of “turn the other cheek,” something that every mother echoes with the age-old clichéd lesson, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” We all know this. And yet we seem ready to abandon this simple, common wisdom at the burning of a flag.

From an article titled “White Fright” from Slate:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one.

“Starting”? What, this guy’s catching on to the phenomenon only now? Sheesh. I’ve been blogging about it for years. Back in 2003, the year I started blogging, I noted the cause as being:

When we gain something, we tend to believe it is earned, not stolen; when we lose something, we do feel that a deserved reward has been taken from us. Similarly, white men are used to a superior position, and believe it is their due; when the scales are made more balanced, it feels to them as if something they have earned is being unfairly stolen and given to someone who does not deserve it.

Whites in general, up until the 60’s at least, were far disproportionately advantaged; they had more wealth, more power, more influence, more everything relative to a balanced norm. And while no one acknowledged it, it was clear that the advantage was taken, not earned.

Minorities were not underachievers; they were, like the term or not, oppressed. Most family lines started from literally nothing in this country, and were denied most opportunities open to whites; they received substandard education, and were constantly discriminated against and shut out, a situation that lasted openly for a century after slavery was ended, and has continued more quietly since.

But to a white person, who had indeed worked hard all of his life, the idea that any of his position or status was due to others being actively kept down was considered insulting. Racism was rationalized and/or committed out of sight, distanced from the positive achievements of white individuals. Few whites would ever know they got a position because a minority was turned down out of their field of view, by an individual who did so because of race but would never admit to it.

No, whites felt they had what they had because it was rightfully theirs. Their race, their religion, their views, all naturally dominant. So when it started being less than dominant, there was no other explanation than that it was being stolen from them. Because if it weren’t, that meant their position in life wasn’t 100% honestly earned, and that was not something they would consider.

It helped that while the unfair elements that helped them were so easily dismissed, and yet even the weak and partial systems of redress, such affirmative action regulations and legislative & court-ordered quotas, were not only visible but so easily vilified. Over the past 40 years, little if any racism in matters of record is overtly committed, and so is deniable as a cause (we are, after all, a “color blind” society now, and any accusation of racism is vehemently and automatically denied as an unfair charge no matter how outrageous the offense), and so whites can act as it there was nothing helping them at all.

Minorities are told that any achievement they make must be viewed as tainted if there is a chance that any equalling program played even a small role in their achievements, but few if any whites ever insist that they must feel the same way themselves about racial discrimination or past advantages ever being a factor in their achievements. So we have the mindset that there is little or no racism by whites, but that there is a good deal of “reverse racism” that subjugates them.

Whites have started to see their supremacy slip, and can only conclude that it is being stolen, and so they are oppressed. Christianity is naturally dominant (didn’t you know that everything we are as a country owes its origins to Christianity?) and so Christianity not being allowed into every last crevice is persecution.

It’s hard being a white Christian male. We suffer so.

In the past, when atheist organizations put up ads, even ones which are positive in nature and do nothing to put down religion, the ads are seen as threatening, hostile, and unacceptable; numerous Christians pressure the organization hosting the ads, usually successfully, to take down the ads. Usually that is done under the pretense of open proselytization–although many of the ads don’t actually proselytize, and Christian groups often openly proselytize on billboards themselves.

One ad was so subtle that it required a bit of thought to see the message, and made a statement that was at the same time patriotic and nothing more than plainly secular–quoting the original text of the pledge of allegiance. Not to mention text that is more inclusive, not less. And yet this rather unserstated, simple display was considered so radical as to merit national attention.

These ads usually are relatively tame; for example, a common one asks, “Don’t Believe in God? You’re Not Alone,” and prompts people to visit the “Coalition of Reason” web site. They usually do not urge people to leave the church, but instead try to attract atheists who do not know of others who feel the same way they do. And yet, such messages often prompt Christians to angrily protest, demanding the ads be removed–this one was taken down after the billboard owner got death threats. (Islamic extremists do not, it seems, have a monopoly on that particular tactic.)

One can safely assume that these are often the same people who are offended by liberals who ask people to be sensitive about what names they call other people, attacking such “PC” sensibilities as “censorship” and “violating First Amendment rights.”

The FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) is somewhat more aggressive, posting billboards and bus ads which directly criticize religion. Quotes from famous figures like Mark Twain, Butterfly McQueen, Clarence Darrow, Emily Dickinson, and Katherine Hepburn involve messages that are clearly critical: from Twain’s snarky “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so” to McQueen’s more pointed “As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.” These ads, although done tastefully, do push the boundaries somewhat; and churches hit right back, with ads quoting, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

However, imagine if the atheists put up signs going much further–say, an ad atop taxi cabs which screamed, “CHILD ABUSE VICTIMS,” and asked, “Is your church a threat to your children?” followed by the URL, “www.LeaveChristianityNow.org”. Not just commentary, but a smear–taking a restricted, unrepresentative scandal and using it as a front to break people from their faiths.

How do you think Christians would feel about that ad?

Actually, the question is academic: I fully doubt that any business or ad agency would allow such an ad to get past the preliminary stages. And rightly so; support ads and even proselytization are one thing; ads quietly critical of religion would be considered less kosher but within limits. But ads actively, underhandedly smearing a religion so stridently are another thing entirely. Even liberals would balk at that, and one might assume that conservatives would be livid at even the idea.

Unless, of course, it’s an anti-Muslim ad.

A few days ago people started hearing about ads placed atop taxicabs in Chicago which read, “HONOR KILLING VICTIMS: Is your family threatening you?” and displays the URL “LeaveIslamSafely.com”. Were this a women’s advocacy group trying to protect people, that would be different–but the URL makes it clear that the intent is to drive people completely from their faith.

The thing is–and I may be wrong on this as I am hardly an expert on the subject–I don’t even think this is related to Islam except indirectly. My understanding is that honor killings are a cultural, not a religious practice.

The ads are cleverly cloaked in an anti-violence support guise, but the real intent behind them is made clear when you understand that the ads were placed by one Pamela Geller, a strident, extremist anti-Islam whack job who revels in seeing lurid conspiracies of anti-American jihad under every prayer mat. Honor killings are not what she’s about, she’s completely anti-Islam. This suggests that the ads are less about saving lives and are more about demonizing Islam. Not that honor killings are not a problem, but they are hardly synonymous with Islam, just as child molestation is not synonymous with Christianity.

For better or worse, the ads are being taken down. One point, however, is that had they been equivalent ads targeting Christianity, they would never have gone up in the first place.

This is an interesting concept: a man can be convicted of rape after consensual sex if the woman agreed to have sex based upon a lie the man told. There has been a lot of talk about it since a Palestinian man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for having sex with an Israeli woman because she believed he was a Jew.

However, it is not just in Israel; in Britain, a man was tried for rape after he told her that he could cure an infection she suffered from by using an ointment applied during sex. And several U.S. states already have or are considering “rape by fraud” laws.

This is an interesting issue because of the implications. Certainly, one has to abhor sex by deception. It is, in a very real way, a non-violent version of rape in that it bypasses true consent. It is very different in other ways–violence is not at its core, and it depends upon the willing cooperation of the victim at the time of the act.

But other implications should be considered (hopefully without the reader assuming that rape by deception is being defended or excused). The first is the very nature of courtship. We all engage in a certain amount of deception when looking for sexual partners. We make ourselves look our best, for example–we cover up imperfections, we coif and dress and apply perfumes so as to appear more than what we are. When we present ourselves, we hide our shortcomings. Neuroses, past imbroglios, radical opinions, health conditions, embarrassing habits–all get hidden away. Is not all of this deception?

The argument that this is to be expected and accounted for by the other party is somewhat dangerous to the concept of rape by deception, as it could then be said that one should always be aware that another person could lie, to any degree, to come by sexual encounters.

And if a person does not lie directly, but by insinuation, what then? People can be very skillful at lying in this fashion, and others, looking for hints and clues, may be quick to accept such lies.

At the core, however, is the idea that a woman is raped if she would not have consented to sex had she known the truth about the man. That, however, is a dangerously thin line. It depends fully on a subjective claim by one party, a claim of preferences, at that. What if the lie was not intended to get sex, but was told for some other reason? If it were laid down as an absolute rule, men would find themselves required to establish a detailed and painstakingly honest resume before they could have sex with anyone, else fear being called a rapist for hiding or embellishing–or even knowingly allowing someone to make assumptions–based on anything that might be significant to the other party.

That, of course, is a ridiculous extreme. But if such specifics about what is and is not considered rape are not carefully laid out, then the ambiguity between what is accepted, what is wrong, and what is a punishable crime will not be sufficiently established.

One could say, for example, that deception is defined not by hiding imperfections or making one look one’s best, but instead the expression of any clearly fabricated detail. Inventing a profession much more attractive than one’s own is often a standard for rape-by-deception; other convictions in Israel include men who lied about being doctors or government officials. Not announcing a past criminal conviction would not be a crime, but lying about it could be.

There is one more matter to consider. Traditionally, rape is considered a crime only committed by men, as forced intercourse has always been the standard. While it is possible for a woman to force a man to have non-consensual sex, it is unlikely and hardly comparable in frequency.

However, if rape can be achieved via deception, then the rules change completely: it is no longer limited to men being the rapists and women the victims. What if a woman lies to a man in such a way as to get him into bed–or, more significantly, into a long-term relationship? While women using physical force to achieve this may be pretty much unheard of, deception is a very different story. Under the standards of rape by deception, women would join men as potential rapists.

For the above reasons, rape by deception–something that I think we can all agree is morally despicable and completely indefensible–is nonetheless problematic when made a punishable crime. I would very much like to see the specific wording of standing laws on the matter, to see how they have dealt with the issues involved.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Republicans are supposed to be the prigs, the “family values” crowd, the religious, morally-upstanding types. So how come you can now be a Republican, cheat on your wife, get caught in a scandal doing unacceptable and even illegal things, and still stay in office and run for re-election? It’s a little bit more than IOKIYAR.

You may think that Clinton was the one who made it OK to have an affair without resigning, but that’s not entirely accurate. Many presidents before Clinton were known to have committed adultery, it was simply considered out of bounds to talk about it. What made the Clinton affair, as well as the graphic terminology involved, so public was the fact that right-wingers deployed a relentless offensive to make it as public as humanly possible. Newt Gingrich, the party leader at the time, pushed incessantly to investigate, publicize, and attack the president over his affairs–all the time while Gingrich himself was having an extramarital affair. The central issue, however, is that Republicans who worked furiously to root out the scandals, throwing every accusation they could and investigating every lead they could come up with before finally striking gold with Monica Lewinsky–and then they rode that one to town, making as big a noise as they possibly could.

Now, there was a problem with that: this was a sitting president, and a popular one. Think of Bush 43 in office, who had real scandals–violating several constitutional amendments among other laws, for example–and yet Republicans, then and since, have fought tooth and nail against the idea of even investigations, much less actual prosecution. The presidency is not something you toss out lightly. Republicans were OK with cheapening the office and the act of impeachment; the public, not nearly as much. The Republicans knew that Clinton would fight this, and that the nation would be quite averse to seeing the office sullied by a resignation. Doing something wrong is, strangely but truly, the lesser sin–resigning is the frank admission of that wrong on the highest level, soiling the office far more than anything else, and is only a last resort against criminal prosecution. Even with Bush, who committed far more grievous crimes than lying about an affair (including his lying under oath in a criminal case at about the same time Clinton did so), the nation was averse to giving credence the commission of these crimes with any kind of official action.

As a result, we had the occupant of the highest office in the country have an affair and he did not resign–he even finished office with high approval ratings.

In the election following his successor, the Republican party ran with a candidate who had in his past worse affairs than Clinton; consequently divorced and also having been centrally implicated in the Savings & Loan scandal, he received the stamp of approval of his party. Similarly ignored were the even worse affairs of fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani, while fellow Republican and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich made sounds of running for president soon, and thrice-married Rush Limbaugh ascended to de facto leader of the conservative movement.

Now, once Democrats have been exposed doing something that Republicans believe is wrong and then got away with it, they see this as an open door to do the same in spades–and they do so with gusto.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who voted to impeach Clinton for his “reprehensible” behavior, hiked the Appalachian Trail and acted aberrantly to say the least, and used state funds for his dalliances; not only has he stayed in office, there is even talk of his running for president in 2012. Nevada Senator John Ensign, who called for Clinton to resign and said he “had no credibility left,” not only had an affair, but paid off his mistress in a way that was potentially illegal; Ensign is still in office. Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who earlier replaced a congressman who had an affair, using it as fodder to call for Clinton to resign, not only had extramarital sex, but did so illegally, hiring prostitutes; he escaped arrest only due to the statute of limitations, and is now still in office. Idaho Senator Larry Craig, another Clinton critic, was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom stall, and did not resign, instead finishing out his term.

Making all this even worse is the fact that conservatives continue to run on “family values” and “higher moral ground” issues. They still hold that infidelity is a sin while committing these sins in the greatest number. Democratic politicians, Clinton in particular, are not squeaky clean in all of this, but they do have the redeeming quality of not preaching on the issue and not hypocritically focusing on such affairs by Republicans while committing those sins themselves. John Edwards stupidly committed adultery, but at least he was not at the same time running on a pro-marriage and family-values platform while attacking his opponents, like McCain and Giuliani, for their infidelities.

In the end, the greatest responsibility for making an extramarital affair allowable while staying in office lies with the right-wing crowd, and it is so primarily because they never actually cared about its morality, but instead found it to be a convenient political weapon. They used the issue as a form of cheap political attack, preached incessantly about it, were exposed as hypocrites, and now violate the principle commonly and openly, creating the model for all to follow, legitimizing it. Thus, they devalued its impact and made it an acceptable practice.

These, the same people who claim to be defending marriage by denying it to others.

Christopher Hitchens does have a point. At the individual or small-group level, it is possible that sports can lead to greater mutual appreciation and understanding, boosting friendship and strengthening ties. Done the right way, for the right reasons, it can also build character and teach moral lessons.

However, at larger levels, sports rarely if ever does that. Instead, it divides, pitting populations, usually regional, against each other, to the point of starting fights and, as Hitchens shows, sometimes even localized conflicts. As a small example, I don’t recall any San Franciscan and Los Angeleno coming closer or forming any ties of friendship due to their sports teams; on the contrary, it has made casual enemies of two cities which otherwise would not have had much against each other. Same for the Olympics. Traditionally, it has been a showcase for rivalries, for demonstrating superiority, and not for building bridges. This is not to say that anyone who watches sports is aggressive or arrogant, or that one cannot watch sports purely for innocent personal enjoyment of the game–again, that’s an individual-level effect.

But sports at the general level is actually a form of nationalism when you think of it. It should be a civilizing influence, but it’s not.

This story from Ars Technica is rather galling:

Two high school student athletes got in hot water after pictures from a slumber party posted on MySpace—with privacy controls, no less—ended up on the principal’s desk. After being barred from extracurricular activities, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on the girls’ behalf claiming the punishment violated their First Amendment rights.

Reading the article, the pertinent facts are that the photos had been set up so that only approved individuals could view them; obviously, privacy was assumed. Apparently someone on that list, or someone who had access somehow, wanted to get the girls in trouble, and so handed copies of the photos to school officials. This is little different from the school accepting snapshots of the girls from a peeping tom, and then punishing the girls for that. The photos had been set for privacy, and the school, by taking possession of those photos, invaded that privacy.

One has to wonder, if a peeping tom were to point a camera into the windows of the school officials’ houses, what would come up? And how would they react if these photos were made public and they were punished for it?

Harlan Drake

James Pouillon (Flint Journal photo)

In Michigan, an anti-abortion activist was shot and killed by a man who reportedly took issue with his protests (see the details below). While not completely analogous with incidents like the shooting of George Tiller, it is just as wrong, just as much an act of evil, and should not in any way, shape, or form be condoned–nor should it be ignored by the pro-choice crowd, allowed to pass without actively condemning this or any other act of violence on grounds even approaching those of belief, or action related to belief–political, religious, or otherwise.

That said, it should also be noted that this is most likely not even close to equalling or canceling out violence encouraged and committed by the pro-life extremists. Already, Randall Terry has jumped in front of the microphones and declared, “May God grant him a Martyr’s Crown,” referring to the slain anti-abortion activist, promising to speak more on this at length; one can expect him to get as much mileage out of this as he possibly can. But even at this early time, it is pretty clear that what happened here is very different from the Tiller case.

First of all, the shooting was not isolated; the killer, one Harlan Drake, a truck driver from Owosso, Michigan, shot two people and planned on shooting a third. After killing James Pouillon, an man who long protested against abortion by carrying graphic signs showing dead fetuses, Drake went on to shoot Mike Fuoss, a gravel pit owner who reportedly had employed Drake’s father at one time. After being captured, Drake confessed that he planned to kill a third man, James Howe, a local realtor who had dealings with Drake’s mother. It appears that Drake, far from being on an ideological crusade, simply had personal grudges against all three men. In the case of Pouillon, it might not even have been about abortion per se; early reports have Drake saying that “he didn’t like the graphic nature of the activist’s sign, saying an image of fetus shouldn’t be around students.” Pouillon often carried his signs around local schools, as well as other locations, and reportedly upset and annoyed a great many people with his “aggressive tactics,” often having things thrown at him from cars.

It is not even known what Drake’s politics are. Reader comments on news stories and in political forums are filled with right-wingers salivating at the prospect of discovering Drake to be a “registered Democrat” (a label they take glee in applying to every criminal suspect ever named), an “Obama volunteer,” and a “liberal activist.” An early look at the case, however, does not seem to indicate any real political connections; unlike Tiller’s shooter Scott Roeder, Drake was not known as an activist in the abortion debate, and the two other planned shootings had nothing to do with the issue, either. It would appear that Drake might just as easily have shot a homeless man or Jehovah’s Witness whose actions he didn’t like instead of Pouillon.

Second, and more relevant on a larger scale, Drake did not carry out his actions in an atmosphere of widespread extremist incitement and provocation by a vocal activist community. Pouillon had not been singled out and vilified by high-profile pundits and activists who called him a Nazi, a killer, and worse; there were no calls for “something to be done,” no publicizing of Pouillon’s home or work address. In short, not a single person, to the best of my knowledge, made any statement of any kind which might have goaded Drake into killing Pouillon.

Nor was this one in a string of killings, nor was it any way a part of a larger campaign to terrorize anti-abortion activists, despite Randall Terry’s attempts to play the victim in exactly this manner, as if this were only the latest in a string of murders of anti-abortion activists at the hands of rabid pro-choicers. (How quickly right-wingers love to “turn the tables” and at the first provocation claim to be victims of the very wrongs they take pride in committing.)

All of these mean nothing in the immediate tragedy of Pouillon’s and Fuoss’ murders, which in themselves are part of a horrible wrong at the personal and local level; I would not think of taking away anything from that. However, at the level of national discourse, where one can fully expect pro-lifers to take full political advantage of this crime, these facts are highly significant and must be discussed, lest they be distorted and used to justify or excuse what is quite frankly a large and highly organized terrorist campaign.

For someone like Randall Terry, who praised and even lionized the politically-motivated murderer Scott Roeder, to use this incident to play up his own terrorist plans, is obscene beyond imagination.

Even if, against all early appearances, Drake was politically active on the left, even if he was involved in the pro-choice movement, even if the murder of Pouillon was his primary goal and the other planned killings incidental, and even it the shootings were intended to cow the pro-life movement–again, contrary to all initial appearances–even if all of those were true, this would still not be in any way exculpatory in reference to the decades-long pro-life campaign of violence against abortion doctors and workers, nor would it come in any way close to equalling what the pro-life movement has been guilty of, nor would it be anything that the pro-life community could use to ignore, excuse, or otherwise play down the egregious crusade of brutality they so desperately wish to legitimize.

Jump this link and watch the video of Lawrence O’Donnell interviewing a young woman named Katy Abram who asked a scathing question to Arlen Specter at a town hall meeting. Her question was this:

I don’t believe this is just about health care, it’s not about TARP, it’s not about left and right. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I am only 35 years old, I have never been interested in politics, you have awakened the sleeping giant. We are tired of this. This is why everyone in this room is so ticked off. I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. My question for you is, what are you going to do to restore this country?

If you watch the interview with O’Donnell, you come away with the impression that this woman is not some hardened right-winger, that she’s not some ideologue, nor that she is unintelligent. What you do come away with is the understanding that this is a person who seems to have listened to the people who are trying to frighten her, and it has worked–and that she looked no further to understand the issues she addresses at the town hall meeting, else she would understand how embarrassingly uninformed she sounds.

She states as the primary issue the concern that America is being dismantled. On that, she is right; where she is wrong is who is dismantling it. She did not speak out while the Fourth Amendment was crassly violated and trashed, nor while the Supreme Court was stacked with those who showed clear disdain for the Ninth Amendment and wanted to warp the meaning of the First Amendment. She stood still while trillions were handed out to corporations and the wealthy at her expense, and while the Iraq War was falsely started, again at the cost of trillions of dollars she would be responsible in the form of debt. She remained faithful to her country during those times, and yet when a new president comes in and wants to reform health care so that she has more choice and it will cost her less, she immediately lost faith and believes that the Constitution is being dismantled and we are turning into Russia. There is little or no doubt that she watches Fox News.

She fears that her country is “turning into Russia,” turning into a socialist or communist state. Presumably this is because she fears that we will be forced to all participate in a single-payer socialized health care system, apparently unaware that many elements of our society are “socialized” and she likely does not object to them–does she opposed publicly funded fire departments? Police protection? National defense? Medicare? Social security? She simply does not understand that social insurance programs are not what defines a “country like Russia,” and that her fuzzy half-remembering of Obama allegedly saying he wanted a single-payer health system many years ago is not equal to the specific legislation now before Congress. She speaks so kindly yet so painfully without real understanding about how the founders didn’t want socialism and felt that those who had wealth would help those without, not seeing that she has become the spokesperson for those with immense wealth who have savaged the poor and the middle class and want to keep on doing it.

She sees things “pushed through very quickly,” and yet had no trouble with the “Patriot” Act or with the trillions-dollar tax cuts for the rich, which were pushed through just as quickly or even more quickly. She apparently had no trouble with the Iraq War, which was devastating in terms of costs in more than just a monetary way. She claimed only to “have faith in the government,” and she “didn’t really care.” But now she’s all furious and scared?

The poor young woman even admits that she doesn’t know the issues too well, she doesn’t know even what her own income is or how these policies would truly affect her, that she is not very politically aware. She doesn’t even seem to understand what Medicare is.

She comes across as a very sweet, caring, concerned person, cutting a very sympathetic figure–but also a person who has little or no understanding of what she is talking about. One gets the very strong impression that if she were to take the time to study, to come to actually know the issues, to understand the history, and see the situation for what it is, she would probably be completely in favor of the current health reform package.

Hopefully, this incident will not hurt her emotionally to the extent where she will withdraw from the issues, nor will it drive her easily into the arms of the mobs she is already associated with, who will offer her emotional support because she is aligned with their cause, but no truth or real understanding. Hopefully she will react to this the same way I reacted to my first scathing, embarrassing social drubbing upon my own entrance into public debate, and react instead by a strong desire to research, fully understand the facts, and re-enter the debate more informed, no matter which side she eventually comes out on.

But what good she has done is to shine a light on why so many sympathetic, well-meaning Americans are so completely wrong on the issues: because they don’t know the situation very well, are so easily gulled by those who would blatantly misinform them, and just don’t seem to have the built-in capacity–or, at least, the time and necessary resources–to strike out independently and inform themselves.

Hers is a movement which depends on people like that, which depends upon people being uninformed and scared to death. It uses people like her. She is not her own person, because she depends on others to handle things like knowing the facts. She simply trusts what others say, and works from that. And, like so many millions of Americans, she is being used against her own best interests, against the interests of her children.

Knowledge is power. Without knowledge, one becomes used.

Update: In the comments, a visitor pointed out the DailyKos story in which it was found that Ms. Abram has been a member of meetup.com since 2006 and lists group interests as being “Conservatives” and “Glenn Beck.” While this sounds like she’s been into both those categories since 2006, it could also mean that she’s just been a member of the service since 2006 and added those specific interests only recently. The fact that she scrubbed the interests from her meetup page suggests that she didn’t want these things to be known, but doesn’t necessarily mean that she was lying previously; she may just want to avoid being dismissed as an ultra-partisan.

For me, this primarily just confirms one thing that I even predicted in the main post: that the TV channel kept on in her home is Fox “News.” That she’s a Glenn Beck fan is even more revealing, as he is the nexus of insanity on that network. It doesn’t mean that Ms. Abram wasn’t gulled or that she’s somehow a bad person–but on my humble opinion, anyone who is a Glenn Beck fan is more than likely not an innocent sheep, and not someone who will try to become an informed person as I had hoped. The likelihood is that she is and always has been strongly partisan, only finding enough fear to protest as of late.

My bet is that her claim about not being “politically aware” before Obama came to office simply meant that she has always been strongly conservative and cheered Bush on in everything he did–and then, like many other tea-baggers, she started to see the End of the World when Obama got elected, and simply absorbed all the bozo rays Beck gives off.

Maybe she’s still a nice person when politics is not involved, but my estimation of her in general has now dropped a great deal. Anyone who likes Glenn Beck is not a person to be admired.

Some of the remaining bits & pieces now being tabulated in the Gates arrest drama are the side players who got involved in it for various reasons. One that’s a bit scary involves a police officer, Justin Barrett, who sent a letter to Boston Globe writer Yvonne Abraham, in which he said this:

His first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with the police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [oleoresin caseinate aka pepper gas] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.

Barrett also forwarded the letter (full text here) in an email to colleagues. When the inevitable fecal matter hit the fan, Barrett said of the letter, “I did not mean to offend anyone. The words were being used to characterize behavior, not describe anyone … I didn’t mean it in a racist way. I treat everyone with dignity and respect.” Later in the same email, he wrote to the female journalist:

You are a hot little bird with minimal experience in a harsh field. You are a fool. An infidel. You have no business writing for a US newspaper nevermind [sic] detailing and analyzing half truths. You should serve me coffee and donuts on Sunday morning.

Umm… Okay. “banana-eating jungle monkey” is not racist, and “hot little bird,” “infidel,” “fool,” and “you should serve me coffee and donuts” to a woman is treating her with “dignity and respect.” Gotcha.

Barrett described “jungle monkey” as a “poor choice of words,” and not racist, but he repeated the phrase four times, ending the letter with:

Your article title should read CONDUCT UNBECOMING A JUNGLE MONKEY –BACK TO ONE’S ROOTS.

Certainly, adding “back to one’s roots” dismisses all speculation that it’s about race.

Hoo boy.

Let’s set aside the “jungle monkey” thing for a moment and look at the rest, shall we? Spraying someone in the face with pepper spray in their own home because they accuse you of being racist? That’s quite something right there. But a lot can be gleaned from the expression, “belligerent non-compliance.” That’s a strongly loaded phrase, in part because he’s likely quoting a commonly-used police expression. Now, if a police officer is acting in the line of duty to accomplish a task necessary to the safety of the public or themselves, and a citizen angrily refuses to comply with a direct order necessary to accomplish that task, then “belligerent non-compliance” is in order. But remember, Crowley arrested Gates after it was firmly established that Gates was a college professor in his own home, and there was no crime involved; already, the situation was confirmed to be completely free of risk or danger, and all you’re left with is one pissed-off old man on a cane.

In exactly what terms was Gates supposed to be compliant? “Compliance” suggests that he had been ordered to do something–well, he had been asked to show ID, and he did. That’s all. After that, there was nothing.

But the reason that “belligerent non-compliance” is somewhat scary here is that it subtly suggests more than just professional police work; it hints at a mindset, hopefully not shared by too many in uniform, that police are less civil servants and more civil masters. That a citizen is expected to comply with any police request in any way, with a smile, or else.

How many think in this way? Crowley felt this strongly enough that he arrested Gates. One can only imagine what Barrett would have done if he were the officer at the scene. What percent of all police officers would have done less or more than Crowley did? How pervasive is the natural expectation of meek compliance by the public?

Think of the atmosphere in which police serve, understand that they are people just like everyone else, and it becomes easier to understand how many could easily be lured into a mindset that is less than appealing. You belong to a fraternity charged with public safety; like doctors, the power of life and death in your hands can attract or lead to the mightiest of egos. You carry a gun, and in terms of authority, you are high on the totem pole in society. People fear and respect you just for wearing the uniform. You are given a certain deal of latitude to act on that authority, and you have the solid support of the entire police force, often the prosecutors as well, in case you step over a line. Your word is far more often respected than that of an ordinary citizen if there is a disagreement. Culturally, you might even feel elevated to the role of hero; certainly, the role of cop is exhaustively expressed in all forms of entertainment in a manner that speaks directly to the male sense of dominance and ego.

In recent comments, a visitor to this blog and I had a discussion about how this relates to customer relations in retail work, where workers dealing with customers have to deal with various kinds of people on a daily basis. Most are non-offensive, some are very agreeable, and some are disagreeable. People in these jobs tend to become aggravated by the disagreeable ones, and much time is spent with co-workers carping on how stupid and unreasonable they are, with the worker usually holding back great resentment while having to be outwardly respectful while being abused by them.

Now put that into the context of police work, where the situation is greatly exaggerated. The disagreeable customers are often armed, dangerous, or aggressive in some way; a good part of your job is to deal with the worst and least respectful elements of society, and it is likely very easy to see anyone acting disagreeably with you–including Harvard professors–to be part of that overall group. You are Authority. You carry a gun. You are to be respected and obeyed. And here’s some ass giving you lip, after you put your life on the line to protect him. He should be grateful.

This is likely not helped by the other end of the spectrum: the respect, fear, and even adulation others show to you. People who automatically show great deference, who will comply readily with your requests, with “thank you” and “please.” That plus the general respect, recently enhanced (especially since 9/11) that police share with firefighters and soldiers, as being the segment of society that keeps everyone secure and alive, boldly patriotic, heralded as heroes and you’d better not disagree.

Enough of this sinks in with enough people that it comes to the point where some start abusing that authority, even in small ways. Here you are protecting this guy’s home and he thinks he can accuse you of being racist? Let’s show him the error of his ways.

I’m sure that many if not most police officers would read this and laugh. But I am just as sure that some, perhaps many, would feel the expressions resonate. That there is an entitlement that goes with the job. That citizens had better respect and obey. Certainly that was the case with Barrett; think you can talk back to me, jungle monkey? Enjoy some pepper spray, boy. And you, lady, you think he’s in the right here? Well, serve me coffee and donuts, hot little bird. And don’t forget to do my laundry. With all due dignity and respect.

Hopefully, Barrett represents the worst and nowhere near the norm. But Crowley, who comes across as much more reasonable, still let himself step over the line when he arrested Gates. And these are not isolated cases.

We probably have no choice but to accept a certain amount of this; police are not supermen, they have to deal with an insane amount of crap, and that kind of authority cannot be expected to have zero effect. But neither should the situation be ignored or dismissed when it does become a problem. Crowley should have been disciplined for the arrest. Barrett was very rightly suspended, but only because he clearly went too far and posed a greater risk.

And, as a co-worker pointed out, all of this is an excellent example of how we are not the “post-racial society” that many have suggested exists.

Crowley has made a defiant point that he would not apologize for the arrest of Gates. He was almost certainly speaking in terms of apologizing to Gates for acting in a racist manner. Probably he would react the same way if asked to apologize for an unwarranted arrest.

The real question is, will he apologize to Lucia Whalen for falsely putting words in her mouth? In his police report, Crowley wrote:

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 that it was she who called. She went on to tell me that the observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of 17 Ware street. She told me that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry. Since I was the only police officer on location and had my back to the door as I spoke with her, I asked that she wait for other responding officers while I investigated further.

Whalen today claims that she never told him that; that instead, she simply said, “I was the 911 caller,” to which Crowley responded by pointing at her and saying, “Stay right there.”

One might call this a case of “he said, she said,” except for the rather significant example of the 911 call in which Whalen specifically mentions seeing luggage, suspects that the men might live in the house and not be intruders, and refuses to identify either as black, guessing instead that one might be Hispanic and she couldn’t see the other one. This is solid, being recorded on the 911 call. Which means that it is pretty much certain that Whalen did not, seconds later, change her story when she met Crowley. Of the two reports, Whalen’s is infinitely more credible.

This in turn means that Crowley simply fabricated that part of the police report. “Remembered wrongly” could be applied, but taking “I was the 911 caller” and translating it into a conversation which never took place in which Whalen identified “two black males with backpacks” is quite the case of remembering wrongly.

Whatever the case, and whatever Crowley’s intentions, one thing is crystal clear: Crowley’s false report made Whalen look very bad, even possibly racist, and being the public record which most people gave ultimate credence to, it amounted to libel against her. Whalen did not fail to see the luggage, she did not fail to consider that they might live there, she did not fail to see that one had gained entry before force was used, she did not report backpacks that weren’t there, she did not even make certain statements about race, however accurate they may have been to make. But by making the public claim that Whalen reported what was seen as “two black males with backpacks” forcing entry into a house when such was clearly not the case, Crowley made Whalen look like a borderline racist, for which she received a great deal of unjust criticism.

So: will Crowley apologize to Whalen for issuing a bad police report and making Whalen look bad?

Somehow I think not. Crowley does not strike me as the kind of guy who admits a mistake on the job, especially when his reputation is at stake. But then again, this tends to be par for the course with police and prosecutors in any case.

The Cambridge police released the 911 call and the tapes of the police radio, and things don’t look all that spiffy for the story of Sgt. Crowley. They do not come close to proving Gates was right, but two key elements suggest that Crowley might actually have racially colored the situation and strongly suggest that he was not being accurate in his police report.

The first element is that Crowley strongly mischaracterized the initial report by Gates’ neighbor, Lucia Whalen. Whalen has received a good deal of criticism because everyone accepted Crowley’s report, in which he claims Whalen describes the two men at Gates’ house as “two black males with backpacks.” In fact, in her 9/11 call (mp3, transcript), Whalen did not initially give the race of the two men, and when asked, said that one of them “looked kind of Hispanic but I’m not really sure,” and reported that she did not get a look at the other one at all. Whalen also specifically mentioned seeing luggage.

Now, this was what Whalen said on the 911 tape, and Crowley got his information directly from Whalen on the street, which was not recorded. But to imagine that “two men with suitcases who might live there and one seems Hispanic and I didn’t see the other one at all” would within a minute or so transform into “two black males with backpacks” is not credible. Clearly, either Crowley made up that part or he radically misunderstood what Crowley told him. And that suggests that there actually was racial bias on Crowley’s part, if he contributed both “black” and “backpacks” in place of “unsure” and “suitcases.” Considering Whalen’s 9/11 call, it seems unlikely that she would even mention race at all unless asked by Crowley, in which she would have given the same answer as the 9/11 call. So “black” seems to have been either assumed by Crowley, or else later inserted by him after he saw the men–either way, his police report was false.

The second element comes from Crowley’s transmissions (mp3, transcript), which seem to contradict what he wrote in his police report. In his report, Crowley wrote:

I again told Gates that I would speak with him outside. My reason for wanting to leave the residence was that Gates was yelling very loud and the acoustics of the kitchen and foyer were making it difficult for me to transmit pertinent information to ECC or other responding units.

This is belied by the radio transmission, in which Crowley had no transmissions which were made unclear by Gates’ alleged “yelling.” In the sections of the recordings of the police radio coming from Crowley, you can hear Gates a little in the background, but nothing more than would be expected of a normal conversation. Listen to this file (mp3) with only Crowley’s transmissions:

While Crowley could have been speaking of yelling that happened which prevented him from even trying to make the calls at all, that is certainly not supported; in the transmissions he makes, there is silence for most of the transmissions–not what would be the case if Gates were yelling so loudly and so often that Gates was forced to leave the house. Instead, it now seems far more likely that Crowley actually left the house in an attempt to draw Gates outside so that he could arrest him.

In this case, the media in general has given Crowley the complete benefit of the doubt and Gates almost none on the basis of believing police officers first and arrest subjects last. However, it now seems that this bias was not correct, and Crowley’s report is now seriously in doubt.

A lot of the controversy over the Gates arrest is now focused on racism. And the other day, when asked about the situation, Obama–clearly admitting that he was biased and did not have all the facts–suggested that the arrest was “stupid.” The problem is, conservatives–as well as a good chunk of the mainstream media–have now made this about Obama attacking the police for racism, when that is not even close to what was the case.

Here is Obama’s original statement:

My understanding is, at that point, Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in. I’m sure there’s some exchange of words. But my understanding is — is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house, and at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which are later dropped.

Now, I’ve — I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

And number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately. That’s just a fact.

Note that while race is mentioned here, Obama (1) does not refer to the arrest as stupid in any way related to race, and (2) makes no claim that actual racism was involved–he actually says “separate and apart from this incident” there is a history of racism, referring to either why Gates reacted as he did, or that sensitivity must be practiced by all parties when race even might be an issue, or both.

The result? The narrative now is that Obama’s remark was somehow an accusation of racism, and an attack on an honest, hard-working cop. One example of how the story is being reported:

Crowley’s account came on a day of dizzying debate over his actions, a furor that was touched off by President Barack Obama’s remarks at a news conference Wednesday night, when he said the police had “acted stupidly” and linked Gates’ arrest to the nation’s long history of racial profiling.

“Linked” being the key word. In a very loose sense, it’s true, but the use of that word implies that Obama accused the officer in some sense of racism–when Obama went to great lengths to avoid saying exactly that. Can you honestly say that Obama “linked Gates’ arrest to … racial profiling” when Obama said “separate and apart from this incident” there is a history of racial profiling? And he was right in that there is a history of racial profiling.

It’s a shame, because the real issue of importance here is not Obama, and not even racial profiling, but rather “contempt of cop” arrests–the “stupid” act that Obama referred to. And Obama was 100% right–it was a stupid arrest, almost certainly a case of a cop getting annoyed at someone and abusing his power to slap that person down.

But what about racism? Was is in fact involved?

While I strongly disagree with the arrest, I don’t think that the facts much support the idea that Crowley himself was racist. It’s possible that he made racially biased assumptions, but far from certain, and Crowley deserves the benefit of the doubt on this.

The initial situation that Crowley was put into was unavoidable: he received a call reporting a break-in, so naturally he had to investigate. He could not just say to himself, “Hmm, there’s an older gentleman inside, he’s probably the owner, I’ll just go away.” He had to check and find out who Gates was. Nothing wrong there.

What Gates identifies as racism is less of a clear-cut situation: that Crowley asked Gates to step out onto the front porch. Apparently, it is much more difficult for an officer to make an arrest if the individual is indoors rather than out; a policeman asking someone to step outside could be a prelude to an arrest. And if Crowley was intending to arrest Gates with no questions asked, then that would have been far more likely a case of racism–it is perhaps not as likely that a police officer would arrest a 58-year-old white person using a cane, in that situation, in such a fashion.

But this is where benefit of the doubt comes in: perhaps Crowley was simply asking Gates to step outside just to be on the safe side, allowing himself more options should the situation take a bad turn. We can’t know what Crowley’s actual intent there was, and so cannot make the assumption that Crowley was being racist–especially since it appears that he did not do anything after that which appeared significantly out of order–until the actual arrest, that is.

Gates, however, made that assumption right off the bat, but there was a contributing factor: that the call had been made at all. This was not Crowley’s fault, of course; the neighbor may have over-reacted. She saw a man forcing open a door–but she also noticed two men. This is critical. To see two men, she had to either see Gates before he entered the house, in which case she would have seen him go around and enter the house easily before the forced front-door entry occurred, or she had to see Gates inside the house when the door was forced open. Neither make sense in the context of an unlawful break-in.

The fact that the neighbor reported men with “backpacks” casts further suspicion: neither man was wearing a backpack–instead, they were dressed in suits, carrying luggage. Where did she get backpacks from, and how did she miss the suitcases? Seeing two men dressed in suits with luggage is a far cry from two men with backpacks; one suggests a returning resident, the other suggests young thugs. It is easy to question whether the neighbor would have reported things differently had she seen two white men in suits, one with greying hair and a cane, in the same situation.

So Gates had returned home in a context that did not match any reasonable expectation of a break-in, and yet moments later police come and act like he may be an intruder. The real turning point was Crowley’s request that Gates step outside, which Gates recognized as a possible prelude to an arrest. With these two facts–an accusation of a black man in an upscale white neighborhood breaking into his own home, and the likelihood that the police officer would simply arrest him right off the bat–Gates forms a new context, and from that point on, everything he sees is colored by it.

Race may very well have played a part in setting up the situation–but it is less than perfectly clear. The neighbor could have just seen things wrong and maybe race had nothing to do with it; the officer could have just been following procedure and might not have treated Gates differently than anyone else. But in the overall context, Gates did have reason to believe that race was involved–though he certainly over-reacted, even if you don’t take the officer’s account at full face value.

What is likely the case is that the neighbor saw the forced entry, and as witnesses are wont to do, painted in details that weren’t there–not an act of overt racism, but more than likely unconscious bias, giving us backpacks instead of suits and luggage, and ignoring the overall context where Gates was already indoors. The policeman came and made what he considered a by-the-book encounter; though he may have intended to act inappropriately and would have arrested Gates right off, we have to assume that he just wanted Gates outside to make the situation easier to deal with. But by that point, Gates had received one too many signals that he was being treated in a racist manner, did not give benefit of the doubt, and started making accusations–accusations that Crowley probably was strongly offended by. The main business of identifying the owner done, Crowley then makes the next big mistake: by wildly overreacting to an angry man who believed he had good reason to be upset, and arresting Gates on trumped-up charges.

That’s the main issue in the end. While actual racism may have played a small, contributory role in setting this up, it was the early taking of offense by both gates and Crowley which escalated things, and eventually Crowley was most at fault, using his authority to satisfy his personal grievance.

And that was the only part of this which was way over the line: the contempt-of-cop arrest.

Obama’s comment did not accuse the cop of racism, but because the media is playing it that way, it’s now about the stuck-up Harvard elitist and his reverse-racist pal in the Oval Office dumping on an honest, hard working cop by labeling him as a racist. Right-wing sites are already ginning up conspiracy theories, like the Boston Globe removing the police report from their web site because it was too embarrassing for Gates, or because it contradicted the paper’s liberal-media agenda to make Gates look like a victim–as if the police report is gospel or something.

So much for any attention on the abusive practice of “contempt of cop” arrests.

By the way, a comment just filed in the previous post sheds new light on why Crowley worded his police report so oddly. From Massachusetts state law, two of the four identifying qualities of what constitutes “disorderly conduct”:

“with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm”

“engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior”

Then, from Crowley’s report:

Due to the tumultuous manner Gates had exhibited in his residence as well as his continued tumultuous behavior outside the residence, in view of the public, I warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly. Gates ignored my warning and continued to yell, which drew the attention of both the police officers and citizens, who appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates’s outburst.

It seems pretty clear that Gates was very intentionally cribbing language from the state code so as to justify the arrest. These terms raised flags–note that my post pays special attention to these terms, as they stood out as rather unusual and unlikely. Now we know why: Crowley had to justify the arrest. Whether this is regular practice or not, it seems to cast doubt on the accuracy of what he claimed, as if it were tailor-made to fit the law, as opposed to being a true and objective account of what actually happened.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, was arrested at his home last Thursday. The facts which are not in contention: Gates and his driver, both black, arrived at his home and had trouble entering; the door was jammed, and Gates’ driver had to shove at it to get it to open. A neighbor called the police to report two black men with backpacks breaking into the house; a policeman arrived and asked Gates for identification. Gates showed an ID, and after some discussion in which Gates asked for the officer’s ID, the police officer left the house. Gates followed him outside, and the officer arrested him on charges of disorderly conduct.

Outside of those facts, the stories are–not to use too ironic a phrase–as different as black and white.

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According to the arresting officer in the police report (PDF), Sgt. James Crowley, Gates yelled at the officer, alarming the neighbors, and thus warranting the arrest. He claimed that when he first met Gates, upon being asked, he immediately identified himself, stating that he was there to investigate a reported break-in. He claimed that Gates responded, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?” Crowley wrote that after asking if anyone else was inside, Gates told him it was “none of his business” and accused him of being racist. He says he “assured” Gates he was responding to a legitimate crime report, but Gates made a phone call to someone, asking for the “chief,” and told someone over the phone that he was dealing with a “racist police officer.” He than asserted that Gates turned to him and said that Crowley “had no idea who I was ‘messing’ with and that I had not heard the last of it.”

Crowley then said that he was surprised that the legitimate owner of the home would act in such a fashion. He said that he asked Gates for ID, and that Gates refused, but later produced a Harvard I.D. card, which Crowley called in to verify. He claims that Gates asked his name again and that he started to reply, but Gates yelled another racist accusation at him before he could complete an answer. Crowley claimed that Gates again threatened that he was not to be “messed with,” and asked again for identification; Crowley claimed that he stated that he had identified himself twice and would now leave, and Gates could talk to him outside if he wanted. Crowley wrote in his report that Gates was yelling so loudly that he could not report anything using his radio, which is why he left the house. He then claims that Gates responded, “ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside!” Gates, he said, followed him outside and “continued tumultuous behavior .. in view of the public.” He held that outside, he warned Gates twice that he was becoming “disorderly,” and claims that bystanders “appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates’s outburst.” After ignoring repeated warnings, he then arrested Gates.

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Gates tells the story differently. In an interview the other day, he claims that he was returning from China to his Cambridge residence provided by Harvard University. He said that his driver, dressed in a suit, helped him with several bags–no backpacks–up to the front door, but it was jammed, with a footprint on the door suggesting that someone may have tried to break in. He went around to the kitchen door, unlocked it, and came to the front door from the inside, but still could not open the door. To get the door open, his driver shouldered the door open, damaging the lock. He said he then called someone at Harvard to get the damage repaired.

At that time, Sgt. Crowley arrived. Gates says that he began by asking, “Officer, can I help you?” and that Crowley asked him to step out on the porch. Gates says that he got a bad feeling then–that the officer would not ask him out on to the porch just to talk to him. He claims that the officer informed him that he was responding to a 911 call about a break-in, to which Gates replied, “That’s ridiculous because this happens to be my house. And I’m a Harvard professor.” When asked to prove it, Gates says he provided both a Harvard ID and a drivers license. At this point, Gates says that Crowley asked another (undefined) question, but Gates instead started insisting that the officer provide his name and badge number, because he wanted to file a complaint–Gates explained that the officer did not act like a policeman usually would, asking if it was his house, but instead started by trying to draw Gates outside, and Gates felt that this is not how a white person would be treated.

Gates said that he asked the officer to identify himself three times, but the officer refused; Gates claims he said, “You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer,” at which time Crowley turned to leave. Gates followed him out to the porch, where he said that at least a half dozen policemen had gathered, and demanded the ID of another officer there–at which point the officer turned around, said “Thank you for accommodating our request. You are under arrest,” and handcuffed him.

As for the yelling, Gates claims that the officer’s charge is ridiculous, in that Gates had contracted a “severe bronchial infection” in China and had not yet fully recovered, thus rendering him incapable of shouting as Crowley claimed.

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You can see how greatly the account clash. Each presents himself as calm, reasonable, and measured, and the other as unreasonable. In such cases, it is safe to presume that the truth lies somewhere in between. The question is, where in between? Crowley paints Gates as being far more unreasonable than Gates paints Crowley. Crowley asserts that Gates, a professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, shouted, “ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside”; while that is not impossible, it does come across as incredibly unlikely, even if Gates were truly pissed off.

It would interesting to see what neighbors who witnessed the event would say about how Gates and the officer were acting outside–for example, was Gates in fact yelling loudly, and were the neighbors truly so “surprised and alarmed” that it warranted an arrest?

Short of that, one should ask if the officer’s reaction was warranted even if we take his word 100% and completely disregard Gates’ version of events. And I think that the answer to that is, clearly, the officer was out of line. Gates was, after all, the one being accused of breaking into his own home; while some people would be happy that police are on the job and assuring the security of one’s home from intruders, some people would not take it in that light. There’s no law saying you have to be grateful. And with the history in America of police and black people, one could at the very least understand how a black man might not be thrilled at being accused of breaking in to his own house.

But the deciding factor was not whether or not Gates was too ungrateful, but rather, was there cause to arrest him at all. Even if you had a severely pissed-off individual here, was he creating so difficult a situation that an arrest was necessary? Let’s face it–we’re talking about a 58-year-old man using a cane, and the worst that even Crowley claims that he’s doing is yelling. Is yelling on your front porch a crime, especially if there is a reason–whether you agree with it or not–for him to be so aggrieved?

What did Crowley feel would happen without the arrest? Did he think it would spiral into violence? While that might sound ridiculous, that is the prima facia reason that Crowley made–he made the arrest only after Gates’ “tumultuous” (dictionary definition: making a loud, confused noise; uproarious) yelling, which “surprised and alarmed” his neighbors. Crowley justifies the arrest by making it seem that Gates was acting in a way that was disruptive to some damaging degree.

I wasn’t there, of course, but from reading the accounts, I cannot possibly see this as being the case.

Instead, what appears to have happened is that Crowley arrested Gates for what is commonly referred to as “Contempt of Cop.” This is when a police officer, in his opinion, finds a citizen to be sufficiently disrespectful, and so arrests the citizen on a trumped-up charge–usually disorderly conduct or obstructing a police officer. The idea is to arrest the person, humiliate them in public, have them go through the process of being booked, and jail them overnight, fully intending all along to drop the charges and release them. Kind of an instant punishment that avoids any oversight or regulation. We can cause you severe humiliation, discomfort, and inconvenience, and jail you for a day, just because we want to.

This practice has some rather obvious problems, the greatest being potential abuse. Since the offense is completely dependent on the officer’s subjective, emotional judgment, it essentially becomes a license to put innocent people through an ordeal for not being respectful to a police officer. There are situations where you can easily imagine this to be justified, but Gates’ case does not even come close–as one would expect that any justified use of this practice should involve more than just offending the police officer.

One problem is that, in Seattle at least, it was found that blacks were eight times as likely to be arrested in this way than whites. This aspect is very likely to have an impact on how we see the Gates arrest–and since “contempt of cop” depends on a trumped-up charge, it follows that the police report will be prejudiced to justify the arrest, explaining Crowley’s implausible “neighbors were alarmed” rationale.

If police are to use “contempt of cop” at all–if police hold that they have to arrest people sometimes for bad behavior–then there should be an actual law drawn up for such circumstances. Otherwise, it is an unconstitutional assault on the citizen. That the police do this with full intent to drop the charges is simply an end-run around the Constitution. The fact that courts dismiss charges that are not dropped hint that such contempt-of-cop laws are not passed because they would not be constitutional.

So what we have is an abuse of police power. No one should be arrested for simply offending a police officer’s feelings.