† The Grim Reaper’s Favorite Number Is Three: New York magazine notes the passing of Taco Bell’s spokesdog (“Gidget, the Chihuahua who rose to fame after famously quipping, ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell’ in a 1997 advertisement for the chain, died last night after suffering a stroke, the latest victim of the Summer of Celebrity Death”). The tribute to Ginger, such as it is, raises a few interesting questions: Does (should) the “Celebrity Death Rule of Three” apply to animals?; If pitchman Billy Mays is considered a celebrity, why not a talking Chihuahua?; and is Gidget a bigger celebrity than Drake Levin? Discuss. 

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: At the press conference (scroll down past the speech) following President Barack Hussein Obama’s speech on healthcare Wednesday night, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times wanted to know what does the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “say to you” and “what does it say about race relations in America”?

After admitting that “Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here” and that “I don't know all the facts” Obama – an attorney by training - nonetheless rendered his verdict: “the Cambridge police acted stupidly” and “the more that we're working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody's going to be.”

Some facts have come out since that show Obama was rash in his calling the cops stupid and assuming racial bias on their part:

‡ Sgt. James Crowley “is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling,” reports The Associated Press:

Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class about racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming. …

The course, called "Racial Profiling," teaches about different cultures that officers could encounter in their community "and how you don't want to single people out because of their ethnic background or the culture they come from," Fleming said. The academy trains cadets for cities across the region. …

Fellow officers, black and white, say Crowley is well-liked and respected on the force. Crowley was a campus police officer at Brandeis University in July 1993 when he administered CPR trying to save the life of former Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis. Lewis, who was black, collapsed and died during an off-season workout.

‡ Sgt. Leon Lashley, a black police officer who was on the scene when Gates was arrested “fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation” and says that Gates' behavior was "a little bit stranger than it should have been" – and he’s not the only black officer supporting Crowley, reports AP:

A multiracial group of police officers on Friday stood with the white officer who arrested a prominent black Harvard scholar and asked President Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick to apologize for comments the union leaders called insulting. [The MA governor had called the incident “every black man's nightmare”].

Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said Obama's remarks were "misdirected" and the Cambridge police "deeply resent the implication" that race was a factor in the arrest.

"President Obama said the actions of the CPD were stupid and linked the event to the history of racial profiling in America," O'Connor said. "The facts of the case suggested that the president used the right adjective but directed it to the wrong party."

‡ Gates, like most elites, exhibited too little common sense and too much sense of entitlement. Crowley – who didn’t know who Gates was - said the professor was throwing his weight around from the git-go:

When the officer repeatedly asked Gates to speak with him outside, the professor responded, "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside," Crowley wrote in a police report. 

"I'm still just amazed that somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level, and berate me, accuse me of being a racist or racial profiling," Crowley said in a radio interview Thursday with WEEI-AM. "And then speaking about my mother, it's just - it's beyond words."

Boston Globe Columnist Joan Vennochi hits the nail on the head when she writes that Gates was essentially “busted for a bad attitude”: 

The police report [link added by The Stiletto] states that Gates was arrested after exhibiting “loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed at a uniformed police officer who was investigating a report of a crime in progress.’’ …

When Crowley told him he was investigating a report of a break-in, the professor said, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?’’

The report also states, “Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was ‘messing’ with and that I had not heard the last of it.’’

[A]ccording to the police report, Gates sounds like what he is: a renowned Harvard academic who is used to deferential treatment. In this case, he didn’t get it, he didn’t like it, and he let it show.

For his part Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins warns Gates not to “exploit the plight of Black men across America to win his battle of egos with the Cambridge Police Department”:

I might be kicked out of "The Black scholars club" for saying this, but the truth is that I don't feel sorry for Henry Louis Gates. America is far more capitalist than it is racist, so a distinguished Harvard University Professor like Gates is likely to get more respect than the average White American. The idea that he is somehow the victim of the same racism that sends poor Black men to prison simply doesn't fly with me.

He won't get an argument from Washington Post columnist Michael Kinsley. Noting that after the incident Gates complained, "It didn't matter how I was dressed. It didn't matter how I talked. It didn't matter how I comported myself," Kinsley points out: "Skip Gates did not want to be treated like a citizen of society, no more and no less. He wanted to be treated on the basis of "how I was dressed" and "how I talked" and "how I comported myself." In short, he wanted to be treated like a Harvard professor." 
 

Suggesting that it would have been smarter for Gates to call a locksmith than to try to break into his home, The Wall Street Journal also echoes Watkins’ sentiments: "Mr. Gates lives in a city with a black mayor, a state with a black governor and a country with a black President. The dispute was arguably about town-gown relations rather than race."

At the root of Gates’ encounter with Crowley is not racism, but elitism. Just as elites look down on former AK Gov. Sarah Palin, both Gates and Obama reflexively saw Crowley as “a dumb cop.” Gates is the sort of person who vacations at the Oak Bluffs enclave of Martha’s Vineyard. These passages from an article New York magazine published about black elites who hang out at Oak Bluffs took on a different flavor after the Gates incident:

Over the years Oak Bluffs has become the summer meeting place for scores of what could be called the Only Ones - black professional and social elites who travel in worlds where they’re often the only black person in the room. … They aren’t assimilationist; they’re ascensionist. …

The Only Ones deal with glass ceilings at work, unfortunate misunderstandings in their neighborhoods, condescension from blacks who think their education or class makes them inauthentic, and identity crises in their kids. …

“If you’re too Southern Baptist, too dark-skinned, too street, you might not be insulted by a white person but you may be insulted by a black person,” says Columbia law professor Patricia Williams.

Gates obviously feels superior to Crowley and his workaday ilk and didn’t have the manners or brains to squelch his hubris, even in a situation that could have potentially gotten him killed.

‡ Whoever you are, if you fight the law, the law wins. On TheRoot.com, a Website Gates is connected to, he bristles: "I can't believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I'm astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race."

This video from Flex Your Rights – an activist group that wants to educate the public on Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure - vividly shows how interactions between the public and law enforcement can quickly escalate into an arrest. 

In a follow-up press conference, Obama dismounted from his own high horse ("[T]his has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately, I think, gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently."). But his statement fell far short of an apology to Crowley and his department. Cambridge is investigating whether and how to make public the 9-1-1 call reporting what was then thought to be a break-in at Gates’ home and the real-time radio transmissions by Crowley, reports the Boston Herald:

“It’s powerful evidence because the (people involved) have not had a chance to reflect and you are getting their state of mind captured on tape,” said former prosecutor and New York City police officer Eugene O’Donnell, who is now a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said last night he has asked City Solicitor Donald Drisdell to review the 911 tape, which has the potential to either bolster or impugn Gates’ stance that he is a blameless victim of racial profiling at his own home.

Knowing one way or the other, rather than making knee-jerk assumptions, will move our country one step closer to being “post-racial.”

Editorial Note: University of Pennsylvania professor Mary Frances Berry, former chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights, tells The Boston Globe that Obama’s advisers “probably wish he hadn’t said anything because he stepped on his message’’ of healthcare reform.” Quite the opposite. It’s tempting to think that Sweet’s question was planted – uncharacteristically for a presidential press conference, no one else asked a question about Iraq, the economy or any topic other than healthcare, and reporters knew in advance which of them would be allowed to ask a question – in case Obama needed to change the topic. Time's James Poniewozik explains: "Obama helped guarantee news focus on Gates partly because his comments were so much better - direct, animated, witty and to the point - than what he said on health care." You can judge for yourself whether, after a listless performance, Obama perked up at the opportunity to play the race card (50:54 minutes into this video).

† Obama’s Healthcare Speech Fails To Close The Deal: Americans from across the political and socioeconomic spectrum tell The New York Times that they are not sold on healthcare “reform”:

Like many in the country, [Craig] Brown, a 36-year-old father of four who lives in an Atlanta suburb, has grown increasingly anxious about Washington’s efforts to reconfigure health care and what it may mean for his middle-class family.

Although he and his wife, Judith, supported John McCain in the presidential race, they find Mr. Obama an earnest and compelling pitchman. But they remain frustrated by the lack of available detail about his plan’s contours and cost.

They say they feel they are being asked to buy on spec from a government they do not trust. And they have lots of questions. …

Although she may well benefit from Mr. Obama’s plan to subsidize health insurance for the working poor, Rowena Ventura, [an] uninsured worker from Cleveland, wondered whether she could afford it. “I’m worried because they’re talking about forcing people to buy insurance,” said Ms. Ventura, a registered Democrat and part-time health care worker. “You just can’t ask any more of me. You just can’t.” …

“You see,” she said, gesturing at Mr. Obama on the television, “he’s saying he wants to continue private insurance, but then he says they’re part of the problem. Well, which is it? It’s just ridiculous.”

† Mama, Don’t Take My Incandescent Bulbs Away: According to a Rasmussen telephone survey of 1,000 Adults conducted July 21 and 22, 2009, 83 percent of Reps, 78 percent of indies and 58 percent of Dems (72 percent of respondents overall) do not agree it is “the government’s job” to tell Americans what kind of light bulb to use.

† Obama – Not McCain - Will Be Bush III:  After repeatedly criticizing then-Vice President Dick Cheney of unwarranted secrecy for not releasing the names of energy executives he consulted about energy policy for much of last year, President Barack Hussein Obama tried to withhold White House visitor logs showing the names of the healthcare industry leaders who met with the administration to confer on healthcare reform. It took a watchdog group’s lawsuit to pry the names out of the Obama administration, reports The Washington Times:

Among the more than dozen executives identified as weighing in with presidential advisers on health care during February were Richard Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association; Billy Tauzin, the former congressman who heads the drug lobby PhRMA; Angela Braly, chief executive of WellPoint Inc.; and Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. …

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the administration, after the Secret Service refused its request for information on visits from executives representing health insurers, hospitals, doctors, drug companies and other interests. CREW said it was seeking the records in an effort to gauge the extent to which the industry players had affected Mr. Obama's health care policy.

In response, the Secret Service said the visitor logs were presidential records, not executive agency records, and therefore exempted from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) - the same legal argument used by the Bush administration.

CREW is not satisfied with the list of names the White House provided, and insists on the visitor logs being made public, because they include such information as “the times and purposes of the meetings and the names of the officials who invited the guests.”  CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan tells the paper, “"Releasing names for political expediency is not the same thing as transparency. This is not the type of transparency they promised.”

† Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised: The Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program has not brought struggling homeowners the hoped-for relief, because it is based on faulty economic assumptions, reports The Washington Post:

According to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the win-win-win concept of modification understates two of lenders' strongest incentives to foreclose. The first is that roughly 30 percent of troubled debtors eventually can pay without a modification; thus, for lenders, 30 percent of the total cost of modifying loans is wasted. And since lenders can't know in advance which 30 percent will "self-cure," they hesitate to offer any modifications.

The second problem is the risk that borrowers redefault on a modified loan. By the time that happens, the value of the house has declined further, and foreclosure costs the lender even more than it would have earlier. The HAMP program includes $10 billion for partial protection against that risk, but it may not be enough, especially given the sour outlook for employment.

In short, say the Boston Fed economists, "the number of 'preventable foreclosures' may be far fewer than many believe."

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Do You Swear To Tell The PC Truth, The Censored Truth And Nothing But The Truth That Will Set The Defendant Free?): Despite prosecutors and witnesses being censored by the presiding judge, evangelist Tony Alamo was convicted on 10 counts of violating the Mann Act and taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex, reports The Associated Press:

Jurors were convinced Alamo had had sex with the girls when they were underage, but deliberated for more than a day to ensure that they considered everything, jury foreman Frank Oller of Texarkana said.

"That was the evidence. That was proven," Oller said. "We came up with a full decision that we are quite satisfied with."..

The five women, now age 17 to 33, told jurors that Alamo "married" them in private ceremonies while they were minors, sometimes giving them wedding rings. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas' borders for Alamo's sexual gratification.

Alamo faces as much as 175 years in prison, and fines of up to $250,000 for each violation of the Mann Act.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): Manhattanites who have been economizing on private school tuition by doing whatever it takes to get their progeny into one of the borough’s high-performing public schools, were able to enhance their children’s learning experience even further by teaming up with like-minded parents and hiring “assistants to help teachers with reading, writing, tying shoelaces or supervising recess,” reports The New York Times. Those days are over:

[A]fter a complaint by the city’s powerful teachers union, the Bloomberg administration has ordered an end to the makeshift practice.

Principals have been told that any such aides hired for the coming school year must be employees of the Department of Education, their positions included in official school budgets.

But such employees can command nearly double the pay of the independently hired assistants, and several schools on the Upper East Side either have told current employees they will probably not have jobs in the fall or have put off hiring new employees. That has incensed many parents, who see the aides less as a perk than as a necessity to cope with growing class sizes in well-regarded schools like the Lower Lab School for gifted children, where the average class size is now 28, and Public School 290, where broom closets are used as offices and the cafeteria doubles as a gym.

“The reason the teaching assistants are here is because they’ve been stuffing so many kids in these classes,” said Patrick J. Sullivan, co-president of the Parent-Teacher Association at the Lower Lab School (P.S. 77), where parents spend $250,000 a year on the teaching assistants. “Nobody wants to break any rules, but 28 is just too many kids for one teacher.”

Rebecca Daniels, a mother of two and past president of the Community Education Council for District 2, which stretches from the Upper East Side to TriBeCa, said the move exemplified how city education officials could be oblivious to classroom needs. “I mean,” she said, “how much do parents have to put up with?”

Gee, maybe Daniels should take a look at some of the other public schools in Manhattan – particularly the ones in Harlem – to find out what other parents have to put up with.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Drug-Stealing Surgery Tech Exposes Thousands Of Patients To Hepatitis): CO health officials say a patient at Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs may have contracted hepatitis C from 26-year-old Kristen Diane Parker, reports The Associated Press. Rose Medical Center has linked 19 cases of the infectious blood-borne disease to Parker.