1 thought on “Maybe David Mamet and Tom Wolfe can come out of retirement to write an op-ed on this

  1. I live in that town and the Boston Herald, which is right wing all the way, devoted the front page – Let's Hear The Tapes! – and the first 4 pages of today's paper (which I have in front of me) to this non-story. (As a note, I subscribe to the Herald.)

    One aspect that's keeping it alive is clearly a defensive obsession. Obama's point was that arresting a 60 year old man who uses a cane when you know it's his house is stupid, not that a black man was arrested. He's right. I've done prosecution and defense work and the police have an option called "Walk away." That's what should have happened. The police were not required to arrest a man at his own home. The police officer chose to do this because this person was not acting as the officer wanted. Officers sometimes do not do the right thing.

    I've seen cases where cops arrested a person for swearing at them, when the state courts had made clear that hearing obscenity is part of a cop's job and isn't criminal. (And this despite any cop show – reality or fiction – where swearing is common.) These are poor judgement calls.

    The story has legs because it reverses the usual obsessions about race and class and for the same reasons that right-wing media and their supporters are nuts about Obama's birth certificate.

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