Even the Mounties can Act Stupidly

A few days ago, Barack Obama committed the third all-out gaffe of his presidency. I'm counting the "clinging to their guns and religion" gaffe from the pre-presidency, Obama likes to start early.

1. Saying Republican Pennsylvanians were clinging to their Guns and religion instead of voting for jobs
2. Saying on the Jay Leno show that his bowling score was like the Special Olympics
3. Saying the cops in Cambridge Mass. acted stupidly handcuffing and arresting a professor in his own house.

Obama's words were not only well chosen, they could be Obama's version of "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall". There is no truer statement that you could possibly make, than to say there was stupidity involved. The cops did act stupidly by arresting Henry Gates. Henry Gates, a black man and Harvard professor, acted stupidly by not being subservient to the white cop when he was ordered to get out of his own home. The neighbour who actually called the cops without recognizing a neighbour, acted stupidly. The head of the Cambridge police union acted stupidly in saying Obama had disgraced his role as Commander in Chief. The press acted stupidly in asking the question in the "health care crisis" press conference. Obama acted stupidly in saying that only the cops acted stupidly. The press acted stupidly in leading with this story for the next four days, even after the police had called the incident regrettable and released the professor. The press acted stupidly in focusing in on this side issue while dropping the very important issue of "Barack Obama's Birth Certificate- is it a forgery?". More broadly, Southern Plantation owners acted stupidly in importing millions of black slaves. And I'm acting stupidly for paying any attention to this at all.

The stupidity seems to be contagious.

Back to the Harvard Professor incident, the arresting officer, Crowley, has served as an instructor for the Lowell Police Academy since 2004, teaching a course entitled "Racial Profiling". So that either tells you that he could never make a mistake himself, since he was the instructor, or it tells you how bad the other cops were.

Now lest it appear that I am US-bashing, here's how the mounties would have handled this in Canada. If you go by this story http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/03/04/bc-taser-inquiry-conspiracy.html

Looks like Henry Gates is lucky he isn't in Canada or he might be dead by now.

The stupid (probably photoshopped) picture is from the stupid website: http://www.sodahead.com/question/302767/silly-insulting-funny-stupid-cute-or-all-of-the-above/