Friday, July 24, 2009

A sellable moment

On Gayle King’s satellite radio show today (via the “Oprah Radio” channel), Henry Louis Gates said he’s not ready to put the Cambridge cop confrontation behind him.

“I want to use what happened to me to bring the public’s attention to racial profiling,” Prof. Gates told Gayle. “I wanna make a documentary for PBS or HBO or someplace on racial profiling, on this kind of arbitrary and unacceptable behavior on behalf of the police force.”

A documentary, Skip? Really?

Meaning it’s now in the professor’s interest to keep this thing cooking in the media? To not squash it?

If so... too bad for President Obama. Because, for however long people talk about the arrest of Skip Gates, they’ll remember how Barack Obama said the police “acted stupidly.” Doesn’t matter that Prez is trying to pull those words back.

On my Vox blog, I’m streaming part of that Skip Gates interview from “The Gayle King Show,” as replayed on L.A. talk station KFI during the popular “John and Ken Show” this afternoon.

Included in this clip is some sassy commentary from John and Ken... which will give you an idea of how this story is reverberating throughout Talk Radio Land. And not just among partisan right- wingers, because John and Ken aren’t that.

Anyway... click here to listen.

2 comments:

KST said...

Hmmm... Interesting. Mr. Gates does not come of that well in this interview, but I have several questions regarding John and Ken's "sassy" comments.

Why are they assuming that Gates is lying regarding the "your mamma" comment? They assume that the report written by the officer is the truth. They ask, "Where does he come off accusing the cop of committing a crime?" Because, um, maybe he did? One dj sputters, "What's his proof?"

Love the "your mamma" commentary.

If Gates, is in fact, telling the truth, then why wouldn't he call the officer out for falsifying a police report. Or is Skip being way too uppity?

sakredkow said...

Never mind H1N1. Never mind cancer, heart disease or avian flu.
Self-importance is the new pandemic.