The Art of No Offense

It really is getting harder and harder to do anything and not offend someone in the process.

Take the “Gates” affair…

What a weird set of circumstances that took place there..

What I can surmise from what little I have read is the Mr. Gates came home from a trip from China and his front door to HIS house was stuck so he called his driver to help him open it and then a neighbor, being ever vigilant, calls the police because she thinks there is a break-in in a house down the street and the cops come and by that time Mr. Gates is in the house. Understand that the caller did not identify the men on the porch as being from any race, just that it appeared men were breaking into a house.

The police come onto the porch and maybe into the house and ask Mr. Gates for his identification and he promptly tells them, “No!” and so an argument ensues.

To make a long story short he gets arrested for being disorderly.

Only one problem…Mr. Gates is a well known professor and academic and he is black and the officer was white. Oops, there is a real politically correct incorrect thing to do.
Now at first blush and with little inside information I am asking myself why Mr. Gates knowing full well that it was his house didn’t just show his ID to the police officer and tell him the door was stuck and what happened?

Why the anger and why the play the race card right out of the box. Easy, it was to disarm the white police officer and to try and gain, what Mr. Gates perceived to be a level playing field. I am not saying he was wrong in being upset but a little discipline on his part could have gone a long ways to not having an incident at all.

I wonder how he would have felt coming home from China and seeing his house totally ransacked with all valuables missing. I wonder if he would have settled for an excuse from the police that, “we thought it was just you coming home and your door was stuck and we thought you would eventually get it worked out so we just stayed away”.

Then the plot thickens as the “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” in America weighs in and basically proves his ineptness in the matter by saying the police acted “stupidly”. What a nice word from a man who acknowledged that he didn’t have all the facts.

So how does it all turn out, with Joe Biden, Barak and the guys enjoying a beer at the White House. Hopefully Joe didn’t open the meeting with his comments on Ukrainian women (although I do agree with him on that one).

Now I have read that one of the early Presidents had a wheel of cheese in the entry way to the White House so that when visitors came there they could have something to eat and it is nice to see that our President is making the “Happy Hour” a possible staple of America’s first house. I can hardly wait to go there and have a wine and cheese hour with the first family.

One of the things that seems to be coming back to me over and over with President Obama is that he lacks “class”. He doesn’t have it, never learned it and quite frankly must have laid off the Protocol person that should be assisting him in such manners.

One of the sad things is that I am afraid that he will never get it and from his disappointing responses from other world leaders I am sure that they also see this deficiency.

Well, he is not the first one that was seen as a social buffoon and he probably won’t be the last but with the economy in the dumper, increased death toll in Afghanistan I really think he has more to do then have a beer with a few of the guys in the backyard.

Did you see the guy delivering the beers? Now that was class…