Professor Gates etc.

A couple more thoughts about the Gates thing and BHO's back peddling on his calling the actions of the cop (not the cop) stupid. (Although, the people who control public discourse, quickly changed the quote to calling the cop stupid, not his actions.)

First, and most importantly it allows the media to just skip away from the Health Care debate and go on to something so much simpler (racist vs. not-racist, abusive cop vs. cop abuse, dirty fucking hippys vs. decent lawn order types [all the rest of us], uppity blacks vs. just us down home decent white types).

I suspect, as people have already commented the white house press corp, was bored with Obama's press conference (except the part about Gates). Because, dare I say, it involved policy that helps the middle class and the poor and it did not involve shooting or beating up somebody (or a lot of somebodies). I now suspect that most of the press are simply not smart enough to understand even the simplest economic and political ideas, short of the shoot up beat up kind. (OK, they may be smart enough [although I'm not sure about that], but they are too lazy to really learn even econ. 101 or to take a couple of weeks and drive through Canada or the British Isles (both countries where English is the language) and talk to the average person who enjoys socialized medicine. Of course, it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, they also know on which side their bread butter blah blah. Or to put it more elegantly: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it."

Second, it allows the right wing to ratchet up their usually high decibel level to the screaming level again and by doing so to try to force (and let's face it they did force the prez.) to back down and to show their power.

Finally, it does amaze me that we are having the discussion on whether or not to enter the last half on the 20th century concerning health care, and we are doing that now well into the 21st century.

All in all, a kind of depressing end to the week.