What is it with guys and beer? I don’t want to beat the “beer summit” topic to death, but seeing the photo of the four guys and their brewskis — granted, one was non-alcoholic – I had to wonder, as I know a lot of people did, why wasn’t Lucia Whalen invited? You remember Whalen — the neighbor who saw something she was concerned about, called the police and then was wrongly accused of making racial assumptions about what she was witnessing?
Was it because they were worried she didn’t like beer and they were all out of chardonnay?
As only the New York Times’ Frank Rich could say,
The president’s subsequent apology for his news-conference answer [about Officer Crowley] was superfluous. But he might have used it to acknowledge the one exemplary player in Cambridge, Lucia Whalen, the white passer-by whose good deed of a 911 phone call did not go unpunished. In his police report, Sgt. James Crowley portrayed Whalen as a racial profiler by saying she had told him that the two men at Gates’s door were black. She denied it, and the audio tape of her original call backs her up: she had told the dispatcher (only when asked) that one of the men “looked kind of Hispanic” and that she couldn’t see the other. Yet Whalen, who was pilloried as a racist because of Crowley’s report, received no apology from him and no White House invitation from Obama. That’s stupid behavior by both men.
If the point of the meeting was to calm down the racial flames of the incident, not only should Ms. Whalen have been invited to the White House, but President Obama should have taken the opportunity to use her as the “teachable moment.” Yes, we want our children (and a lot of adults) to learn that we shouldn’t jump to racial conclusions. And the incident also raised instructive lessons about how we talk with out kids about authority figures.
But how about this lesson – show the woman some respect.
Whalen wasn’t the only woman who lost out on the respect-o-meter in this one – the Washington Post’s spoof of the beer summit fell flat with yet another swipe at Hillary Clinton with the suggestion that, had she been there, her brew of choice should have been Mad Bitch Beer.
Come on guys, the woman is Secretary of State! I’d be careful — with comments like that, if you had accidentally crossed the border into North Korea, I don’t think she’d be sending Bill after you.
Wine is generally my cocktail of choice, but I’ve been known to sip some suds now and then. If the President would like a real beer summit, I’d like to see some invitations sent to some strong women who could help create some real teachable moments for everyone, not just our kids.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:17 am
You might be the only person raising this angle of the story, sadly, but I’m so glad you have. Excellent points.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
I have written this incident in my blog iam just pasting it here, it’s long, be patient to read it…….
“MAY BE ME AND THE WEGMAN”S LADY SHOULD HAVE JOINED THE BEER SUMMIT”
9yrs back when i first came to U.S.A. i came to Pennsylvania. The town of Erie(right by the lake Erie,it’s gorgeous!) seemed to me a small town compared to where i landed in JFK!!!!!!!!! the racial distribution in my eyes went something like this:
•White:90%
•Black :5%
•Asian :2%
•Others:3%
i was actually not that wrong. Only the % of White is 86% and Black 10%(iam writing the %es in round figure) and asian same as i thought.
At first i fell very intimidated and in secured but that was purely for coming to a foreign country for the first time, really, it had nothing to do with the above mentioned racial distribution……then why did i put it up there??? iam coming to the point…
I have heard stories of racial issues from my friends and some of them warned me that i might someday face something and i shouldn’t be scared but protest against such behaviour. But instead i faced a quiet picturesque town, with wonderful people always saying hi whenever i went out for a walk pr to the store or park…..some even commented on my beautiful indian dresses………i was (i won’t say surprised as in general i do believe people are nice) somewhat surprised……
Then came that day after 3 or 4 months when i with another indian lady went for grocery shopping at the nearby Wegman’s, it was not the first time, i went there 2-3 times a week ever since i came to Erie as that was the only store that had an ethnic isle. Me and my friend were walking down the isle carrying our baskets and talking (normal grocery store voice) about products and came that Wegman’s lady…….. She without saying hello or anything just said the below mentioned sentence:
” you two must be talking about us american people and you never speak in english at public places so that you guys can talk bad things about us”
I forgot what advice my friends gave me instead i stood there astonished, hot in my face,almost feeling like crying……. never in my life i thought talking in my language would cause other people to think like that!!!!!!!!!!! i never talk in my language at a party, at my kids play dates,school, my husband’s office party or vacations with english speaking friends……….yes i talk in my language at grocery stores when iam shopping with my family or with my indian friends, at restaurants with my family only when no other friends or acquaintances are joining us……
Me and my friend both left our grocery baskets and without talking to the Wegman’s lady or Wegman’s store manager went back home, and i for that matter never went to that store, though i stayed in Erie for another 4years and had my firstborn there and never did i face anything like that in my 9yrs in this country, nor did my family.
So, when i came across this story of the cop(Crowley) and the scholar(Gates) and later how after they met and talked things over and now none of them hate each other and they are moving forward and even willing to be friends and the incident that actually sparked so much national attention as a racial incident, both are saying that night they acted on the heat of the moment .
Now iam coming back to my incident 0f 9yrs back……..that day may be i should have talked to the Wegman’s lady and asked her what prompted her to make that comment……. maybe it was not us… it was another bad experience of her past made her say what she said, maybe it was the moment which she might have regretted later, may be she is not a racist white woman she is actually a good person who was having a bad day…….. i don’t know because i left….. may be i should have contacted the Wegman’s lady and gone to President Obama’s beer summit and talked things over……..who knows may be we could have been friends
August 7th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
It unfortunately takes me back to my newlywed days when Husband & FIL went out to get beer and brought back – two. FIL: “Oh, little girl, I didn’t think you liked beer.” I’ve been educating the chauvinist pig for 25 years now. Maybe girls don’t drink beer, but women? We might.