Archive | July 31, 2009

Commenting on the Gates arrest, Boston police officer Justin Barrett explains his attitude toward the civilians who pay his salary:

His [= Gates’] first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [= pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance. … He indeed has transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey, thus he forever remains amid this nation’s great social/racial divide.

’Cause we all know there’s nothing worse than when someone suddenly, belligerently, non-complies at you.

Still, such, um, frankness about a case that is already in the national spotlight was a bit too much even for his cop bosses (as well as for his army bosses), and Barrett is now facing termination – which is a shame, because, as he helpfully explains, he didn’t mean “banana-eating jungle monkey” in a racist way at all; it was just, you know, that standard non-racist use of “banana-eating jungle monkey.” Barrett assures us:

I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist.

For some reason I’m reminded of Eichmann’s contention (I think it’s in Eichmann Interrogated) that he couldn’t be considered anti-Semitic because he used to visit his Jewish friends while wearing his Nazi uniform and they never expressed any disapproval. (“Guess who’s coming to dinner, honey. You know that chair we thought we were saving for Elijah?”)

Now comes before the court Barrett’s lawyer, who leaps into the fray to offer some further explication:

Officer Barrett did not call professor Gates a jungle monkey or malign him racially. He said his behavior was like that of one. It was a characterization of the actions of that man.

That is such a good point. This blue-costumed vicious thug despicable asshole conscientious public servant never said that Gates was a jungle monkey; he just said that Gates had “transcended” (I guess he thinks this means “regressed”) “back to a bumbling jungle monkey” and “thus he forever remains,” which is totally different.

So please leave race out of this. Banana-eating jungle monkeys come in all colours, after all; so what Barrett was really saying that he would have physically assaulted anyone, black or white, who acted like they had any rights he was bound to respect. And that, of course, is totally okay.