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.
There is no way Barrett intended to refer to Gates as a jungle bunny in the course of writing the article. That would have been racist.
Come to think of it, Barrett couldn’t have meant to say porch monkey either…
What’s the big deal? Since when is it a crime to say porch monkey?
*Insert Clerks II quote here*
Monkeys are so cute. I wish I had a monkey. I blame the state for not creating the conditions whereby I could have a monkey. It’s not fair!
In a free society there would be no restrictions on keeping monkeys, cats, bats, rats, mice, ferrets, peacocks, or any other sort of pet. You can raise silverfish and cave crickets if you really want to.
So blaming the state seems like a perfectly spiny idea.
So Groundskeeper Willie didn’t mean the French specifically when he said “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”?
He was commanding the cheese-eaters to surrender their monkeys.
Barrett’s lawyer appears to have graduated from the Stephen Kinsella School of Imaginary Distinctions (Advocating vs. Practicing homosexuality; Being vs. Acting like a jungle monkey).
Also of no great surprise: the LRC Blog has been completely silent on GatesGate, even as it has discussed much less prominent cases of police abuse. I wonder why…
Well, LRC hasn’t been silent on it; see here and here.
Also of no great surprise: the LRC Blog has been completely silent on GatesGate, even as it has discussed much less prominent cases of police abuse. I wonder why…
Also of no great surprise: Micha Ghertner makes ridiculous, unfounded accusation, and doesn’t apologize even when corrected. I wonder why…
I wasn’t strictly correcting him, since LRC and the LRC blog are distinct (just as being and acting … well, never mind).
Well, the racism is A problem, but it isn’t THE problem in question.
THE problem is that so many police believe they have the right to use weapons against people for saying something the police don’t like, for refusing police orders, for ignoring police orders, for being unable to comply with police orders, for not hearing police orders, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for twitching too much while pepper sprayed.
Okay, I can see how both problems intersect.
But the use-of-force issues stood out. The belief that noncompliance can justify the use of weapons is the willingness to repeat the Amritsar Massacre.
Well put, Marja.
Damn good stuff Roderick!
I am alarmed that this cop is being terminated for using racial slurs, and not for his insistance that he would willing assault a person in their own home because of “non-complience”.
I think there’s a particular NWA song that fits this situation.
He’s being terminated because the black guy he threw his particular authoritarianism and racism at happened to be a famous Harvard professor, and the affair got picked up my the MSM. The person they hire to replace him will likely be just as authoritarian and almost as racist.
Perhaps I’ve been reading too many of Vichy Fournier’s postings, but it is amazing how much sense the world begins to makes if one adopts cynicism as a personal axiom.
It’s still not worth it.
~~~~
‘Banana-eating jungle monkey’.
Some of us politically-correct types might be hyper-sensitive enough to interpret this as indicative of some sort of prejudice on the officer’s part.
“Some of us politically-correct types might be hyper-sensitive enough to interpret this as indicative of some sort of prejudice on the officer’s part.”
Perish the thought! Why, I thought it was a compliment on his good dietary habits and endearing good looks.
Now, be fair. “…if I was [sic] the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey…” is accusing Gates of treating the policeman as though the policeman were “a banana-eating jungle monkey”. It’s the same structure as “the prisoner he shot like a dog”, which doesn’t mean “he” is acting like a dog but that “he” is treating the prisoner like one. Of course, considering the rest of the email and that this wasn’t offered as a defence of the email, that is probably not what Barrett meant but rather the result of poor sentence construction.
Notice that Barrett considers that Gates’s professional area is not as useful as, say, “help[ing] to limit and reduce [Barrett’s] income tax”, which shows some awareness of what really is constructive.
It’s the same structure as “the prisoner he shot like a dog”
You mean I’ve been reading that one wrong too?
Where do you get these damned pictures?
In this case, I googled “dog with gun.”
Update: Charles’ post contains some choice Barrett quotes I hadn’t seen before. Unsurprisingly, the more you read, the worse it gets.