You can find the image at the White House’s
official blog
here (I wonder how long it will be up
there, though?).
I am stunned that the official White House Blog
published this picture and that it is in the
public domain. The body language is most
revealing.
Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this
trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down
the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the
infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of
self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on
his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so
self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?
And they are right. Sgt. Crowley had no reason
to help Dr. Gates. After all, wasn’t it Gates
who had insulted both him and his family?
Furthermore, isn’t Obama supposed to be the
emphatic one here (after all, it’s a trait that
only Democrats are supposed to have because they
“feel your pain”!) for inviting them down in the
first place in the hopes of reaching some sort
of understanding that never came to fruition?
But, in this unusually candid photo, the truth
comes out. Obama keeps on walking paying no heed
to Gates, and it is Crowley, who has been
demonized throughout this entire incident, who
is left to help the man.
I can’t help but think back upon a certain photo
I saw of President Bush and Senator Robert Byrd.
President Bush had no reason to even want to
help Senator Byrd, who had spent much of his
time in the Senate railing against the Bush
administration, particularly on the war in Iraq,
yet he helped the old man regardless.
Note the difference between the two Presidents.
Furthermore, note how both Bush and Crowley
helped men who didn’t deserve it, at least not
from them.
Character isn’t about who you are when you know
the spotlight is on you, it’s about who you are
when it isn’t, or when you THINK it isn’t.
