Boston Cop's Racist E-Mail

Talk show host Glenn Beck, for whom I actually felt some respect when he worked at HLN, has gone completely off the deep end ever since he switched his employment to Fox News Network. It seems that Beck has been trying to out-Hannity right wing extremist Sean Hannity with his hateful comments about anything and anyone whose political sentiments are anything left of far right. Now he has gone and called our president a racist because he had the audacity to question a Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer's arresting of a prominent scholar in that scholar's own home. Wait, let me fill in the blanks: the officer was white, the scholar was black, and our president is black. Oh yeh, Glenn, that's got to be racist!

Now comes the news that in Boston (lying next to Cambridge) one of their police officers circulated a mass e-mail calling that black scholar a "banana-eating jungle monkey". But hey, when he was confronted with his words, Officer Justin Barrett said, "I am not a racist". And Barrett, who as an officer "of the law" carries a gun and Taser and handcuffs and whose testimony against suspects as a policeman carries undue weight in court, retained an attorney who said that his "comments were taken out of context".

Yes, attorney, let me read a little more of the e-mail to put it in better "context". Your client stated in it that had he "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey [Barrett] would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance." You're right, attorney, the context does change the meaning. It makes it worse.

Barrett was placed on administrative leave after the e-mail and may lose his job. Who wants anyone to lose their job? But shouldn't there at least be some accountability expected for the officer's actions? Nevertheless, I see ahead in my crystal ball the following events happening:

---Glenn Beck not only refuses to call Barrett or his comments racist; he turns it all around and further accuses President Obama somehow of causing Barrett to lose his job or suffer whatever disciplinary action he incurs.

---Sean Hannity gets (possibly former) Officer Barrett on his show and turns the racial-epithet spouting cop into a folk hero for the far right wing nuts, with the policeman having allegedly been hounded out of his job for political incorrectness by the intolerant left.

---Heads of various police and law enforment organizations hold another press conference, once again full of indignance and arrogance, and once again demanding apologies from whatever party they think that they can accuse of something. Without finding fault with Officer Barrett, for whom they collectively demand full reinstatement.

---President Obama DOESN'T invite this sorry dude to the White House for beer and pleasant chatter.

---The GOP targets for fund-raising white supporters of theirs with mass mailings capitalizing on their racial fears exploiting this sad incident, making it out to be an example of the administration behaving in a racist manner against whites. And making whatever happens to Barrett an example of political correctness gone wild.

Who knows what actually will happen. I do have a pretty cynical regard, though, for the right wing press. As well as for the way the police ominously seem to be setting themselves apart as a class superior to the rest of Americans. As for the Republican Party, well, that's the sorry state of politics nowadays. But I am pretty sure of my Obama/no beer prediction being a "slam dunk"!