Présidentielle américaine/2012: Vous avez dit postracial? (Racial demagoguery from the seventies to Obama)

Je ne sais pas -n’ayant pas été là et ne connaissant pas tous les faits- quel rôle la race a pu jouer là-dedans, mais je pense qu’il est juste de dire, en premier lieu, que chacun d’entre nous serait assez en colère» (si cela lui arrivait). En second lieu, que la police de Cambridge a agi de façon stupide en arrêtant quelqu’un dès lors qu’il y avait déjà des preuves qu’il était dans sa propre maison. Barack Obama (2009)

Je ne peux qu’imaginer ce qu’endurent ses parents. Et quand je pense à ce garçon, je pense à mes propres enfants. Si j’avais un fils, il ressemblerait à Trayvon. Obama (2012)

The ironic result is that the election of the first black president may well have moved us further back in removing race from politics than forward. Sherrilyn A. Ifill

It’s often said that those who are unduly bothered by gays are latent homosexuals. Isn’t it possible that people obsessed with racism are themselves racist? Treating blacks like special-needs children, liberals bury them in ludicrously gushy praise. Ann Coulter

 This isn’t a story about black people—it’s a story about the Left’s agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else. Ann Coulter

For decades, the Left has been putting on a play with themselves as heroes in an ongoing civil rights move­ment—which they were mostly absent from at the time. Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America’s only protectors. It took the O. J. Simpson verdict—the race-based acquittal of a spectacularly guilty black celebrity as blacks across America erupted in cheers—to shut down the white guilt bank. But now, fewer than two decades later, our “pos­tracial” president has returned us to the pre-OJ era of nonstop racial posturing. A half-black, half-white Democrat, not descended from American slaves, has brought racial unrest back with a whoop. The Obama candidacy allowed liberals to engage in self-righteousness about race and get a hard-core Leftie in the White House at the same time. In 2008, we were told the only way for the nation to move past race was to elect him as president. And 53 percent of voters fell for it. Now, Ann Coulter fearlessly explains the real his­tory of race relations in this country, including how white liberals twist that history to spring the guilty, accuse the innocent, and engender racial hatreds, all in order to win politically. You’ll learn, for instance, how a U.S. congressman and a New York mayor con­spired to protect cop killers who ambushed four police officers in the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s mosque, the entire Democratic elite, up to the Carter White House, coddled a black cult in San Francisco as hun­dreds of the cult members marched to their deaths in Guyana, New York City became a maelstrom of racial hatred, with black neighborhoods abandoned to crimi­nals who were ferociously defended by a press that assessed guilt on the basis of race, preposterous hoax hate crimes were always believed, never questioned. And when they turned out to be frauds the stories would simply disappear from the news, liberals quickly switched the focus of civil rights laws from the heirs of slavery and Jim Crow to white feminists, illegal immigrants, and gays, subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz was surprisingly popular in black neighborhoods, despite hysterical denunciations of him by the New York Times, liberals slander Republicans by endlessly repeating a bizarro-world history in which Democrats defended black America and Republicans appealed to segregationists. The truth has always been exactly the opposite. Going where few authors would dare, Coulter explores the racial demagoguery that has mugged America since the early seventies. She shines the light of truth on cases ranging from Tawana Brawley, Lemrick Nelson, and Howard Beach, NY, to the LA riots and the Duke lacrosse scandal. And she shows how the 2012 Obama campaign is going to inspire the greatest racial guilt mongering of all time. Présentation de « Mugged » (Ann Coulter)

Vous avez dit postracial?

Passé réécrit, vidéo d’un tabassage supposé remontée, enregistrement bidonné, fausses accusations de viol contre des policiers ou des étudiants blancs, attaques antisémites, émeutes prétextes  …

Alors qu’on apprend que, contrairement à ce qui avait été annoncé par une administration qui n’en est pas à ses premiers « arrangements avec la vérité », il n’y avait pas eu de manifestations devant un consulat américain bien trop peu protégé avant l’attaque d’Al Qaeda qui se termina par le lynchage de l’ambassadeur et la mort de trois de ses adjoints  il y a deux semaines …

Et qu’après son premier et catastrophique débat électoral et des sondages désastreux y compris dans les états importants ou indécis de Floride ou Virginie ou même dans l’Illinois (merci James) tant la notoire arrogance que le refus explicite de préparation d’un président prétendument postracial mais de fait élu sur sa couleur et n’ayant jamais hésité à ressortir la carte raciale ne peuvent toujours pas être critiqués sans voir les critiques accusés immédiatement de racisme …

Pendant que, dans une élection plus que jamais polarisée racialement, le candidat républicain se voit quasiment privé de voix noires qu’une agence de sondage reconnait avoir sous-évalué ses échantillons blancs …

Retour, avec le chroniqueur Thomas Sowell, sur le dernier ouvrage d’Ann Coulter qui revient sur plusieurs décennies de chantage au racisme d’une véritable génération de chasseurs d’ambulances …

Race Cards

 Thomas Sowell

Real Clear Politics

October 9, 2012

If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter’s new book, « Mugged. » Its subtitle is: « Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama. »

Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best.

Many people will learn for the first time from Ann Coulter’s book how a drunken hoodlum and ex-convict, who tried to attack the police, was turned into a victim and a martyr by the media, simply by editing a videotape and broadcasting that edited version, over and over, across the nation.

They will learn how a jury — which saw the whole unedited videotape and acquitted the police officers of wrongdoing — was portrayed as racist, setting off riots that killed innocent people who had nothing to do with the Rodney King episode.

Meanwhile, the people whose slick editing set off this chain of events received a Pulitzer Prize.

Even the Republican President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, expressed surprise at the jury’s verdict, after seeing the edited videotape, while the jury saw the whole unedited videotape. Even Presidents should keep their mouths shut when they don’t know all the facts. Perhaps especially Presidents.

Innumerable other examples of racial events and issues that have been twisted and distorted beyond recognition are untangled and revealed for the frauds that they are in « Mugged. »

The whole history of the role of the Democrats and the Republicans in black civil rights issues is taken apart and examined, showing with documented fact after documented fact how the truth turns out repeatedly to be the opposite of what has been portrayed in most of the media.

It has long been a matter of official record that a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats, in both Houses of Congress, voted for the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Yet the great legend has come down to us that Democrats created the civil rights revolution, over the opposition of the Republicans.

Since this all happened nearly half a century ago, even many Republicans today seem unaware of the facts, and are defensive about their party’s role on racial issues, while Democrats boldly wrap themselves in the mantle of blacks’ only friends and defenders.

To puff up their role as defenders of blacks, it has been necessary for Democrats and their media supporters to hype the dangers of « racists. » This has led to some very creative ways of defining and portraying people as « racists. » Ann Coulter has a whole chapter titled « You Racist! » with examples of how extreme and absurd this organized name-calling can become.

No book about race would be complete without an examination of the role of character assassination in racial politics. One of the classic injustices revealed by Ann Coulter’s book is the case of Charles Pickering, a white Republican in Mississippi, who prosecuted the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s.

Back in those days, opposing the Ku Klux Klan meant putting your life, and the lives of your family members, at risk. The FBI had to guard Pickering and his family. Later, Pickering went on to become a federal judge and, in 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him for promotion to the Circuit Court of Appeals.

As a Republican judge, Pickering was opposed by elite liberal Democrats in Congress and in the media who, in Ann Coulter’s words, « sent their children to 99-percent white private schools » while « Pickering sent his kids to overwhelmingly black Mississippi public schools. »

Among the charges against Pickering was that he was bad on civil rights issues. Older black leaders in Mississippi, who had known Pickering for years, sprang to his defense. But who cared what they said? Pickering’s nomination was defeated on a smear.

« Mugged » is more than an informative book. It is a whole education about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to racial issues. It is a much needed, and even urgently needed education, with a national election just weeks away.

Voir aussi:

Excerpt of Ann Coulter’s ‘Mugged’: Racial Double Standards at MSNBC

Ann Coulter

September 25, 2012

How about Chris Matthews? He is an aggressive bean counter when it comes to the number of blacks at Tea Parties—as if the Tea Partiers can control who shows up at their rallies.

Blacks as a group are overwhelmingly one-party voters. Jews have more Republicans. As a result, any group that espouses Republican principles obviously isn’t going to have a lot of black people—although probably more than the schools Chris Matthews’s children attended.

While living cheek-by-jowl with the nation’s capital, which happens to be a majority black city, Matthews’s kids managed to go to schools that are probably about 3 percent black. When Matthews had an opportunity to associate with blacks by sending his children to public schools, he chose not to. His obsession with race is all about self-congratulation. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

The Tea Parties weren’t as white as Chris Matthews’s office. They weren’t as white as Matthews’s neighborhood or television audience. (It’s doubtful that even Eugene Robinson watches Hardball.)

This is New-York-Times-Charlie-Rose-PBS thinking. We’re not racist, they are. This pompous self-perception allows liberals to be offensively, self-righteously preening in the positions they take, such as demanding school busing for other people but sending their own kids to private schools.

If we attended a party at the Matthews home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, how many blacks would we see? Could we at least wave to the black neighbors? The New York Times write-up of his son’s wedding included a panoramic shot of the church, showing nearly a hundred guests. Not one of them is black. You may check for yourself here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/fashion/weddings/04vows.html?pagewanted=all.

A Republican saddled with the facts of Matthews’s life would be convicted of racism in five minutes.

No one is required to be a friend to someone else because it’s good for society, and people should be able to hire anyone they please. But you better have your own house in order if you’re going to run around accusing everyone else of racism based on a dearth of black associates.

Like Matthews, New York Times columnist Tom Wicker made a career of proclaiming that America was a deeply racist country. But he sent his own kids to lily-white private schools and then retired to the whitest state in the nation, Vermont. Wicker being so right-thinking and the scourge of racists, people were curious about why he didn’t send his kids to New York public schools. Did he just screw up? Asked about the hypocrisy of sending his own children to sanitized private schools, Wicker said, “It gives me a lot of intellectual discomfort, but I am not going to disadvantage my children to win more support for my views.”

It’s not a question of winning support for his views, it’s whether he really held those views to begin with. The surest proof of racism is not what people say, but what they do. The only thing in his whole life Wicker could have done that wasn’t just running his mouth was to send his kids to public schools, and he didn’t do it. On what basis did Wicker have a right to self-congratulation on his racial attitudes? Because he worked especially hard to make sure other people’s kids had to go to crime-ridden schools?

It’s often said that those who are unduly bothered by gays are latent homosexuals. Isn’t it possible that people obsessed with racism are themselves racist?

Treating blacks like special-needs children, liberals bury them in ludicrously gushy praise. In a field where the competition is brisk, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow stands out. When not spinning conspiracy theories, Maddow can usually be found patronizing her very, very special black guest, Melissa Harris-Lacewell with fulsome, flowery praise.

Harris-Lacewell (who became Melissa Harris-Perry toward the end of 2010) is professor of being a black woman, which is one of the most demanding, hardest-to-qualify-for positions at any university (you have to be a black woman). She is never treated like some regular nerd guest. Maddow is compelled to tell her she’s “amazing,” “wicked smart” and “one of the smartest people I’ve ever talked to about anything, anytime, anywhere.” (Then again, the smartest person at MSNBC is the guy who replaces the toner, so that last one might not be false praise.)

Excerpted from MUGGED: RACIAL DEMAGOGUERY FROM THE SEVENTIES TO OBAMA by Ann Coulter by arrangement with Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright © Ann Coulter, 2012.

 Voir également:

On Libya Cover Up: Hillary Clinton Told Video Story While Body Of Ambassador Was Next To Her

Charles Krauthammer

Real Clear Politics

It’s beyond a disconnect, it is utterly damning. There are two scandals going on. The first is the coverup. We now know, and they knew earlier there was no mob, there was no demonstration, there was no incentive about the video. It was all a completely false story. This was simply an attack of our men who infiltrated and killed our people.

So everything that Susan Rice said was a confection, it was an invention. And as you showed, it was repeated again and again. You had Hillary Clinton speaking of the video as the body of the ambassador was lying next to her. Then you had Susan Rice spinning the tails. You had the president of the United States addressing the [U.N.] General Assembly more than two weeks later talking about the video, the insult to Islam, et cetera. You have this entire story going all along. They’re trying to sell the video, they’re trying to sell extremism and they’re trying to sell all of this at a time when they know it isn’t true. So that’s number one. That’s a scandal and I think it has to do with the fact that they were spiking the football over the death of bin Laden and al-Qaeda a week earlier in Charlotte and this is a contradiction of it.

The second scandal is the lack of security at the site before. So what happened before? And I think that what happened was the administration, it wasn’t a lack of money that they withdrew all the support and they didn’t put up the required barbed wire and the fences and all of that. It was under the theory which starts with Obama at the beginning; we don’t want to be intruders in the area, we don’t want to be oppositional, we don’t want to have a fortress in America, we don’t want to look imperialist. We want to blend in with the people and help them build. That’s a noble aspiration and that was the motive for having very light security, but it was a catastrophically wrong decision to do it in Benghazi in a no man’s land in Dodge City and it cost us the lives of the Ambassador and three other Americans.

Voir encore:

The Dividends of Romney’s Debate Victory

More Republicans than Democrats are registering and voting early in several battleground states.

Karl Rove

Real Clear Politics

October 11, 2012

How big an impact did Mitt Romney’s performance in last week’s debate have? Huge. Mr. Romney not only won the night, he changed the arc of the election—and perhaps its outcome. Surveys have him leading the RealClearPolitics average of polls for the first time since securing the GOP nomination in mid-April.

Prior to Oct. 3, Mr. Romney trailed President Barack Obama by an average of 3.1 points in national polls tallied by RealClearPolitics. Since the debate, Mr. Romney now leads Mr. Obama in the RCP average by a point, 48.2% to 47.2%, and the bounce is likely to grow. By comparison, Sen. John Kerry was widely seen to have bested President George W. Bush in the first 2004 debate (held on Sept. 30 of that year), but he never led in the RCP average in October.

OpinionJournal: The Vice-Presidential Debate

The WSJ editorial board’s live commentary and analysis of tonight’s debate begins at 9 p.m. ET.

In seven of the past nine presidential debate series, the challenger has gained more in the polls than the incumbent (or the candidate of the party in power). The first debate generally frames the series and establishes whether the bounce will be large or modest. Mr. Romney’s bounce is significant.

It’s unlikely that Mr. Obama will do as poorly next Tuesday at Hofstra University in New York. His supporters are demanding that he be more aggressive. He will be, telling AM radio’s Tom Joyner on Wednesday that he’d been « too polite » in the first debate.

But if the president is as angry and negative in the Oct. 16 debate as he has been on the campaign trail the past week, he will damage himself again. It’s hard in a town-hall format like next week’s to attack, and too easy to come across as mean and nasty. Also, alleging that Mr. Romney is a serial deceiver—as the president and top advisers are doing—is a hard sell. Mr. Romney came across last week as practical and thoughtful, authentic and a straight shooter.

A record 72% in the Oct. 8 Gallup survey said he won the debate, compared with 20% who thought Mr. Obama did. Voters would not have awarded such a lopsided victory to a liar.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney

An Oct. 7 Pew Research report found that before the debate, Romney voters were four points more likely than Obama voters to give the election « a lot of thought. » After it, Romney-voter engagement was 15 points higher than that of Obama voters. This enthusiasm gap already expresses itself in voter registration and is now influencing early voting.

In the eight battleground states that register voters by party, Republicans have maintained their advantage or cut into the Democrats’ in all but one (Nevada). Since September 2008, Republicans have kept their registration advantages in Colorado and New Hampshire. They’ve added more new Republican registrations than Democrats did in Florida, Iowa and North Carolina. And they’ve lost fewer voters from the rolls than Democrats did in New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.

Before Karl became known as « The Architect » of President Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, is a Fox News Contributor and is the author of the book « Courage and Consequence » (Threshold Editions).

Email the author atKarl@Rove.comor visit him on the web atRove.com. Or, you can send a Tweet to @karlrove.

Click here to order his new book,Courage and Consequence.

Republicans are also getting the better of Mr. Obama in early voting. In 2008, Democrats made up 51% of the North Carolina early vote while Republicans were 30%. This year, Republicans have cast 54% of the ballots returned so far, Democrats only 28%, according to state data compiled by George Mason University’s Michael McDonald for his United States Election Project.

In Florida, 46% of absentee ballots returned by September’s end came from Republicans (compared with 37% in 2008) while just 38% came from Democrats (they were 46% of the total in 2008). More Republicans have requested absentee ballots in Colorado, a state where Democrats edged out Republicans in early voting last time.

Republicans have also made up ground in Ohio. For example, in 2008 Democrats requested 5% more absentee ballots in Franklin County (Columbus), 4% more in Greene County (Xenia), and 11% more in Wood County (Bowling Green). This election, Republicans have more ballot requests than Democrats in these counties by 5%, 19% and 1% respectively.

The Romney campaign saw a $12 million surge in online contributions following the debate, and major GOP fundraisers are again opening their checkbooks. True enough, Hollywood stars and rich San Francisco liberals wrote big checks during Mr. Obama’s two-day California swing this week. But it isn’t clear what overall impact the president’s poor debate performance will have on his fundraising. The small Internet donors that produced an eye-popping $181 million fundraising total in September may be disappointed in his debate skills and waiting to see if he improves.

During the GOP primary, one of Mr. Romney’s chief selling points was his skill as a debater. He picked a powerful moment to display this strength. The debate at the University of Denver qualifies as among the most consequential in history. It might end up as the election’s decision point.

Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, helped organize the political action committee American Crossroads. He is the author of « Courage and Consequence » (Threshold Editions, 2010).

Voir enfin:

International Barack Obama empêtré dans une polémique raciale Marie Desnos Paris Match 24 juillet 2009

Une polémique dans une polémique. Henry Louis Gates, un intellectuel noir de 58 ans, a récemment été pris pour un voleur alors qu’il rentrait chez lui. Criant à la discrimination raciale -son sujet de prédilection- il a créé la controverse. Tant et si bien que Barack Obama s’en est mêlé, se rangeant du côté de son ami Henry Louis. Ce qui n’a fait que décupler l’intensité des débats.

Il s’appelle Henry Louis Gates et a déclenché une véritable polémique à son insu. Pis, il a remis sur la table un débat vieux de plus d’un siècle, et devenu presque tabou depuis la fin de l’apartheid : la discrimination raciale aux Etats-Unis. Un sujet sensible à propos duquel Barack Obama a été invité à réagir : prenant fait et cause pour cet homme qui n’est autre qu’un de ses amis, le président américain a heurté la sensibilité de certains, et mis de l’huile sur le débat enflammé.

Henry Louis Gates était jusque là surtout connu dans les milieux intellectuels et universitaires américains. Il est décrit par la presse américaine comme «un éminent professeur d’Harvard, spécialiste de l’histoire des tensions raciales aux Etats-Unis», par ailleurs «directeur de l’Institut de recherches africaines et afro-américaines». Il a écrit de nombreux articles sur la généalogie et l’histoire des Noirs, et édite plusieurs revues scientifiques consacrées à ces questions. Henry Louis Gates a 58 ans. Surnommé «Skip» par ses proches, il a tout de même été classé en 1997 parmi les 25 Américains les plus influents par le «Time».

Le quiproquo Mais son activité professionnelle n’a rien à voir avec ce qui est presque devenu une «affaire d’Etat». Il se trouve qu’Henry Louis Gates a récemment été arrêté sur des soupçons de cambriolage, alors qu’il tentait seulement de rentrer chez lui, à Cambridge, dans la banlieue chic de Boston. Revenant d’un voyage professionnel en Chine, le professeur s’est heurté à une serrure grippée, à tel point qu’il a demandé l’aide de son chauffeur -Noir, tout comme lui- pour la débloquer. Ils y sont finalement parvenus, mais une voisine ayant vu la scène avait entre temps téléphoné à la police, pensant être témoin d’une tentative de cambriolage.

Une voiture de police arrive donc sur les lieux, et c’est là que les versions divergent. Selon Gates, le policier (blanc) se serait montré agressif, et lui aurait demandé de décliner son identité sans accepter pour sa part de présenter son badge. Il aurait toutefois finalement accepté de lui montrer une pièce d’identité valide, mais l’agent se serait acharné contre lui. Selon la version du sergent James Crowley, qui s’est exprimé sur une radio locale -rapporte le «Seattle times»- le suspect refusait au contraire de présenter sa pièce d’identité, jusqu’à ce qu’il sorte sa carte d’Harvard, où ne figure pas l’adresse qui lui aurait permis de convenir qu’Henry Louis était chez lui. Le policier, âgé de 42 ans, aurait pour sa part répété à plusieurs reprise son identité, mais le professeur parlait trop selon lui pour l’entendre. Gates affichait un «comportement désordonné et belliqueux», a poursuivi l’agent, voire menaçant. Ce manque de coopération et de sang froid lui aurait valu de se faire arrêter avec les menottes -ce qui n’aurait pas empêché Gates de continuer sa «tirade», selon Crowley.

Les charges retenues contre l’universitaire ont finalement été abandonnées mardi, mais le professeur, qui se juge victime de discrimination raciale, a réclamé des excuses du sergent James Crowley, sous peine de poursuites judiciaires.

Obama prend parti pour son ami Puis cette affaire a pris de l’ampleur, s’immisçant dans les forums de discussions, puis dans les talk-shows, jusqu’à ce que Barack Obama lui-même soit invité à se prononcer sur la question. S’il a admis ne pas être en possession de «tous les faits» pour juger de l’affaire, le premier président noir des Etats-Unis -qui s’est prudemment gardé de jouer sur la couleur de sa peau durant la campagne, et de s’épancher sur l’enjeu de son élection pour les Noirs- a jugé cette arrestation «stupide». «Je ne sais pas -n’ayant pas été là et ne connaissant pas tous les faits- quel rôle la race a pu jouer là-dedans, mais je pense qu’il est juste de dire, en premier lieu, que chacun d’entre nous serait assez en colère» (si cela lui arrivait), a-t-il déclaré lors d’une conférence de presse. «En second lieu, que la police de Cambridge a agi de façon stupide en arrêtant quelqu’un dès lors qu’il y avait déjà des preuves qu’il était dans sa propre maison», a-t-il ajouté.

Que n’avait-il pas dit ? Plusieurs voix se sont élevées contre son jugement jugé hâtif et partisan. «Non seulement vous avez fait preuve d’un manque de jugement dans le choix de vos mots, mais vous avez mis en cause tous les membres de la police de Cambridge et tous les officiers de sécurité publique à travers le pays», a dénoncé David Howlay, président de la Fraternité internationale des officiers de police -qui compte 15 000 membres- dans une lettre adressée à Obama. «En me fondant sur ce que j’ai vu et entendu de la part d’autres policiers, il (Crowley) a respecté la bienséance professionnelle pendant tout le déroulement de l’intervention et s’est conduit d’une manière professionnelle», a renchéri Robert Haas, chef du département de la police de Cambridge, précisant que les policiers de la ville avaient été «vraiment affectés» par les propos du président. Il a par ailleurs annoncé qu’il allait mettre en place une commission chargée d’enquêter sur les circonstances et conditions de l’arrestation.

Le débat s’enflamme Même Deval Patrick, le premier gouverneur noir (démocrate) du Massachusetts (depuis janvier 2007), a qualifié cette affaire de «troublante et d’ennuyeuse».

Le sujet a tellement passionné les foules que Barack Obama est revenu dessus sur ABC News, jeudi. Il s’est dit «surpris par la controverse» crée par sa réaction. Tout en évitant scrupuleusement la question sensible de la discrimination, le président a tenu à justifier son opinion : «Je pense qu’il s’agissait d’un commentaire franc que de dire qu’il n’était probablement pas nécessaire de passer des menottes à un homme d’âge mûr, qui se sert d’une canne et qui se trouve chez lui», s’est-il défendu. Soulignant son «extraordinaire respect pour le difficile travail accompli par les officiers de police», il a précisé son «idée» : «Des mots ont été échangés entre l’officier de police et M. Gates et tout le monde aurait dû se calmer et il aurait fallu garder la tête froide.» Comme s’il appelait également, implicitement, les Américains, à modérer leurs propos et à réfréner leurs ardeurs sur cette nouvelle polémique.