I, like many of us here at PB, love This American Life. Last week’s episode was a repeat of one that I missed when it aired a year ago: “Got You Pegged.” Like most TAL episodes, they pick one theme and tell a few stories that fit into that theme. The episode description calls it: Read More
UPDATE: The e-mail. From the Boston Herald, via the Root: A Boston police officer allegedly sent a mass e-mail using a disgraceful racial slur in referring to Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., prompting the commissioner to move immediately to fire the cop, the Herald has learned. Officer Justin Barrett, 36, a two-year veteran Read More
At a certain point, I was really close to brushing off Gatesgate. I thought it was clear the cops had overreached and that Professor Gates should have known better than to engage the authorities in that way, if only because it spoke poorly of his self-preservation skills. What else was there to say? I didn’t Read More
The conversations at TNC’s spot on the Gates fiasco have been great to read, but this quote from a commenter named brent is really worth highlighting. Setting aside all of the other meta-discussions on race and class that surround this issue, the thing about all of this that creeps me out the most is that Read More
[via] The press conference was about what you’d expect: Obama trying to sell the public health care reform (which Ambinder notes, he has subtly begun calling “health insurance reform”) ahead of his self-imposed end-of-summer deadline for a bill from Congress. But Obama was surprisingly candid in his response to a question about the Skip Gates Read More
Henry “Skip” Louis Gates, the venerable Harvard professor, was arrested for, uh, not breaking into his own home. No, seriously. He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to the Cambridge police log. Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s Read More
