The Need For Adult Supervision

I owe Colin Powell an apology but yahoo news owes me and the rest of its readers an apology as well.

Last night I read this account of General Powell's appearance on Larry King live on yahoo news. This particular part of the article made it seem as if Powell was totally blaming Henry Louis Gates for his arrest.

Powell, interviewed by CNN's Larry King, criticized the way Gates dealt with Sgt. James Crowley, a white officer who responded to reports of a possible break-in by arresting the black professor at his home on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was soon dropped.

Gates "might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer, and that might have been the end of it," said Powell, one of the nation's most prominent African Americans.

"I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal," he said.

snip

But, he said, "when you are faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child.

"You don't argue with a police officer," Powell said.

Now the thing of it is, Colin Powell did say those things. But conspicuously absent from the write up was what Powell had to say about the arrest itself. So lets roll the tape.



So even if he felt like Professor Gates handled it wrong, he STILL felt that he shouldn't have been arrested. He even goes as far as to say that "adult supervision" should have taken over. So while the yahoo news article gives you the impression that General Powell was saying the arrest was all Gates' fault, thats not really what he said.

For my part I apologize for overreacting and calling Powell a "sellout mofo".