Miscellany

Ok, I´ve got to revert to writing about Brasilean oddities and cultural differences. I don´t think I´ve ever mentioned that the grocery stores do not sell milk in their refrigerated dairy sections. Virtually all of the milk that is sold here is UHT-treated (ultra high temperature) and doesn´t require refrigeration before it is opened. Some stores have the milk in plastic containers that are shaped like an old-fashioned milk bottle, but most of the milk by far is sold in boxes. My very unsophisticated, or possibly deadened-over-time, palate can´t detect a difference, although I have read on the internet that some people do feel the high temperature alters the taste.

Heitor and I live in the center of São Paulo, and any morning when I happen to be awake between about 5 and 6 a.m. I am serenaded by a rooster somewhere in the vicinity. I don´t think it is close enough and loud enough to actually wake me (it certainly never wakes Heitor) but, if I happen to be awake, I hear this bird. Heitor has never heard it, but I do know what a rooster sounds like and I hear him without fail if I am awake early. My only conclusion is that someone is keeping him on the roof of one of the apartment buildings. There is a little store in my block that has a parrot who wolf whistles at passersby all day long, but I think that is the extent of his vocabulary, and that store isn´t open at such early hours. And would he be smart enough to imitate a rooster at dawn and a lecherous Brasilean the rest of the day?

The reaction to Obama´s statement about the Cambridge police having acted stupidly was perfectly predictable and totally frustrating. As Jon Stewart pointed out, Obama´s statement was...how should Jon say it?...stupid, because he should have foreseen the reaction to it. And he had already said he didn´t have all of the facts in the matter. But it seems to me that what he said was completely true. If the Cambridge police arrest a man in his own home and drop all charges the following day (or day after?), isn´t that a tacit admission that the arrest was a mistake? I know that all mistakes are not stupid, but I think this one was.

This has nothing to do with what Professor Gates may or may not have said to aggrevate the situation. My first thought, after all, was that Gates should have been pleased to have alert neighbors who got involved and called the police when they saw something suspicious. But a later thought was that his gratitude to his neighbors has nothing at all to do with his reaction to the behaviour of the police.

It has been a pet peeve of mine for at least 40 years that the police do not accept responsibility for their mistakes, and that their normal overreaction to verbal abuse of themselves or to any questioning of their actions is part and parcel of their us-versus-them mindset. We are always reminded that theirs is a dangerous profession, and that they are only human, both of which are valid considerations. But we also have a right to expect that the police behave as the public servants that they are. A request for an officer´s badge number is always legitimate. In fact the refusal to honor that request, or even to treat it as an aggressive act, seems like an admission on the part of the police that they are acting in error. If an officer is in the right and knows it, why wouldn´t he proudly offer up his badge number? And how can police unions anywhere think they still have any credibility at all when the only reaction they know is a kneejerk defense of their members in any and all situations. Have you ever known a police union to act differently?

Finally, I don´t understand how an officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts who apparently prides himself on his racial sensitivity doesn´t recognize Henry Louis Gates in this situation. I think I´d recognize him if I ran into him on the street in São Paulo, unless his cane threw me. But I sure as hell would have recognized him from his Harvard ID card.

Tchau