Boston cop Justin Barrett, the guy who was suspended for calling Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. a “banana-eating jungle monkey” in a mass e-mail he sent to his friends and local newspapers, has now sued the city over his suspension. He claims he’s entitled to a right to free speech. “The choice of words were poor; but they weren’t meant to characterize Professor Gates as a banana-eating jungle monkey,” his lawyer, Peter Marano, said. “They were meant in a response to behavior and characterizing the behavior. Not the person as a whole.” See, he didn’t think the distinguished academic was actually a primate who lived in the trees and ate fruit — duh. It’s just a figure of speech! And when you think of it that way, it’s not racist at all.
