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"I think the Cambridge police acted...stupidly"

The president paused ever so briefly on that last word as is to convey the impression of not knowing the right word to use or if he was trying to choose his words more carefully. If I've learned nothing about our new president in his short tenure thus far it is this, he is a measured man in his responses to questions from the press. I say that to mean he measures a great deal of flair and nuance mixed with very little substance.

Not this time however. This time his answer was direct and held no ambiguity as to how he felt about the situation involving his good friend professor Henry Louis Gates, esteemed professor of African and African-American studies at the hallowed Harvard University. The question asked of the president was how he felt about his friend being arrested by the Cambridge police last week. I'm sure most of you reading this already know the story but I'll recap to add the proper detail to what follows.

It seems the estimable professor Gates had returned from a trip to China, arrived at his home only to discover that his keys had gone missing. He and his driver attempted to gain entry by forcing the lock on the front door. A neighbor seeing this, immediately called police to report suspicious persons at the home attempting what looked like, to any reasonable person, a burglary in progress. Police arrived on scene after Mr. Gates had already entered his domicile and viewed him through a glass entry door on the front of his home. Sgt. James Crowley, lead officer at the scene knocked on the door and asked if he could see some identification and to learn why these people were in the residence. From the police report it was learned that Gates '"... flew into a verbal rage when officers asked him for identification"
Gates called Sgt. Crowley a "racist policeman" and asked him if he "knew who he was dealing with". Sgt. Crowley asked Gates to go outside with him to answer any other questions he might have to which Gates replied, "I'll meet your mother outside."
Can anyone say Zsa Zsa Gabor?
The verbal insults grew more rancorous as Gates followed Sgt. Crowley outside to the front of his home where he was warned that his behavior would lead to arrest if he didn't calm down and take a deep breath. Neither of which he did. He was promptly arrested as he was told he would be. Not for burglary but for disorderly conduct.

Professor Gates is a venerated member of the Harvard faculty, a frequent guest on the Oprah show and travels in all the right circles in polite liberal society. He is an elite amongst elites. How dare Sgt. Crowley not know who he was! The audacity is enough to make one drop ones chardonnay.
Sgt. Crowley, on the other hand, is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling and has taught a class on the subject for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

“I have nothing but the highest respect for him as a police officer. He is very professional and he is a good role model for the young recruits in the police academy,” Fleming told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Gates maintains he was singled out because of his ethnicity and Sgt. Crowley maintains he was just doing his job.

Who here thinks talking about a law enforcement officer's mother is ever a good idea? I mean, outside of wishing her a long life and continued success at bingo?

The president, however, peering through the prism of skin color, made a snap decision to add fuel to the fire of perceived racism by white police officers on a black man. It seems the paradigm will stay firmly in place on this matter. It never even occurred to the president that Gates might have been out of line that night. He even admitted that he wasn't there and didn't have all the facts. He hadn't even read the police report yet. He had one fact, the only fact that seemed to matter.

Gates is black and Crowley is white.

Let's not cloud the issue with facts when there's an opportunity to reinforce the stereotype of arrogant, racist white cops overstepping their authority to lay down a little "white justice" on an unsuspecting and undeserving black man. Gates was neither unsuspecting nor undeserving, he was belligerent and disrespectful to a man who was only making sure that no one was breaking the law and robbing Gates blind.

No, let's call the police racial profilers who think a black man jimmying the lock on a house is maybe something they should look into.

The president eschewed calls for an apology saying only that this was a "teachable moment" and maybe he could have "calibrated his words better". That's about as nuanced as I've heard him up to this point. It meant nothing except to say that he still believes that Gates was unfairly targeted by law enforcement simply because he is black. It is indeed a teachable moment for me. It taught me that Obama didn't just sit idly in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church pews every Sunday. He was paying attention to the hate filled rhetoric and inflammatory sermons about the inequities of society. He brought those teachings into his world view and carried them...

into the White house.