Gates - Crowley: RIP

It would appear as though the only person who behaved properly in the entire Gates-Crowley incident was Lucia Whalen. In case you forgot, she's the neighbor who reported what she thought was an attempted break-in at a house on her block. I can only hope that my neighbors behave the same way if they see someone trying to break into my house!

By most accounts, Professor Gates behaved poorly. Sure, he might have been tired; and I'm sure he was more than a little shocked to see a squadron of police cars outside of his house. Still, yelling at a cop in front of a bunch of other cops is never a very sensible thing to do. Even the most even-handed cop will get his back up a little.

Officer Crowley doesn't fare much better than Professor Gates. At some point, it had to become vividly clear to him that the person he was arguing with was the lawful resident of the house. He also had to realize that this lawful resident had temporarily lost the ability to reason. At that point, he should have said, "Sorry to disturb you, sir," and walked out the door.

Sadly, President Obama fares worse than either Crowley or Gates. At least they were caught up in the moment and could be forgiven their irrational behavior. Obama had time to gather all of the facts, consult with experts, and think long and hard about what he should say. After all this, he concluded that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly". That's it. Nothing more. Even his most fervent supporters had to wince at that. What he should have said was something like, "This is not a racial incident. This is an simply an unfortunate situation that should never have escalated to where it is today. Both parties are guilty. Both parties should have handled it better." If he had said something like that and ended his press conference the entire blogosphere wouldn't be droning on about it today. Bad show, Mr. President.

Finally, when things finally appeared to be calming down, Sgt. Leon Lashley, the black policeman who was also at Gates' home during the disturbance, wrote an open letter to Officer Crowley. In it, he asked Officer Crowley to inform Professor Gates and President Obama that Gates' actions "may have caused grave and potentially irreparable harm to the struggle for racial harmony". Please ..... does anyone really believe that? All his letter did was fan the embers back into flames and put this story back on the 24 hour news networks.

The only positive thing about this incident is that it generated some excellent material for the late night comics and programs like The Daily Show. I particularly liked the political cartoon shown at the top of this post that was created by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Now that's journalism!