How typical for an intellectual – use your own definition of said term – to use the race card to bring attention to himself.  And yet that was the case this past week when Harvard scholar Henry Gates was arrested by a member of the Cambridge, MA police department, one Sgt. James Crowley, after a phone call was placed to 911 by a neighbor.

As you could well imagine, the episode that went down was one of “he-said, he-said”.  Gates apparently got belligerent while Crowley was simply trying to do his job.  Gates was suspected of breaking into a house – his own it turned out – and was charged with disorderly conduct; those charges were subsequently dropped.

So as most of us already know, the episode was worthy enough to find its way into a press conference that President Obama conducted last week.  Obama was asked about the Gates-Crowley episode and he said that he didn’t have all of the facts but that the police acted “stupidly”.  Interestingly enough, Obama said he regretted making those comments although he believed both Gates and Crowley overreacted.  And we’re still waiting for an apology from Obama.

Obama’s way of defusing this situation seems rather odd.  He invited Gates and Crowley over for some “beer diplomacy”; personally, I have no idea what purpose this serves.  All that the president had to do was simply apologize and let it go at that.  But noooo.  Obama opted to go the David Letterman route; by that, I mean that the president made ill-advised comments and then proceeded to try and weasel his way out of a sticky situation.  And we’re still waiting for an apology.

Not surprisingly, Gates says he wants to “move on” from this sordid mishap; he said that he hopes this encounter improves fairness in the criminal justice system.  Oh and get this – he claimed that this “wasn’t about him at all”.  One word for you, Gates: bull crap.

What a lot of people did not know is that Gates was seriously contemplating a lawsuit against the Cambridge, MA police department and was even thinking of making a documentary on his arrest to tie into a larger project about racial profiling.

What’s disturbing about all of this are several things.

Let’s start at the beginning with the arrest in question.  It is known that Gates and his companion tried to get into his home that he rents from the university.  It is also well-known that a neighbor placed a 911 call, reporting the incident.  The police came and asked Gates to produce some identification that proved that he lives at said address.

That’s where things got a bit contentious.  Apparently, Gates got belligerent, sprinkled in some racial statements and was escorted to his front porch – in handcuffs.  Arrested, in other words.  Then came the Obama news conference which included the aforementioned remarks by the president.

It is also known that Crowley taught a class at the Cambridge PD which officers were taught how not to racially profile anyone.  And ironically or not, his supervisor who oversaw this class was black.  So not only did Obama have his facts – what few that he had – wrong, but he acted stupidly.  Takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Mr. President?

And again, I have no idea what the invite for a beer to smooth this out proves.  Perhaps this was an action by Obama to distract from what was a crappy news conference about his health care reform bill.  Perhaps Obama’s actions prove that he’s an old-school elitist like Gates.  Maybe Obama and his rebuke of the Cambridge PD proves that he has this distrust of law and order at least on a local level.

I realize that this is a lot of speculation as to what Obama’s motives were, but note that the president is notorious for bringing attention to things in order to divert the American public’s attention to much more important things.  Things such as his health care bill, cap-and-trade and other pressing issues.

Gates should be lucky that this did not take place in less comfortable surroundings; he very easily could’ve got his butt handed to him by less law-abiding police departments than Cambridge’s.  As for Crowley, he did absolutely nothing wrong; if anything, he simply was doing his job – and doing it correctly.

And finally the president.  Let’s just say that the Gates episode was the perfect opportunity to try and tune people out of the health care bill he’s trying to get enacted in record time.  Well guess what, Obama?  Not this time.  We, the people of the United States, are much smarter than you give us credit for.  He needs to be mindful of the fact that the 2010 election cycle is just around the corner.  When that time comes, we voters will ensure that a truckload of pink slips will be issued – at voting booths nationwide.

And when that time comes, it will be the beginning of the end for President Obama.  It will be a slow process, for certain.  But I promise you – if you contact your local lawmakers and put the fear of the political pink slip into their minds and come out in droves and vote come November 2010, change will come.  Change that we actually can believe in.

You have to admit: President Obama seems to find new and creative ways to piss folks off.  I am sure you remember the press conference that took place on Wednesday?  If you do, then you probably remember the remark he made involving that professor at Harvard Henry Gates and the arresting officer, one Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge (MA) police department.

A normal human being, once they have realized they misspoke, would typically recant their statement or apologize.  But not Obama; not him.  Instead of a simple apology and letting it go at that, he told the peeps at his daily White House briefing today that he spoke with Crowley over the phone and that he wanted to share a beer with Gates and Crowley over at the White House.  Are you kidding me?

This folks is kinda similar to the Letterman flap with Sarah Palin, with Obama being the Letterman character while Crowley was the Palin foil.  Obama’s excuse on his remarks on Wednesday?

“Because this has been ratcheting up and I helped contribute to ratcheting it up, I want to make clear that in my choice of words I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically and I could have calibrated those words differently.”

And:

“My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve it the way the wanted to resolve it.”

Do you sense an apology here?  I sure as hell don’t.  What’s really galling here is that Obama seems taken aback by the backlash that has been the result of this incident and his comments thereafter.  For those of you who may have missed what went down in Cambridge, MA, here’s a breakdown.

Gates was arrested July 16 by Crowley, who was first to respond to the home the renowned black scholar rents from Harvard, after a woman reported seeing two black men trying to force open the front door. Gates said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed.

He was charged with disorderly conduct after police said he yelled at the white officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after Crowley demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home. The charge was dropped Tuesday, but Gates has demanded an apology, calling his arrest a case of racial profiling.

Then on Wednesday, Obama had a nationally televised news conference in which he was asked about the incident at Cambridge; Obama began his response by admitting that he didn’t have all of the facts and that Gates was a friend of his.  then the statement that has dogged the president since Thursday morning:

“But I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry. No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”

So there you go, people.  Obama sympathizing with Gates, who obviously used the race card when he was arrested.  What isn’t known in much of this is that the arresting officer (Crowley) is one of the officers who had taught fellow officers in his department how not to use racial profiling.  so based on that, Crowley really did not do anything wrong.

Obama also contradicted himself; how can he say that he didn’t have all the facts then come out there and say that the police “acted stupidly”?  Let’s also consider the president’s track record.  It is well known that he prefers the elitist crowds at Harvard over other places.  And that was made known during Wednesday’s press conference.

So if anyone acted stupidly here, that would be President Obama.  It isn’t the first time he has done this, and I suspect that it will not be the last, either.

Any kid who questions anything that Barney Frank says or does – and also calls out Frank – gets my respect. The kid in question? A Harvard student, of all people. Let’s see why he “punked” Frank.