Pat, you don't have the facts right (white officer at the core of it) and I don't quite get the connection you're trying and failing to make.

That said, the President made a large error. He said the word "stupidly" when it comes to a law enforcement agency. Not a swift idea--even if possibly true. Even if he added plenty of context, the context was bound to get thrown out of the window because media organizations and comment section mouth breathers alike can't understand context--or they don't want to. Willful ignorance is a national birthright, evidently.

Now, no one much is talking about health care--an actual problem impacting all of our lives and one that needs to be dealt with very quickly in this thing called reality---because it's much easier to talk about an anecdotal story involving race and class (Gates a black man working for the lightning rod on class). Go to the comments section in the Globe on stories about this or go to the hideous sinkhole that is craiglist boston's rants and raves section and see just how quickly and actively a subsection of "humanity" will get whipped up over this story--one that they really just don't seem to understand at all. Why? Because of their love of mankind? Not quite.

I've met Henry Gates a couple of times and he struck me as a very nice man. Now, I try to be a very nice man (but fail daily and often) but if I come home from a long trip and can't get in my house, I'm already surly. I show a cop ID that shows I am in my own house. That cop should go away and go away right away. Now I don't know what happened (despite reading a police report on the matter--an article that is always beyond repute-Hah!) but let's say a cop is a tad arrogant and pushy and snotty (in a Cambridge cop? Gambling at Rick's?) then this is where things deteriorate further if I am tired.

The officer said that he was berated by Gates and that Gates spoke ill of his mother. Zut! This guy has got time to arrest Gates for calling out his mom with all of the actual crime in that area? Gates has a great house but in a twenty block range on all sides there are gangs, there are robberies, there are dozens and dozens of at high risk runaways, there are all of the urban crimes all cities have. Leave the dude alone and get out of his house.

I don't know the cop and wasn't there but there is an actual history among some Cambridge cops (and other local towns) of open racial hostility. If I had to guess I think in this case it was likely more cop entitlement disease. But the race stuff--I've seen it. It's hit friends of mine, actually. It's everywhere in America. This area, though, has a lengthy crap history when it comes to race. It's depressing is what it is.

So--we'll have to listen to this dookie for another two days and then it's the weekend and eventually another important celebrity will die or some other equally important thing will happen like a reality show couple will split up or we'll need to know if that Harry Potter kid still has boffo box office. You know, the fundamental things.

No rioting, Pat. Sorry.

No real discussion of health care. Sorry everybody.

I'm avoiding the news for a few days. TIme for a bike ride before the next round of heavy rains.