Gates

Like a lot of people, I've had an opinion bubbling around in my head about the whole Gates arrest fiasco. It's largely useless at this point, since (let's face it) most of us are sick of the story by now - and there's been no end of published opinions on them.

Honestly, I can see the whole incident as a racially neutral act that triggers racially-motivated responses by those who identify with the parties involved.

• Officer responds to a mistaken report of a break in
• Officer discovers that the suspect of the break in lives in the house.
• Suspect berates policeman.
• Officer arrests suspect on charge unrelated to original report.
• The charge against the suspect is then dropped.

What's going on there is disturbing and has nothing to do with race. A cop is fed up with the suspect's attitude, so he arrests him.

That should be the discussion. The validity of that action. And that's not a simple discussion.

But since the cop and the suspect have different skin colors- we get breathless coverage of the easy narrative: Race.

Guaranteed conflict and a ready supply of invective spouting pressure groups - eager to cast the entire affair as yet another example of why their side is correct. You SEE??!! they scream.

And then the president weighs in. "Stupidly."

In a vacuum, his comments make total sense. The cop is trying to arrest a man for burglary at the one location where that crime is impossible - his own home. The cop looks foolish. Since the disorderly charge was dropped, the cops have no crime to stand on. They do look stupid.

But this is America - and a comment about a single arrest is somehow an assault against all cops, and (to some) an attack on all white cops. Now we get the pent-up frustration of police officers everywhere rearing up to denounce the injustice of it all.

We're not racists. Stop attacking us!

If they would just leave it at that- that might pass - but we get

Gates deserved it. He was rude to the officer! He's racist!

Which spawns another round of:

-How dare you accuse a black man of racism? Don't you know the history of racial oppression in America?

We're not talking about history, here-

-OH YES WE ARE...

And so on.

We finally end up with the President of the United States being asked to publicly kiss the ring of law enforcement and construct an elaborate beer garden kabuki so all sides can save face. See? we got to meet with the president. We're right.

And then both factions go away with the same certainty they arrived with.

Meanwhile, the whole reason we had this whole farce - Gate's arrest on a disorderly conduct charge - is left largely unexamined.

Thankfully we have Digby.

She has an excellent post on that very issue:

Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn't encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn't behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don't, we shouldn't make excuses for them. It's far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.

I was going to go down that rabbit hole, but she's done it so brilliantly - I couldn't possibly add a thing.

Read the whole thing.