On Gates

It needs to be said that, though I casually threw it out there, I really have no clue whether race played a role in Gates' arrest. It's important to say that. I don't know what I would have done if I were in shoes, but I don't know that I'd assumed race. I think the decision to arrest a guy for, at worst, being rude in his own house is shockingly stupid. The thought of someone like that carrying the power of life and death is mind-boggling.

That said, the wind is leaving my sails over this one and I'm not sure why. I keep getting this "doth protest too much" vibe every time I read Gates's interviews. It's interesting that it took his own arrest for Gates to decide to make a doc about this. Maybe he's had a Come To Jesus moment. Who can know? Who can really know?

I'm much more concerned over Shem Walker's family. The dude was killed for doing what a lot of us would do if we saw some fool hanging out on our mother's porch. And the taxpayers will most certainly be held to account for it. I don't want people like that holstering guns around my kids.

UPDATE: Also, one wonders how much of this has to do with the local politics of Cambridge and Harvard. I wonder how much the tensions that often exist between an Ivy League school, and its surrounding community was at work. I don't know enough about Cambridge to say...