Friday, July 31, 2009

Chit Chattin' the night away...

What do the President, a police officer and a scholarly professor all have in common? No, this is not the setup to a bad joke...President Obama made good on his offer to share a beer with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr and police Sgt. Joseph Crowley. The three sat around on Thursday evening discussing the important topics that keep us all up at night such as "why is the grass green?", "what happens to clouds at night?", and the ever popular "just what is the sound of one hand clapping?" In between those riveting discussions they also focused on the issue of race and, while agreeing to disagree (Crowley and Gates), they did come to the conclusion that this is a good learning experience and that moving forward is best. Hopefully next time President Obama wants to stick his two cents into something like this, he will choose better words than saying police "acted stupidly."

Both parties are guilty of overreacting and not listening to each other. This is a situation that got completely out of hand because two people were both trying to prove something...that they were each right. By the way, the original 911 call made no mention of race, something else that is of significance here.

Of course, there is something else that can be learned-if your door becomes jammed when you are trying to unlock it, maybe it's time for a new door. And there's still no word on whether there were free refills at the "beer summit."

peace,

paul

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