Mark Steyn on why Henry Louis Gates was "plain stupid"

Last week’s encounter between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and a Cambridge police officer called to Gates’s home over reports of a break-in remind Mark Steyn of his own run-in with a surly Vermont police officer. After being called a "liar" by the officer, Steyn considered his options: he could either "get hot under the collar" and end up in a violent confrontation, or he could write a letter to the cop’s boss complaining about the treatment he received. "I chose the latter course, and received a letter back offering partial satisfaction," he writes. But Gates went with the former, which according to Steyn "is just plain stupid" if one puts any sort of premium on one’s personal safety. And yet, Steyn fumes, in spite of the poor choices Gates made, several high-profile politicians have publicly sided with the professor. "A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling. The boundless elasticity of such endemic racism suggests that the ’post-racial America’ will be living with blowhard grievance-mongers like professor Gates unto the end of time."

Orange County Register