Over the past ten days we've watched a soap opera involving the arrest of a Harvard professor by a Cambridge, Massachusetts, police sergeant.  The incident has been analyzed half to death by just about every columnist in the nation but nobody is hitting the nail on the head.

Even the people I respect the most like Thomas Sowell, Cal Thomas, Michelle Malkin, and Harry Jackson have completely screwed the pooch on this one.  Ann Coulter’s weekly column came out yesterday and I’m afraid to read it because she’ll probably miss the point, too, and then I’ll have no heroes left.

This incident had nothing—nothing—to do with race.  You read it here first.

The incident and its aftermath have been hilarious, a combination of medieval morality play and Kabuki theatre—Kabuki morality comedy?—and the playwright did all he could to make sure his point was clear by providing a delicious list of ironies almost too blatant to believe.

1. The professor prancing toward the audience in his front yard and screeching about racism isn’t just a black professor, he’s a professor of African American studies.  This is his area of expertise that he gets completely wrong.

2. The 911 caller never said a word about race when she reported seeing two men pushing their way into the professor’s home.  They were facing away from her.  She couldn’t see what race they were.  When the 911 operator pressed her on the issue, she said “Maybe one of them is Hispanic.”

3. The professor’s house had previously endured a break-in, which was why he couldn’t get the door open.  The stupid door was still broken.  So everybody involved, from the woman in the street to the police department, had good reason for worrying about two men forcing their way into the house.

4. The white policeman isn’t just a cop, he’s the guy picked by a black police chief to teach other cops about racial profiling.  You couldn’t find a white cop less likely to be guilty of racism.

5. The white policeman says he voted for the black president who called him a stupid racist.  “I’m an Obama supporter,” he calmly stated.  (Who writes this stuff?)

6. This unlucky cop is looking up at a power structure that includes, in addition to the afore-mentioned black police chief, a black mayor, a black governor, and a black president.

7. It turns out the black guy and the white guy are related.

At some point this incredible chain of circumstances has to shout in your ear, “This professor is not a victim of racism!”

So what is this about?  It’s about class, not race—and no, I don’t mean the lack of class displayed by the professor.

There is a class of wannabe elites in this country who have grown in power to the point where one of them sits in the Oval Office.  The one in the Oval Office happens to be a friend of the one under discussion here.  That’s why Obama jumped into the fray.  He wasn’t defending a fellow black man.  He was defending a fellow member of his class—a fellow Harvard grad, university lecturer, and pseudo-intellectual.

These people are leftist, they are products of certain preferred institutions of higher learning, they are sympathetic to communism, and they have an antipathy—if not outright hatred—for the United States of America and any man wearing a uniform that represents any portion of it.

They think they are above us, they despise us, and they think they should be telling us what to do.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Harvard professor playing the villain in our Kabuki morality comedy, is the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.  Who is W.E.B. DuBois?  He’s a man who traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1920s when Joseph Stalin was busy centralizing power and forcing the Sovietization of surrounding countries, and exclaimed, “Here life is poetry itself!”

“Poetry?”  Not so much for Stalin’s 15 million political murder victims, I’m guessing.  For them it was probably tough just writing a halfway decent limerick.

(Poetry!  One thing about leftists, they are so flagrantly wrong, so consistently, that they provide immense comic relief just by living.  Hey, maybe that’s why God made them in the first place!)

Mr. Gates’ ire was about class.  One of the great unwashed from the lower classes was in his home, asking for ID.  How dare he?  It didn’t matter what color Sergeant Crowley’s skin was.  Gates would have been equally irate with a black policeman—the childish outbursts would have been somewhat different because racism is a hard sell when the policeman is the same race, but still equally angry.

“Ya, I’ll speak with your momma outside,” Gates yelped at Sergeant Crowley.  What grown man says that to a cop?  Only an insane man or an arrogant one.

Mr. Gates doesn’t leave any doubts regarding how he feels about us.  In 1996, speaking to a gathering at Harvard, he mentioned the horrible year he spent working in North Carolina.  “I taught at Duke for one long painful year…  I ain’t lying.  I don’t even like the airplane to fly over North Carolina…  And now I’ve been, thank god, at Harvard for five years.”

Last I heard there were some black folk in North Carolina so it’s not a racial thing that inspires Henry Gates’ hatred.  What happened was this: Yale, where he was an associate professor, refused him tenure as did his next stop, Cornell.  Facing career failure, he was forced to lower himself and teach at Duke.

What a thrill for Duke.

To an aspiring intellectual phony like Henry Gates, Duke represented banishment from the elite.  Duke was his Siberian gulag.  Having to work in North Carolina was embarrassing to him.  No wonder he hates the place.

Notice that he can’t admit to his audience that he spent two years there.  That would be too much.  They might think he caught something contagious or, even worse, belongs there.  So he shortens the purgatory to “one long painful year” in front of the Harvard people.

On July 8 I wrote a column that ended with these words:

“Let’s stop letting them make it about black against white and let’s turn our attention to the system that is destroying us all.  Let’s send the race baiters like David Duke and Al Sharpton off to some deserted island and let them throw rocks at each other.  Who would miss them?”

Henry Gates is another one who deserves a ticket to that island.

We can’t let this man’s arrogance and class hatred fool us into thinking this incident was about race.  That’s how the race baiters divide and conquer us.  Black or white, we’re all human beings engaged in the same struggle for meaning and salvation.  We have more in common than we have that’s different—and one of the things we have in common is that Henry Gates disdains us.


From Reno, Nevada, USA

August 1, 2009 - Just to clarify...it was, in fact, Laura Ingraham who called Meghan McCain a "plus-sized model". Laura Ingraham said this in response to Meghan McCain's comments about Ann Coulter. Meow! - Sam, Michigan

J.P. replies: Oooo, Sam, trash talkin' on Jay!  My website is really growing up.

July 30, 2009 - You are right, J.P., this issue has nothing to do with race, and our president did himself a disservice to make the comments he did. It just shows that he is human, like the rest of us, and suffered from poor (emotional) judgement. Even the president is allowed to be human right? But hold on, that isn't the part that scared me. Coulter? A hero? Are you fucking kidding me? This is the same woman who kept calling John McCain's daughter fat? Really? I am at a loss. - Jay, Michigan

J.P. replies: Hey, she's hot, she's smart, and she's conservative—what more could a man ask for in a woman?  Besides, I think it was Laura Ingraham, a different hot, smart, conservative woman, who made a comment about Meghan McCain's weight.

July 30, 2009 - As much as you are right, the majority of people still won't GET IT! It is so time for us to stop shouting the race card at every little thing. I applaud the lady who called the cops. We spend time, money and manpower to boast "Neighborhood patrolled by"...... and when we exercise our right of concern, the bullshit starts! I believe this lady who said, "I'd do it again". Black people, take your heads out the sand, we've come too far to continuously play the race card. Enough already! BTW, I live in an all white neighborhood and if my neighbors see somebody at my door that doesn't look like me, I would surely hope that they would call 911. That's concern, not profiling. Get it together people! Just so we're clear, I really like Obama. - Star, Tennessee

J.P. replies: Just when I was thinking you were on the ball...

July 30, 2009 - You are so "on the money' with this one. I am one of those 'tarheels' from North Carolina his elitist ass sneers at. But, even more than that, I am sick to death of everything being about race in this country. - Glenda, Nevada

J.P. replies: By the way, what the heck is a “tarheel,” Glenda?

July 30, 2009 - Michael Savage agrees with you. Maybe he should be your new hero :) What message does this story send to the police force? Do they have to walk on eggshells, sacrifice their training, possibly put their own lives in danger as not to "offend" a black person, and have his face plastered all over the media as a racist? I once got pulled over by a black police officer. It was dark, I was lost, and I ended up turning the wrong way down a one-way street. When he approached my vehicle, I was in tears. I explained to the officer that I was lost, and, well, he still gave me a ticket. Clearly this black man was in the position of power, and since I'm a white girl, he gave me a ticket for breaking a traffic law. He must be a racist (excuse my sarcasm). What a joke. - Sam, Michigan

J.P. replies: I love listening to Michael Savage.  He's intelligent, he's educated (two different things), and his opinions are unfiltered by thought police on either side of the political aisle.  Most important, he isn't afraid to rant—there are too few people left in the world willing to express honest passion.