Steyn: He Said/V.I.P. Said

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU3NWRmYzY5MmZjOTZjN2NiYTMwOGI3ZTBiZDA5ZjM=&w=MQ==

As Professor Gates jeered at the officers, "You don't know who you're messin' with." Did Sergeant Crowley have to arrest him? Probably not. Did he allow himself to be provoked by an obnoxious buffoon? Maybe. I dunno. I wasn't there. Neither was the president of the United States, or the governor of Massachusetts, or the mayor of Cambridge. All of whom have declared themselves firmly on the side of the Ivy League bigshot. And all of whom, as it happens, are African-American. 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.

In a fairly typical "he said/V.I.P. said" incident, the V.I.P. was the author of his own misfortune but, with characteristic arrogance, chose to ascribe it to systemic racism, Jim Crow, lynchings, the Klan, slavery, Jefferson impregnating Sally Hemmings, etc.