President Obama invites Gates and Crowley for beer

President Obama invites Gates and Crowley to White House for beer

Had I known President Barack Obama personally, I would have call him yesterday and suggested that he invite Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley to the White House to discuss the arrest issue that appears to be a potential derailment from his health plan agenda.

To my greatest surprise, on Friday, the president did exactly what I was thinking. He personally telephoned both Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley and extended an invitation for them to join him at the White House to have a beer. While trying to lighten the situation, he also expressed compassion with Crowley about having reporters on his lawn.

From every indication, it seem as if the Gates and Crowley incident was getting out of hand like a destructive monsoon wind triggered bushfire.

The president told the press today in what he called a cameo appearance, “I wanted to address you guys directly because over the last day and a half obviously there’s been all sorts of controversy around the incident that happened in Cambridge with Professor Gates and the police department there,” the president said.

He also added,” I actually just had a conversation with Sergeant Jim Crowley, the officer involved. And I have to tell you that as I said yesterday, my impression of him was that he was a outstanding police officer and a good man, and that was confirmed in the phone conversation — and I told him that.”

He also noted, “And because this has been ratcheting up — and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up — I want to make clear that in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically — and I could have calibrated those words differently. And I told this to Sergeant Crowley.”

The president continued by saying he believe, based on what he have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. He also noted that based on what he heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.

Soundoff: Without a doubt, the president’s action was a step in the right direction, however the distrust of White officers by Blacks is still a major issue. What do you think about the president approach? Would you have done it any different? How can we improve race relations in the United States?

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