Trouble Brewing: The Economist

Quoted via The Economist:

AND now the world knows what beer he drinks. On Thursday July 30th, Barack Obama, clasping a Bud Light, met James Crowley, a white police sergeant apparently partial to a Blue Moon and Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor who glugged on a Sam Adams Light. The three, along with Joe Biden, the vice-president and Buckler man, met to chat about an incident that has become known as Gatesgate. After the past week, Mr Obama probably found his cold beer unusually welcome.

The saga sounds daft but threatened to spiral into a controversy about race in a country that has just elected its first black president. Sergeant Crowley arrested Mr Gates on July 16th outside his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr Gates had locked himself out and then broke back in. A neighbour, suspicions aroused, called the police. The rest of the details are far from clear. It seems that Mr Gates lost his temper with Sergeant Crowley and was detained briefly before all charges were dropped. Mr Obama was pulled into the row when he said, during a press conference, that the police had acted “stupidly”.

That utterance hinted at a racial antagonism that Mr Obama sought to put to rest with this week's “Beer Summit”. Mr Obama knew he had a problem on his hands. He is no angry black man but the dispute sparked a flurry of furious responses. Those who already disliked Mr Obama leapt to Mr Crowley’s defence, while those who like the president rushed to argue in favour of Mr Gates. more