The View From Prospect Hill for July 29

There has been a lot of squabble locally about President Obama's remark that the Cambridge Police acted "stupidly" by arresting his old pal Professor Gates last week. There are always two sides of a story, to be sure, and maybe one side will be a little less vindicated when the facts reveal themselves - but the real question is simple: why did the President of the United States comment about a simple little arrest? Was it because Professor Gates is an old friend? Was it a racially motivated? Was it a momentary lapse of rational thinking and just meant to be a snippy little comment thrown towards the city where he had to pay his parking tickets - 17 years later - before he could run for President? In an unabashed act of pure self-promotion, let's remind everyone of who broke that story: The Somerville News. Typically, when a politician does something so silly, it is to purposely distract people and the press from another topic of discussion. That's an old trick in politics. Unfortunately for the President, he definitely did not want to distract anyone from his universal healthcare initiative. You could see the uneasiness in his eyes and hear it in his voice when he made that ridiculous statement about how he should have done a better job "calibrating" his words more carefully. President Obama - you would have regained more respect back from the people you insulted, had you just said "I never should have said anything, I am sorry." So now there will be silly debate over such topics as: "well, he showed he is human," "the Presidential Office is bigger than a common arrest," "he was speaking for every oppressed person of color," and so on, and so on, and so on. The bottom line is simple: he should have kept his mouth shut - it had nothing to do with him on any level.