What I mean when I say it's a tawdry problem, mg, is that it was just another situation with two prickly men who got ticked off at each other and got unreasonable with each other. Gates was clearly unreasonable with the cop, and the cop was probably unreasonable with him too (in that he should probably not have arrested him). That problem of two men being unreasonable with each other because of their own pride has been happening ever since the first cave men or Pithecanthropus or whatever walked this Earth. It's an eternal problem.

It's one of the things that creates a lot of unnecessary strife on this forum too...(and women are not immune to falling into that same error, but I'd have to say that men commit that error a bit more often than women do). Most of the strife and backbiting on this forum results from pride-based confrontations between people which escalate and get nastier and nastier...and that's what happened between Gates and the police officer.

It happens in every society, it always has, and it probably always will, and no set of laws or media debates about racism will ever make it stop happening.

That's why I say this incident was, in itself, a tawdry problem. If Gates was not a high profile guy and a friend of Obama we wouldn't even be hearing about it.

Can you use the incident to discuss issues like racism or disrespect toward police officers? Yeah, sure, you can. But you are never going to change the basic fact that a lot of people are still going to get their backs up and get unreasonable with one another in various situations regardless of what the heck race they are or what is going on. They do it basically because they are too insecure and too self-centered to give much thought to how the other person might be affected by their aggressive behaviour. They don't care about the other person's feelings. The only thing they give a damn about is their own sense of pride and entitlement...their own self-image.

And that is a completely individual issue that transcends race, economic level, creed, job description, nationality, or any other group definition you can come up with.

Ron - You are absolutely right when you say: "it is not at all a " sad waste of people's time and energy" for anyone who intends to stop President Obama's health care reform.   Chances for health care reform depend to a large extent on his personal popularity, which as a result of this incident and his role in the aftermath has taken a hit. And the more prominence this incident receives the greater the damage to President Obama.   The fact this story has amazing "legs" is not good for health care reform--or anything else which depends heavily on President Obama's personal political capital.

I couldn't agree more with you on that. I bet that's one key reason WHY we are hearing so much about this incident and why it will not go away. I do regard it as a sad waste of time for people to be doing that, mind you...but that doesn't mean that it's a sad waste of time for them...not from their point of view, because it yields exactly the political result they desire. It's just a sad waste of time from the point of view of someone who doesn't want to see damage done to Obama's credibility and his administration and his attempts to reform health coverage in the USA.