Prof. Gates, Cop Crowley Have Another Round

Museum on black history now has them

(NEWSER) - The "beer summit" is now a little piece of American history. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has donated the handcuffs used to arrest him to the new museum on black history at the Smithsonian. Last summer's arrest set off a racial brouhaha that led to the so-called summit at the White House with Gates, Cambridge cop James Crowley, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. More»

From Dancin' DeLay to Roberts' inaugural flub, 'twas a weird year

(NEWSER) - Politics isn’t always a deadly serious game of statesmanship. Sometimes it’s goofy. Politico recalls the most bizarre moments of 2009:

• Barack Obama sworn in—twice: Obama joked that they’d done it because “we decided it was so much fun.”
• Sarah Palin resigns: Even her aides were surprised, and a meandering resignation speech did little to explain away possibly the year’s biggest political curveball.

(NEWSER) - Another black member of Harvard's faculty has accused the Cambridge Police Department of racism, the Boston Globe reports. S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor, was arrested outside his home in 2006 on assault and battery charges. “I was polite, and yet police lied and said I was loud, just as they did with Professor Gates,” said Counter, who was acquitted. More»

Harvard prof kidded Cambridge cop at White House

(AP) - A black Harvard scholar said today he has been able to joke about his arrest by a white police officer that led to a national debate on race, despite receiving death threats and bomb threats. In his first public appearance since meeting with Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley at the White House, Henry Louis Gates said he and the officer found some humor in the incident and have since discussed going out to eat or taking in a Boston Red Sox or Celtics game. More»

White elites too often succumb to 'Village People populism'

(NEWSER) - A nation bored by dreary, knotty debates about health care found relief in another National Conversation on Race. “This one,” as Frank Rich writes in the New York Times of last week’s ballyhooed Beer Summit, “ended with a burp,” but the hangover could last well over 30 years. Census counters say the US will become a white-minority country by 2042—a prospect fueling hysteria among the Lou Dobbs and Glenn Becks of the world. More»