STEYN ON THE FAMOUS ARREST - AT 8:55 P.M. ET:  The arrest of Professor Gates is now the most famous recent arrest in America.  At least the professor wasn't trying to skip town in a white Bronco.

The great Mark Steyn weighs in, stating things rather bluntly, and accurately:

The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of the free world had the guts to stand up and speak truth to municipal police Sgt. James Crowley.

Yes, all the righteous are relieved and grateful.  And there's this from Steyn:

As professor Gates jeered at the officers, "You don't know who you're messin' with." Did Sgt. Crowley have to arrest him? Probably not. Did he allow himself to be provoked by an obnoxious buffoon? Maybe. I dunno. I wasn't there. Neither was the president of the United States, or the governor of Massachusetts or the mayor of Cambridge. All of whom have declared themselves firmly on the side of the Ivy League bigshot. And all of whom, as it happens, are African American. A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team, headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling. The boundless elasticity of such endemic racism suggests that the "post-racial America" will be living with blowhard grievance-mongers like professor Gates unto the end of time.

COMMENT:  I suspect that Steyn's gut reaction pretty much parallels that of much of America, which is why the White House is trying to practice some damage control.  But the president can only go so far without upsetting his back-to-the-sixties base. 

We'll be watching tracking polls to see if this incident moves the numbers.

July 24, 2009