MORE FACTS ON THE GATES CASE - AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  Since we're on the subject of facts, or the lack of them, in reporting (see the item just below), we note the emergence of a critical fact in the now-famous case of the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.  From the Boston Globe:

The woman whose report of a possible house break-in led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said she never mentioned race during her 911 call and is “personally devastated’’ by media accounts that suggest she placed the call because the men she observed on the porch were black, according to a lawyer acting as her spokeswoman.

The woman, identified in a police report on file in Cambridge District Court as 40-year-old Lucia Whalen, saw the backs of both men and did not know their race when she called 911, said Wendy J. Murphy, a Boston lawyer from New England School of Law. Whalen phoned police, Murphy said, because she was aware of recent break-ins in the area.

In an interview last night, Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas said it was accurate that Whalen did not mention race in her 911 call.

There are tapes of the 911 call:

Hass said yesterday that he expects some version of the tapes to be released in the next few days.

Some version?  What does that mean?  We should hear the tapes - all of them.  This whole episode is ridiculous enough as it is.  It increasingly appears that race, which we certainly concede plays a role in other cases, played no role in this one, until Gates himself brought it up.

July 27, 2009