No, this title is not an homage to Dane Cook.

Ugh, I hate Dane Cook.

It's actually a reference to one of the more interesting topics of one of my favorite classes I've taken in college. If you're thinking about going to the University of Florida or are just living in Gainesville for a few months and need a reason to wake up at 6 AM, I would highly recommend POS 4624 - Race, Law and the Constitution. It's part of the 'trifecta' of courses taught by Professor Samuel Stafford; it's also by far the least work-intensive of the three, so yeah. Rather than pile on hundreds of pages of reading every night which unlike every other PoliSci course you take you MUST read in order to have a prayer of passing the course (like his American Civil Liberties course), POS 4624 course is a four month long discussion of the history of race issues in the United States and their impact on the development of the American criminal justice system.

And no, I am not giving readers a chance to foam at the mouth about how American colleges and universities are Communist, white-hating mind-control factories that brainwash our children into hating everything our country stands for. I respect Professor Stafford (who is African-American) far too much to lie about him and his teaching style just to increase my readership. In the succinct words of the Internet, if you would like to opine about that, kindly GTFO of this space. I am actually merely using the course and the topic of the vicious circle to shed light on what the real story about the Henry Louis Gates arrest is. Won't take long for me to get to that point, but that will come later.

What is 'the vicious circle'? It's a cycle of destructive behavior and relationships between members of law enforcement and the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect. The cycle ultimately harms the relationship between all members of society, but it has a particularly devastating impact on people of color, if for no other reason than that our nation's history of race relations makes for good ratings and sells books, but also due to the fact that law enforcement resources tend to be concentrated more in areas where persons of color are also highly concentrated. That's a discussion that could go on forever in itself, but is not critical to the discussion here.

As we considered in the course, the cycle is driven by the offering (or denial) of one thing and one thing only: respect. When a police officer approaches, pulling a completely random example totally not inspired by recent real world events, a suspected domestic disturbance in an affluent neighborhood in Cambridge, MA, he has a responsibility both to himself and the community which he or she serves to address the residents of that home with respect, within the requirements of the law. And likewise, the resident or owner of the home has the responsibility to respect that officer's authority within the confines of the law. When one or both of these parties breaches that responsibility, a situation typically spirals out of control quite quickly, and has serious ramifications for both that officer and his comrades' ability to administer their duties responsibly in the future.

It serves us no good to be perpetually deferential to law enforcement officers when considering how this cycle is allowed to persist. If you don't think that LAPD officers are still dealing with the consequences of the Rodney King incident, you seriously need to trade in your rose-colored glasses. If you have ever been involved in a car accident with a law enforcement officer (and I have), you will know that they have ass-covering down to an art form. Those are examples of fundamental disrespect that some (and I do emphasize some) law enforcement officials exhibit towards the citizens they serve, and those acts of disrespect make it that much harder for the 90% of cops in America who do outstanding work for their community to do their job well.

But the debate over percentages aside, that is a critical part of the story behind the Henry Louis Gates story that a lot of conservative columnists seem to disregard. Yes, Sgt. James Crowley is by all accounts a decorated and exemplary officer. He says he is not a racist, and given his record and the fact that I have never met him, I will not claim that he is. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if he was entering a white man's home, a black man's home or an Asian crack whore's apartment. While he had reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed due to reports of a disturbance, once it was ascertained that the house was in fact Gates' residence, he had no right to be in the home without a warrant. If Professor Gates asked him to leave, Sgt. Crowley had to leave. And it doesn't matter if Professor Gates was being a jackass about asking Sgt. Crowley to leave. Not only do all Americans have a First Amendment right to be a jackass to a cop, you also have a Fourth Amendment right to tell a cop to get out of your house if they don't have a warrant.

But here's where Professor Gates' culpability in continuing the vicious circle comes in. Just because you can be a jackass to a cop doesn't mean you should be. For better or worse, you will be arrested and charged for disorderly conduct most of the time, and you will have to go through the (expensive) process of making sure those charges are dropped. And most of the time they are dropped; your average District Attorney is not going to prosecute someone for exercising their First Amendment right to say nasty things to a law enforcement officer, especially when that officer was in a person's residence without a warrant. Professor Gates knew he was on the right side of the law here. But being on the right side of the law does not give a person the right to just be blatantly disrespectful to another person. All he needed to do was prove that the house was his own residence, and explain in no uncertain terms that the cop could not be in his own home without a warrant. This can be done without making unflattering references to a cop's mother; if I and my public school education could do this, surely anyone with an Ivy League doctorate could figure it out as well.

But he didn't do that. He chose to not be the adult in the situation. White or black, anyone who behaves as Professor Gates did is risking not only his future with his employer (unless of course you're a tenured college professor...) and potentially a good deal of financial burden over something that could be positively resolved in a non-controversial manner. He failed to stop the vicious circle from continuing its revolution, and thus played a role in creating a crisis of confidence in the Cambridge police department.

President Obama is many things both good and bad. An idiot is not one of them. But perhaps the stupidest act in this public relations mess was his calling out Sgt. Crowley for acting "stupidly". I can certainly understand the desire to stick up for a friend in a time of need. But to say what he said when he said it dealt both himself and his colleague a world of hurt. Speaking in the bluntest of political terms, he went off script in a major press conference meant to bring momentum back to his health care reform plans. In some ways, he should be fortunate that his comments on Gates' arrest are the only thing the media is talking about; by most accounts, the press conference was considered a total dud as far as promoting health care is concerned. But ultimately, his comments on Gates are the only thing America got out of that press conference, and it spun up an entire nasty news cycle that distracted from his health care agenda entirely, tossing what little chance he had of getting a bill voted on before August down the drain.

But in a broader sense, he too put himself in the vicious circle, and helped it keep spinning right round. And he did it while conceding that he wasn't fully aware of the facts of the case. For a man who is normally a pretty deliberative thinker, this is an unfortunate deviation for him, even if done for the right reason, that being to defend a personal friend, something we've all done perhaps less than rationally at least once in our lives. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for those who oppose his health care reform plan), he has been given a healthy reminder that when you step on a third rail, it's different from stepping on the other two.

The vicious circle is the real story here, not the pissing match over who the real bigot is or who owes who an apology. Those are political battles that really aren't going to mean a thing outside of people who use these stories in fundraising letters to gin up contributions. The vicious circle is the real 'race' debate going on, and it's not even all that much about race. 'Respect' doesn't begin or end at the color of a man's skin. And a badge on your chest doesn't give you a right to not afford a citizen the respect he deserves. This Gates deal isn't a race issue. It's a human issue. Sadly, politics is not the greatest vehicle for discussing matters of common humanity. And perhaps that's why politicians talking about race issues makes many Americans want to cringe and yell "teh pandering, make it stop!"

And on a side note, cap off your weekend with the awesomest American video you will ever see in your life. Ever.