GATE$ and RACI$M

Move over Michael Moore, there's a new producer of demagoguery about to hit the big screen. His name is Henry Louis Gates Jr.

How much is Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. worth? It's hard to say, but with his Harvard salary, book royalties, documentaries, and fees for speaking engagements, it is safe to say his annual income is easily in the multiple five-figure range. The publicity over his arrest in Cambridge, MA last month will likely increase the size of his wealth. Gates's livelihood over the years has evolved around his views of racism against blacks in the United States, and Gates-gate(TM) will fit in nicely with that business plan.

Gates is a professor of African-American Studies at Harvard, and Director of the school's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research. He is paid to profess about the subject of racism and the plight of the black man. He opines on the topic with overt generalizations and with his fingers pointed everywhere but himself. One could argue that when Gates speaks about race, he does so in the role of an agitator seeking to financially profit from the issue.

When Gates tells his life story, it's always through the eyes an oppressed black man.

About the cane? (Hint: It was whitey's fault)

Found His Path In 1964, when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was fourteen years old, he suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint of the hip while playing touch football in his hometown. He didn't realize the severity of the injury until a few weeks later when the joint sheared apart while he was walking. The white doctor who examined Gates shortly afterward questioned the boy about his injury as well as his career plans. When the young Gates replied that he wanted to be a doctor and then correctly answered many questions about science, the doctor made his diagnosis. He told Gates to stand and walk, and the young boy fell to the floor in intense pain. The doctor then turned to Gates's mother and explained that her son's problem was psychosomatic — a black boy from Appalachia who wanted to be a doctor in the mid-1960s was an overachiever. Years later Gates wrote in an article for The New York Times that "'overachiever' designated a sort of pathology: the overstraining of your natural capacity." As a result of the misdiagnosis, Gates's right leg is more than two inches shorter than his left. As a result of that injury, Gates walks with the aid of a cane.

White cop helps Gates down White House steps, while black President does not
Obviously the "white doctor" misdiagnosed the injury, but the doctor's race is completely irrelevant - added to the story as a gratuitous implication of racist medical treatment. Would a white boy have fared better? Would a black doctor have treated him differently and prevented the life long use of a cane? These are questions that the Harvard professor does not consider.

Here are some of many books that Professor Gates has written:

• The new Negro
• Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial"
• The Signifying Monkey
• Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars
• Colored People: A Memoir
• The Future of the Race
• The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
• Wonders of the African World
• The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century
• The trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's first Black poet and her encounters with the founding fathers.
• Finding Oprah's Roots: Finding Your Own

I've not read any of these book, but judging from the titles, I doubt Gates ever speaks about human beings in a general sense. To him there are only the oppressed blacks and the oppressive whites. Gates probably has made more money has an "expert" on racial issue that most of us will ever make in a lifetime.

Looking back to Gates-gate(TM) and Obama's comments that "cooler heads should have prevailed", why didn't they?

The cop's 15 minutes of fame appear to have run out. The media tracked him down after Obama said he "acted stupidly" and he hasn't been shy about answering their questions, but a year from now he'll likely be just another cop on the street doing his job as he's always done it.

Gates' erratic behavior prior to the arrest makes one wonder if this wasn't a moment he long awaited. Seven words that just might get you arrested: "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside." Those words of course, along with the comments he made outside after he followed the cops outside, led to his arrest for disorderly conduct.

How did a misdemeanor arrest become national news in the first place? The earliest news report I can find of the arrest is from Boston Globe on July 20, four days after the incident.

"Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said ... Gates, 58, declined to comment today when reached by phone. "

These "friends" were not at the scene of the arrest, yet they to give a statement to the press as if they had witnessed the event. Were these "friends" the ones who tipped off the Globe to a story that would soon make the national news wire. On July 22, Obama acknowledged he didn't have all the facts, yet still told the White House Press Corp that the "police acted stupid". Bad move by the President, but good for those who might profit from increased publicity over the event.

Today, Henry Louis Gates is a household name only because, A) The Globe ran the arrest story with the overtone of racial profiling, and B) Obama was quick to blame the cops. Will Gates use his arrest to make a few quick bucks? Gates has already suggested that possibility:

Harvard professor and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates may make documentary about racial profiling

"As a college professor, I want to make this a teaching experience, Gates told TheRoot.com, a news web site he founded and for which he serves as editor-in-chief. "I am going to devote my considerable resources, intellectual and otherwise, to making sure this doesn't happen again."

It sounds like another Gates production is in the works, this one will have plenty of free promotion and expand well beyond the typical audience of government-subsidized public television.

Cha-Ching!