Obama, Gates, And Crowley Beer Summit A Snooze

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Following a mammoth media buildup of several days, the now-infamous beer summit came and went, and race relations in America seem to be the no better for it.

Sgt. Crowley told reporters afterward they spent more time talking about the future than the past. President Obama was more bartender than peacemaker. Not even Vice President Joseph Biden was able to perform his usual foot-in-mouth routine. What a snooze.

I was hoping for something meaningful to come of all this. I was hoping Harvard Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, Jr. would talk about his Irish roots and their shared ancestry with Irish-American Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley. I was hoping they might agree on one thing: that only in America could an Ivy League, wealthy, world-renowned, globe-trotting black man accuse a lower-income, less-educated blue collar white guy of racial profiling. I was hoping the brainpower at that summit would emerge from the meeting with something earth-shattering and meaningful to tell the world.

Instead, it was just a photo op of four "regular" guys who happened to be at the White House.

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By Bonnie Erbe