She saw two guys she didn’t know, one of whom was black, breaking into a house so she decided to err on the side of caution and call the cops. Ergo, racism. As it turns out, she didn’t identify either Gates or his cab driver as black in the actual call to police, a fact the media paid some attention to after the tape was released as possibly exonerating her of any malign intent. But as a lefty friend said to me today, what would it prove if she had ID’d them by race? That’s a standard detail given in any description of a suspect. Is the new reality that it’s okay to assume the worst about a break-in so long as the suspects aren’t minorities, but if they are minorities, it automatically becomes improper? Explain to me what she did that warranted the death threats here.

Meanwhile, not one, not two, but three separate liberals who follow me on Twitter thought it was important that I be informed that a cop who appears to have no connection to Crowley and who in fact works in a different police department than he does used a racial slur against Gates in an e-mail. What lesson I’m supposed to glean from that fact is unclear, but I have a hunch this Patterico post on stereotyping might be worth re-reading. Exit question: How come Whalen wasn’t invited to be part of tomorrow’s “teachable moment”/kegger at the White House? Evidently she wants to be.