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More at Fox Nation.

Still in his 20’s, Zuckerberg is the billionaire creator of Facebook, a massively popular website that has changed how people use the Internet. “The Social Network” chronicles the creation of Facebook and the success of  Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg). Leaving aside its harsh treatment of its lead character, “Network” is still one of the best films of the year.

“The Social Network” tells the story of a young man disillusioned by rejection and unwavering in his determination to become successful. The film begins in a bar with a conversation between Zuckerberg and his then-girlfriend. After comparing dating Zuckerberg to dating a Stairmaster, she breaks up with him. He is shocked by her cold rejection and carelessly apologizes to win her back. When that proves unsuccessful, he takes his frustrations to the Internet calling her a “bitch” on his blog. As he drinks in his dorm room that night, he single-handedly creates a website where Harvard students can judge the attractiveness of school’s female population.

After his website proves successful in a matter of hours, Zuckerberg becomes well-known on campus. He then begins work on a new social website that will eventually become known as Facebook. The battle over who invented Facebook lies at the heart of “The Social Network.”

The story of Facebook’s creation is framed around two lawsuits that Zuckerberg faced after the site became wildly popular. Two brothers at Harvard, who originally hired Zuckerberg to build a similar site, sue him for stealing their idea. Additionally, Zuckerberg’s best friend Eduardo files a lawsuit against him as well. All three allege that they are partially responsible for the creation of Facebook and deserve credit for their significant contributions to it. The movie jumps from their testimony to the story of how Facebook became the massive sensation that it is.

Zuckerberg is clearly presented as the lead architect of the site but the film’s portrayal of him is extremely harsh. He is seen as a smug, condescending, and downright arrogant college student who despises the elitists on campus. Ironically enough, the movie itself treats Zuckerberg as an elitist who doesn’t care about the people who have helped him become successful. At times, Zuckerberg is also seen as the brilliant and driven developer that he undoubtedly  is.

His best friend Eduardo Saverin is seen in a much more favorable light. Played by Andrew Garfield, Saverin is seen as an idealistic entrepreneur who doesn’t understand the full potential of Facebook. He is easily the most likable and relatable character in the story. Like a small-time fisherman who doesn’t notice a tidal wave approaching, Saverin is clueless about Facebook’s potential importance in the online world.

As Facebook gains momentum, other people want to get involved including Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of Napster.  Parker sees the potential of the new site and seemingly seduces Zuckerberg into his world to the disapproval of Saverin. While Saverin is working tirelessly to market the website on a small scale, Parker sees a bigger picture and grabs onto Zuckerberg’s coattails, never letting go.

From the very first scene, the script for ”The Social Network” is incredible. Based on the book The Accidental Billionaires, Aaron Sorkin brings this story to life. Known for sharp and fast-paced dialogue, Sorkin has previously written shows like “The West Wing” and movies like “A Few Good Men.”  In “Network,” Sorkin rises to a new level and has almost guaranteed himself an Academy Award nomination and will likely be the front runner in the adapted screenplay category.

Even with movies based on true stories like “Network,” audiences will likely never understand the complete story of how Facebook was created and who was really responsible for it.  It is doubtful that Zuckerberg is as vengeful and angry as he is presented as being in this film and I hope one day he tells his side of the story.  Despite this movie’s portrayal of him, Zuckerberg is a young genius and his work ethic speaks for itself.

“The Social Network” is an extremely well-done and often brilliant depiction of the creation of Facebook but it’s surely not the complete story of how a Harvard undergraduate student became a billionaire and how Facebook went from being an idea to being an online phenomenon.

Emboldened by alcohol and a vengeance fueled by his own palpable sense of inadequacy, Zuckerberg then goes on to use his impressive computer hacking skills, and those of his more level-headed best and only friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), to humiliate most every girl on campus through the creation of a website that ranks their attractiveness using sorority photographs. A small Harvard scandal erupts but this only ends up being the first sordid step towards what will eventually become the multi-billion dollar sensation we know today as Facebook.

Directed with skill and precision by David Fincher and impressively scripted by “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network” is tightly told, well paced, and quite brilliantly structured with a story that unfolds through the inter-cutting of two different lawsuit depositions and flashbacks. The acting is impeccable, especially Eisenberg’s performance as the world’s youngest up and coming billionaire and Justin Timberlake as Napster founder Sean Parker, a craven party-boy genius whose unerring sense of the big picture is frequently undone by a dark nihilistic streak. His Svengali-like influence on Zuckerberg, who like himself is driven beyond reason to settle old scores, real or imagined, will prove the old adage about gaining the world at the cost of your soul.

Based on Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, there’s no doubt that this look at how the creation of a cultural phenomenon left behind a wake of betrayals, broken relationships and billion-dollar lawsuits is an absolutely fascinating one – and one told by skilled filmmakers at the height of their respective powers. Every frame demands and holds your attention from beginning to end, and that’s about as strong of a compliment as there is. The problem, however, is that all you are is fascinated, and what you are not is in any way emotionally invested. Whether or not you walk in knowing the ultimate outcome of the various relationships and lawsuits, there’s not a single character in the bunch sympathetic enough to help you summon a damn.

If forced to pull for someone, I guess I would choose Zuckerberg. Yeah, he’s an irony-smeared superior prick – a mini David Letterman — but at least he was making things happen; pushing that boulder uphill and rolling it over anyone who got in his way or slowed things down to wring their hands. On the other hand, his best friend and CFO Eduardo might have been a nicer person, but it’s hard to pull for a whiny weak sister with less vision that Ray Charles. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss  (both played by actor Armie Hammer and some digital help), the identical twins who claimed Facebook was their idea and sued Zuckerberg for intellectual theft, are a little too square-jawed pretty and willing to let others do their work for my taste. And as far as Sean Parker goes, whether it’s the music business or the relationships around him, he’s not a creator, he’s a destroyer.

If anything, “The Social Network” feels like a two act film. You keep hoping and waiting for that third act where someone anyone will find some sort of personal redemption through something other than a victory in court or a deadpan quip. But it’s painfully obvious that this is a production meant to be an awards magnet, a prestige film, and for whatever reason, these days “important” is always translated into something emotionally distant, spiritually bankrupt, and carried by a smarter-than-thou anti-hero destined to be left hanging in some ironic limbo of his own making.

“The Social Network,” is, well, clever. Yes, that’s the word: clever. And good for it. Hats off, respect, and all due applause. From the photography to Trent Reznor’s driving, moody score, I’m impressed because there’s a whole lot to be impressed by.

But I’m also indifferent.

Hmmm … does this really have to do with child abuse or, to use the Reagan perspective, are these arrests and possibly further imprisonments of high level Catholic authorities “bargaining chips” to convince the Catholic Church that her ban on abortion should be … how shall I say … “seriously reconsidered?”

All is politics these days … and all will be used to further the political game.

However, considering the Catholic Church’s major hand in overturning the Polish Communist State, the “game” is decidedly beyond politics.

The increasingly deadly Game has been a not-so-Cold War for quite some time.

Unfortunately, it is now not only Catholics versus Communists.

It is the Catholic Church versus the entire Progressive New World Order.

Versus the European Union’s Socialism.

Versus Russia’s neo-Soviet allegiance with Red China.

It is basically the Catholic Church versus the World.

Not even America is an ally of either Israel or the Catholic Church.

America is no longer, as the President has repeatedly declared by word and deed, a Judeo-Christian Civilization.

It is clearly and merely a part of the Progressive New World Order.

As I’ve said before, America gave up any substantive resistance to the very Marxist New World Order when her Supreme Court passed the Roe v Wade decision 37 years ago.

In Europe, however, the Catholic Church has refused to condone abortion or euthanasia.

America’s collapse to the first stage of Communism, which is Socialism, was insured when the Nixon/Kissinger Presidency not only collapsed before Vietnamese Communists in Paris but when its Supreme Court – bipartisan, mind you – instituted legalized abortion.

America not only gave up the territorial fight, it surrendered in the spiritual war as well.

We not only lost the geographic battle, we lost the moral high ground as well.

I consider Kissinger, without question, the single most valuable asset to World Communism and the decidedly Marxist New World Order.

It is no surprise that the Last Great Courtier should be spending much, if not most of his time, in Red China.

Kissinger’s infiltration of the White House long preceded Barack Obama’s capture of the Presidency through the front door.

Kissinger bent Nixon into a moral pretzel.

Admittedly, it wasn’t hard.

Nixon’s adoration of Harvard credentials made him and the rest of the nation a sitting duck.

Now we’re deeply mired in the Harvard quagmire with Dr. Obama, the recipient of all the highest degrees now possible, including the Nobel.

And Kissinger now resonates as our real life version of Hollywood’s Sidney Greenstreet.

Dr. K is therefore the odious counterpart to our very American and independent loner, whether it be John Wayne, Ronald Reagan or Sarah Palin.

As much as the Progressives would like to eliminate Good versus Evil as the evaluating slide rule of America, it will never be done.

Even our slightly tainted anti-heroes, like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca, re-enter the war with equally tainted but unavoidable idealists such as Claude Rains’ French inspector.

Are they actually Communist good guys? However, is a Communist good guy even possible?

Now that America is out of the fight with Communism because we have a decidedly Marxist President, all that remains as a defense of even human life and its sacredness is the Catholic Church.

So it is, indeed, Communism versus the Catholic Church.

Marx versus Christ.

I personally don’t think the match is fair.

Karl hasn’t got a chance!

He is unquestionably the Devil’s Advocate and the Satanic Economist and, well, the Bible tells you how such an encounter ends repeatedly.

The Devil loses.

Now, however, because Mao’s Red China still survives, a neo-Soviet Russia is being rebuilt by the puppets of a KGB loyalist, Vladimir Putin, and a full and unapologetic Marxist, Barack Obama, rules the White House, it would seem that Christ’s days are up!

That and the certainty of a whole new Marxist Christ defending abortion.

For me, however, the Marxist/Progressive New World Order is no more than The New Goliath, albeit with an Ivy League degree.

It is a tortured and venomously lying creation of Communism’s tacit agreement with the likes of Osama bin Laden to destroy America first and then worry about the Catholic Church.

The Tea Party was the most unexpected hindrance to the New World Order. That and Fox News’ Glenn Beck.

Therefore, we now have, in the midst of this delay, a shift of focus back to attacking the Catholic Church.

The same Progressive Movement that is now handing out condoms to five year olds is sincerely concerned about child abuse?

You tell me if that contradiction-in-terms isn’t a clear indication of the Marxist New World Order’s real intent while attacking the Church’s undeniably Achilles’ heel.

I guarantee you, if the Catholic Church condones abortion, we won’t hear any complaints about priests and child abuse in the mainstream press, not while the Obama’s public schools are handing out condoms to five year olds without parental consent.

Here’s what popped into my head on the Miller Show. At the age of five, my mother told me that if my father ever left her she would kill herself, and that if I wanted to prevent that from happening, it was my job to keep him around. This is a heavy responsibility to lay on a kid of five but I accepted it without question. I adored my mother. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and funny. She was also a self-destructive drunk who had room in her heart only for my father. He was a charming sadist with room in his heart for no-one: a hot-shot liberal who helped found the New England branch of the A.C.L.U. but in private often used the word jewbastard.

Their marriage was, to say the least, tumultuous. I had been sent by Central Casting to play the small but important role of the child. After each of their frequent and alcoholic altercations, my father would storm out of the house (actually, the rented, upper half of a house in a working class neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts…Gates-Crowley country) and head off to spend a few days with one of his girlfriends. I’d be sent after him, once actually barefoot in the snow, a sobbing ten year old, to catch up and explain how much I loved and needed him and beg him to come back. “Go home,” he’d tell me. “I’ll be back in a while.”

He would be back after a while and things would settle down for a time until the next upheaval. Shortly after my sixteenth birthday, my father left home for good and, true to her word, my mother went to the kitchen, lay down on the linoleum floor, turned on the gas and packed it in. I put our furniture in storage, made living arrangements for myself and went on with my life. After ten years of analysis, two years of Reichian therapy, fire-walking, re-birthing and then a second ten years of analysis, I had forgiven my poor, sweet, alcoholic mother. But my father remained beyond my powers to forgive. The last shrink I attended put it this way. “The no-good bastard isn’t worth forgiving. Live with it.”

Meanwhile, I had become a Christian… my own form of odd-ball Christian (leave out the middleman and deal direct with the Maker for big savings). Each morning and night I get down on my knees and thank God for my life and ask Him to make me grateful all the time instead of just most of the time. One morning, a few weeks ago, I realized that I had forgiven my father. I don’t know how or when, I just knew that it had happened. Not because the son of a bitch was worth forgiving and certainly not because he had asked for it, but just because, if I was ever going to feel grateful all the time, in other words, if I was going to become truly happy, I had to forgive him. It wasn’t for him (although it affects him, wherever he is) it was for me.  The heaviness in my heart which he represented and which I’d always carried around, was just gone. I felt lighter. I loved my wife more now. I loved my kids, my grandkids, my friends, the blue sky above and maybe even guys who cut me off on the freeway. (Well…) I hadn’t tried to forgive my father. It had been, it seems, the inevitable result of my prayers to feel grateful, my determination to be happy.

Back to Professor Gates. He has spent a career immersing himself in all the bad stuff that white people have done to Black people. His head is full of it. It seethes in him like a cauldron and it hurts. He will never feel relief until he forgives us white folks. Not just good ones like Officer Crowley, an Irish cop who has worked harder than probably any white guy alive to understand the Black condition, but ordinary ones like me. Oh yes, and really bad ones like the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Hard, you say? If it was easy, as my dear old grandfather used to remark, everybody would do it. But it’s the only way. You can forgive and be filled with happiness and peace of mind or you can hold on to justifiable anger and be rich, famous, tenured at Harvard and miserable.

My whole childhood was like that. A lot of crazy stuff, a lot of running from police. Was a local sport, like train-hopping. But that’s all just the gritty side of Cambridge. And even though I’m a rank Righty today, I still love Harvard University all the way, the Square especially. It’s the Crossroads of the World. I was a total Harvard Square rat growing up. Harvard is the Bright Light of Olde Cantabrigia. Harvard was also very active in the community back then, and most likely still is today. Harvard hosted field trips to the campus from schools all over Cambridge. The Agassiz Museum was my favorite. Lots of dead bugs and dinosaur bones. That was Heaven to me. Still is.

So there it is. Cambridge Dark and Light. Of course, as a Harvard Square rat I ran into my fair share of elitist Harvard eggheads, both students and faculty, whose utter contempt for a lowlife Cambridge projects kid like myself could be felt with Hiroshima-like intensity. But given my many experiences on campus, and as a waif wayfarer on Harvard’s Challenge program, I believe most people at Harvard, both faculty and students, could not be more honorable or pure of heart and intent. I’m not going to smash that whole crate because of a few bad eggheads. Harvard has its troublemakers, too. Lots! Just ask former Harvard president Larry Summers. He was run out on a rail by militant feminists.

Fact is, I love Cambridge. Warts and all. Part of my heart and soul, and one of the most egalitarian cities on earth. So when news broke about Dr. Gates’ outrageous charges of racism, I immediately and most publicly called him a bold-faced liar. But not just in defense of my hometown or CPD. I called it based on personal experience. And I called it right on the money, did I not? See, some years back my brother and I, both drunk, were in a confrontation of my idiot drunken brother’s making with five Cambridge cops when I yelled “Your Mama!” at a black cop. We were arrested for disorderly conduct, cuffed, thrown into the paddy wagon and hauled off to the same jail as Dr. Skippy.

That incident took place not five blocks from Dr. Gates’ house. In short, I had experienced the exact same arrest for the exact same charge in the exact same neighborhood by the exact same PD. Who not actually there could have seen how the whole thing went down better? From yelling “Your Mama!” to cuffing to paddy wagon ride to booking in the same jail? Yet Dr. Gates’ hoax cry of racism at whom we now know is one of the state’s top racial profiling experts, President Obama’s Man Show suds-rinsing of Dr. Gates’ crime by sitting down white victim and black victimizer on an equal moral plane in sickening equivocating fashion, is not even the real monster here.

The real monster would have been if Al Sharpton brought his Traveling Racial Arsonist Show to town, which he was ready to do. Big Al lives for incidents like this to spark or fuel smoldering racially-tinged incidents into Towering Inferno proportions. Think about this. Had Officer Crowley been just some regular Officer Joe on the Beat, and not been able to provide the damning refutations of Dr. Gates’ hoax cry of racism, Cambridge, the city of my birth that I love warts and all, might at this very moment be going up in flames, both racial and literal, for Big Al’s race-mongering fun and profit. Just like Crown Heights and Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Nine dead in those two alone. And it would have all gone down over yet another foul race-baiting hoax, just like Tawana Brawley and Duke.

In my city? In my birthplace? He’ll have to kill me first! Over my dead body! Not a rare outcome when Big Al brings his racial gas cans and lighters to town. How Big Al a bullet did Cambridge just dodge? I’ll bet Big Al is breathing a sigh of relief as he watches Dr. Skippy burn in a fire of his own making, yet is even now scouring the American landscape for the Next Big Whitey Thing to torch to the skies. That’s who he is. A black David Duke, as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe so aptly put it. What happens to the next racially-targeted innocent white police officer, his city and his peaceful neighborhoods, when said officer is NOT a racial profiling expert who teaches the subject?

Got an idea. And THAT is the monstrous 800-pound gorilla that is occupying and trashing the Obama Racial Harmony Room, to wit the all-too-profitable and most politically powerful black Lefty racial grievance-mongering Hate Whitey cottage industry in America. It’s got to go. The law, and the law alone, from the cop on the beat to the US Supreme Court, should deal with all crimes and legal matters of race, not the racists themselves. Kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it? They’re like the black radical version of the Klan, showing up with ropes and torches at even a whiff of white-on-black injustice, real or imagined, wherever it happens in America. Duke Lacrosse ring any bells?

In fact, black Lefty racial grievance-mongering is a HUGE business in America today. With a black President in a 72% white-majority nation, how sad is that? In this Obama Age of Racial Harmony, in particular? Tell me truly. What legal resources and avenues of redress do any and all minority Americans NOT have? The federal and state EEOCs, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a million other NGOs and government agencies exist, and even live, to redress real racial grievances to the fullest measure and extent of the law. As they should. For ALL races of Americans!

Since news on Dr. Gates first broke, I have been neck-deep in it. It has been my mission in life since to bring him down, and as many of his fellow career race-baiters and grievance-mongers who jumped all over this race-hoax abomination from the word go. Anderson Cooper’s AC360 show called me about my first damning oped on Dr. Gates. The Cambridge Chronicle is reprinting it Thursday. My reports are all on file at my article folder at Digital Journal, including one manic thirty-hour stretch when news was breaking insanely fast and furious.

Lots more deep background on Cambridge, and some very unsavory stuff on Dr. Gates et al. But this has all been a very unsavory episode, hasn’t it?

That monster is growing, people. Worst of all, with President Obama’s direct aiding an abetting by giving Get-Out-Of-Terrorizing-White-Voters-Free cards to the three Black Panther thugs whom career DOJ lawyers wanted to skin alive, and had default convictions in hand to do just that. Why did Obama do it? Aren’t white voters just as protected by the law as blacks in the Jim Crow South? Or are we witnessing a regression of the law in favor of black radicals? When you throw in Obama’s equivocation of Dr. Gates’ crime of yelling racial “Fire!” in a crowded country, it doesn’t look good.

A lot more background in my DJ reports, but here’s two related news items you may find interesting.

AL SHARPTON’S NIECE WANTS REPERCUSSIONS FOR SNITCH WHO CALLED 911

That would be Ms. Lucia Whalen, the woman who placed the 911 call, whom Brittany Sharpton wants revenge served cold on. Ms. Whalen has been insanely persecuted ever since that call, even though she never mentioned race until asked by CPD. Great. Rile up some whack job black racists to terrorize an elderly woman for doing a public service, even for Dr. Gates has it been a real break-in like the one he recently suffered. Like Uncle, Like Niece.

Here are some delightful insights from Facebook on NBBP poll watcher thug-in-chief Jerry Jackson, who will be right back terrorizing, er, I mean watching the polls in Philly:

DISTURBING CONTENT ON NBBP JERRY JACKSON’S FACE BOOK PAGE

‘Killin’ Crakkkas’ is very high on Mr. Jackson’s To-Do List. He also has a very welcoming sign at his home in Philadelphia: “COLORED ONLY: NO WHITES ALLOWED”

I have to tell you, people. I may not be black. But with all that’s going on lately, I’m starting to get an idea of how it felt to be a black man in the Jim Crow South. Tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way. Racial injustice knows no color, people. And Hate is as Equal Opportunity as it gets. Stop The H8!

I also wonder what kind of lawyers they’re churning out at Harvard when their most well-know alumnus starts a statement with. “I don’t know all the facts.” and then doesn’t immediately follow that with, “So I have no comment.” Instead, he goes on for two or three paragraphs giving the facts as he was told them by his friend, the Harvard professor with a bad attitude, and then reaches a conclusion that the police acted “stupidly.”

What he meant when he said “stupidly” was that the arrest of the friend of the most powerful community organizer in the world was racially motivated. President Obama believes in one of the great myths of progressivism: The police are always wrong and always racist. Many of our progressive friends believe that any time a member of a minority is stopped they must be innocent victims of racial profiling.

What is racial profiling? It seems hard to make the case you’re an oppressed minority when after you mouth off to a cop and get arrested your high-powered mouthpiece gets on the blower to the governor who calls the mayor who calls the police chief — all resulting in the charges being dropped. Meanwhile, you’re on the phone to the only automobile executive with access to nuclear weapons asking him to give you a shout out at the news conference. I wish I had that kind of juice. I can’t beat a speeding ticket in my home town (where I know four of the five top guys in the police department and play golf with the county prosecutor).

I do know this, from the time I was a very young hillbilly living in rural Kentucky, my dad taught me that when you’re stopped by anyone with a badge and gun, you say, “Yes, sir.” and “No, sir.” Especially on a dark country road where there are no witnesses. You do what the cop asks and never lunge for the glove box.

Imagine the cops had acted the way President Obama and other liberals seem to think they should have, but in a slightly different situation. Let’s say you’re African-American and at home asleep with your wife and kids. Meanwhile, someone uses a crowbar to let some fresh air into your place, and this person is also African-American. A neighbor calls the cops and a white officer responds but the burglar (who’s in your house) informs the cop he lives there and that everything’s under control. The white cop says, “OK” and walks away. After you’re found dead will you wish the cops had done a little “profiling?”

After all is said and done, if I were a criminal in Cambridge I know whose house I’d break into tonight. Do you think the cops will even answer the call?

Unfortunately, rather than using this incident as an opportunity to have an honest and substantive conversation about stereotypes and race, racialists of every stripe have high-jacked the discussion in order to continue a one-sided discussion focusing on Black victim-hood. One such racialist is our post-racial President Barack Obama.

During his Wednesday evening press conference the President claimed that Gates was the victim of racial profiling and that the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates for breaking into his own home. Alas, the president was tall on rhetoric, but short on facts, which was surprising (or perhaps not) given that the conference questions were pre-approved and he knew to expect it. Contrary to the President’s assertion- Gates was not profiled. The police were responding to a report of a possible break-in at Gates home. Nor was Gates arrested for breaking into his own home. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.

And lest anyone assume I am deaf to Gates complaint- make no mistake, I have walked in his shoes and understand his outrage completely.

At the time I was living in West Orange, New Jersey, a quiet, middle class community west of Newark. I was walking about two or three blocks from my home one morning when I was stopped by a white police officer. He informed me that there had been a report of an attempted break in and that the description was that of a woman and a well-dressed Black man. I thought it odd that he stopped me in that I was by myself and wearing a raggedy sweater and a pair of shorts. The officer then asked if I had any identification. I did not. I was walking in my own neighborhood! Further this same officer had answered a call at my home when my home security system had gone off not one week prior. It burned me up that he didn’t recognize me.

Clearly, I was being hassled because I was a Black man living in America. How else to explain my inability to walk through my own neighborhood without being questioned? Other patrol cars soon arrived. I continued to protest; my voice rising. As the situation escalated one of the other officers threatened to arrest me for disorderly conduct, which of course only increased my outrage. Just when things were going to get really ugly something happened; it could have only been the hand of God slapping me in the head. I shut my mouth. I bit my tongue till it bled. The officers let me go. I poked out my lips and stalked off home, cursing the concrete beneath my feet.

Two weeks later I was driving down the street in my fancy sports car (those were the days) and who should pull up alongside me at the red light? The same officer. He did a double take and commented, “Nice car.”

“Oh you recognize me now?” I replied.

He smiled and asked if I wanted to talk. We pulled into a parking lot and had a friendly conversation. He understood my anger, he said, but asked me to understand that he was simply doing his job and could never remember every person he encountered on the job in a town of more than 50K people.

Fair enough. However, as a Black man I want him to understand that I am/was, (like Gates), conditioned to suspect such interactions with the police as being motivated by latent or overt racism. Would the cop have recognized my white neighbor? Would a neighbor have called the Cambridge police if two white men were forcing the door to a home open? I have no idea. And it is only wise for Police departments and the officers that man them to recognize that the history of this country places serious doubt in the minds of most black folks.

That said every interaction with the police is not tinted with racism and Black folk are just as guilty of stereotyping white cops as is true in the reverse. Moreover, we are often guilty of appeals to being victims of profiling when it is clear the police had legitimate reasons for detaining us or asking us questions. Like Gates I was stopped because there had been a legitimate report made to the police and like Gates I didn’t like it one bit. Like Gates I became irate and loud when legitimately pressed by the police officer to produce identification. Like Gates my outrage was based not in any real transgression by the police, but in a perception – a stereotype — of a white racist Cop working in league with my racist neighbors. (Do we really want our neighbors to ignore suspicious behavior and for police not to follow up on those reports? As much as we may dream it to be so, criminals of every color tend not to be down for the cause. Indeed, Gates front door was jammed because it had been damaged during a burglary at his home. But I digress.) Like Gates I protested the perceived injustice. Unlike Gates I had the benefit of Gods huge hand on my mouth before I got into trouble.

The interaction between blue uniforms and black skin is the final hurdle to overcome in our nations striving to become truly post-racial. Once we conquer it there will be little to stop us or slow us down. However, in order to succeed we need to have an honest, two sided conversation about race in America. We certainly aren’t ever going to overcome if we view the arrest of Harvard professors engaged in boorish behavior as evidence of racial profiling as opposed to proof of the desperate need for mutual respect and better communication.

Two months ago, a young African American man was shot by (allegedly) another African American man in the basement of Kirkland House, a Harvard campus dorm.  Neither was a Harvard student.

Text messages sent by the victim, along with a pound of marijuana and approximately $1000 found with his body, suggest that he was a drug dealer.  The alleged shooter, up from New York, was (and possibly remains?) the long term boyfriend of a Harvard co-ed.  Meanwhile, a second female student, who was suspected to have given the shooter a Harvard access card and had past disciplinary problems, was banned from campus and denied graduation with her class.  All of which, of course, roiled the campus and inflamed racial tensions.

The second female student told the Boston Globe, “I do believe I am being singled out…  The honest answer to that is that I’m black and I’m poor and I’m from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way… It’s something that labels me as different from everyone else.”

Blackplanet.com reported it this way:

This isn’t the first time the university has been accused of racial profiling. Since the murder, black students have reported receiving extra scrutiny.

“Lately I’ve definitely been getting some interesting looks from white people, security guards and other security personnel,” said Malcolm Rivers, a black Harvard student…  “As a black man on campus, you understand that that’s part of the territory…  People are going to be like, ‘These girls brought the hood with them.’”

These fresh events may not have contributed to Gates’ behavior with Officer Crowley.  Nor, clearly, would they provide any justification for treating Professor Gates, or any other Cambridge African American citizen, with suspicion.  And I don’t believe they did.

But they may help explain why during Henry Lous Gates’ CNN town hall meeting, young African American students were eager to reclaim their status as victims of pervasive racism — particularly in a law enforcement context. This story also, of course, complicates the “narrative” of race at Harvard in some uncomfortable ways for those who do the narrating.

The United States Supreme Court tackled the issue in the seminal case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 US 265 (1978).  In that case, the Court found that race could only be one of numerous factors in determining admission to a university.  It stated that the University of California policy was unconstitutional, but that the policy used by Harvard was a valid type of affirmative action.  The result was that Mr. Bakke was admitted to medical school and became a respected physician.

Since that time, there have been many more challenges to the doctrine, some of which were successful and some of which failed. This week, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court, basically eliminated affirmative action or reverse discrimination or whatever you want to call it.

In the case of Ricci v. Destefano, the Supreme Court held that an affirmative action policy by the City of New Haven, Connecticut was invalid.  The litigation began when the City tossed out the results of a promotion exam because too few minority members passed.  Accordingly, the white firemen who did pass the test were not promoted.

The Court ruled that the white firemen who did pass the test should have been promoted.  Four justices in dissent felt otherwise.  The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who stated that although the court felt sorry for the passing firemen, it wasn’t enough.

Hopefully, this decision puts the final nail in the coffin of reverse discrimination, which is anything but fair to either side.  By definition, it is discrimination.  Anything that puts one group above another is discrimination whether it is to make up for past wrongs or not.  What has happened in the past is the past.  What matters now is the future.  And, in the future of the United States, there should not be discrimination of any kind, reverse or otherwise.  These policies have lived past their time, if, in fact, they ever had one.

But, this case is interesting on other grounds besides what it may mean to affirmative action. The Supreme Court, by deciding as it did, was overruling a decision in which Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotamayor took part.  Does this mean her nomination is in jeopardy?  I think not, but it does mean that she should be more carefully examined by the Senate.  Remember, this is the woman who stated that her rich cultural background as a Puerto Rican woman would qualify her more to decide certain types of cases than a white man.

Maybe, she is the one who is guilty of discrimination and being racially biased.  I do not believe that the Senate should give her a free ride.  She should be examined very carefully before being put on the bench.