Stupid ‘stupid’

Obama’s retraction is refreshing, but does leave some questions about his willingness to comment on the basis of incomplete information.

For the President not to have got the full story before commenting was itself certainly stupid, but for the rest of us it does not help that some of the media set this up by reporting the arrest was for B&E when it was just for “disorderly conduct”. If Gates was in a bad mood (or maybe had had a few over the evening) he may have reacted belligerently to the investigators when producing his id and if he was as persistent and annoying as I might be under the same circumstances he might have needled the cops enough to prompt an overreaction (which is actually often much easier to do than it should be – but that’s just life when high levels of testosterone are involved). Of course if he had been thinking clearly he would have thanked them instead of berating them since if it had been someone else breaking in they would have just saved him from a nasty surprise on his return.