WASHINGTON — The chief White House spokesman said a Thursday meeting of the president, a Harvard University scholar and the policeman who arrested him will be “about having a beer and de-escalation.”
Robert Gibbs said today that the session, weather permitting, is planned for 6 p.m. at a picnic table outside the Oval Office. “The president wants to continue to take down the temperature a bit,” Gibbs said.
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is black, was arrested last week by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department, who is white, after a caller telephoned 911 and reported an apparent burglary. Gates, who had been trying to get into his own home, was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge, quickly dropped by Cambridge police.
When Obama said at his news conference last week that the police had “acted stupidly,” the national debate over racial profiling escalated to the point that the president went into the White House briefing room on Friday to say he wished he had used different language.
Gibbs said Obama suggested the meeting over beer when he phoned Crowley on Friday. Gates concurred when Obama phoned him next.
But what to serve? Crowley apparently likes Blue Moon beer. Gates favors Red Stripe or Beck’s. Don’t look for Obama to order a similar high-priced brand, however.
“The president had a Budweiser at the All-Star Game,” Gibbs told reporters, hinting at Obama’s likely choice.
The meeting with Gates and Crowley in the planning stages, Gibbs said the president was hoping for “an increased dialogue between both of the individuals here and their representation of both law enforcement and the minority community.”
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