A class act

The Henry Gates/policeman incident has been forgotten by now, so it's time to post about it. The US press covered it purely in terms of racism, of course, but forget that, it's about class. In those terms you have a Harvard professor, who from the age of 18 has been one of the most privileged people in the world (Yale, Cambridge, Harvard) confronting a working-class cop. The line "Do you know who I am?" and the insistence on producing a Harvard ID (which indicates rank in the university) as opposed to a Mass driver's license (anyone can have one of those) can only be understood as "Fuck you, I'm famous and you're a prole" followed by "Fuck you, this prole is taking you in." Mind you, I'm not criticizing Harvard, this is what Harvard is for and what the world expects of it.