Glenn Beck: Obama 'racist?' -- Beer time

by Mark Silva

It'll be beer-time soon at the White House, where President Barack Obama will play host to the black Harvard professor arrested in his own home and the white Cambridge police sergeant who handcuffed him - the president taking the officer up Thursday on an invitation to hash out the issues over a cold beer at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Both the president and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. are looking for "teachable moments'' in the saga of the Gates arrest. Obama, the first African-American president, has acknowledged making a bad "choice of words'' in initially saying last week that the police had "acted stupidly'' in arresting a fellow who had forced his way into his own home because of a jammed door.'' Nevertheless, the president has suggested that the incident was emblematic of a persistent problem in America: Racial profiling.

There may be little that a cold beer can accomplish, however, in chilling the temperature of some of the rhetoric on the sidelines of this continuing debate. Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator for the FOX News Channel, had some rather provocative things to say about the president's own racial profiling:

"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture, I don't know what it is,'' Beck said (see the video above. "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.''

The remarks may say more about Beck than Obama, and perhaps something about the level of political discourse that FOX is sponsoring in Beck.

Retired Amy Gen. Colin Powell, who, like Obama, was the first African-American to achieve one of the nation's highest political posts, knows something about racial profiling, too. The former secretary of state said last night on CNN's Larry King Live that he has been subjected to it.

"Yes, many times,'' Powell said, citing the importance of averting anger at times like these - and also suggesting that Gates could have handled the situation in his own home better than he did. "You know, anger is best controlled.''