A friend sends along this link, apropos my comment last night on the Special Report panel that President Obama's instinctive identification with Professor Gates (and his willingness to attack Sergeant Crowley without knowing the facts) was as much about class as race.
In a short note in the August 2007 Travel and Leisure magazine, Gates explains why Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard is his favorite place:
"I started going to Oak Bluffs in 1981 and fell in love with the light. It reminded me of the light in the south of France, near St.-Paul-de-Vence, which for me was a déjà vu experience-it evoked the summer of 1973, when I spent a wonderful time in France with James Baldwin and Josephine Baker....I spend every July and August in my house near Oak Bluffs. I love bicycling, and because of a hip replacement I had a couple of years ago, I had a 24-speed tricycle made by hand in Germany." Etc.
Perhaps the professor can show the president his tricycle next month when the Obamas are vacationing on the Vineyard. And the president can explain to the professor that he was lucky he got that hip replacement when he did (did a board of experts in Washington certify that it was necessary? cost-effective?), before Obama's health plan went into effect.
