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PrintJuly 25, 2009
Steyn on Gates
The inimitable Mark Steyn knocks one out of the park, writing about the President and the Professor. Pretentious poseurs, which is what Henry Louis "Skip" Gates has been exposed as, are like candy to Steyn, and his column in the Orange County Register is one delicious confection. Unless, of course, your nickname is Barry or Skip. Savor this:
As to the differences between the professor's and the cops' version of events, I confess I've been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. "It's like Shakespeare's 'My love is like a red, red rose,'" he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.As it happens, "My luv's like a red, red rose" was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What's the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates' testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.
The fact that Gates has become famous and enjoys the exalted status of an endowed chair at Harvard while possessing such a shallow grasp of his subject matter is a scandal in and of itself. It makes the President's self-declared nickname-basis friendship with the poseur all the more dubious an asset to the nation's first post-racial presidency.
Hat tip: Lucianne.com
