Guest-hosting for Keith Olbermann last night on MSNBC’s Countdown program, newsman Richard Wolf  reported, cheerily, that the interaction between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Sergeant Jim Crowley at yesterday’s co-called White House “beer summit” was “friendly and warm” — “unlike the beer,” he added for good measure, before proceeding to tell us which brand of beer each participant preferred.

“Warm,” however, is not an adjective that could be used to describe the angry racial rhetoric that Gates has employed repeatedly during his years in academia. In a video clip that has gained much traction on You Tube recently, the professor can be seen extolling the virtues of affirmative action while excoriating black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who opposes racial preferences, as a traitor to his race. Said Gates:

“Without affirmative action we would have never been able to integrate racist historically white institutions in American society…. [B]ecause of racism, I never would have been allowed to compete on a more or less level terrain with white boys and white girls. And for me, for someone who has benefited so much from the opportunities of affirmative action, to stand at the gate and try to keep other black people out would be to be as hypocritical as Clarence Thomas.”

There is a long, ugly tradition of black leftists speaking about Justice Thomas as though he were a moral degenerate who could best serve his “race” by simply dying. Consider just a handful of examples:

Jesse Jackson, who views white racism as America’s “congenital deformity,” characterized Thomas’s vote to place limits on affirmative action programs as “a brutally violent act” that, “in effect, stabbed Dr. King,… paving the way back toward slavery.” Along with fellow race pimp Al Sharpton, Jackson led a prayer vigil outside Thomas’s home to protest the Justice’s decision. Likening Thomas to a Klansman, Jackson asserted: “At night, the enemies of civil rights strike in white sheets, burning crosses…. By day, they strike in black robes.”

The late columnist Carl Rowan sarcastically suggested that “if you give Thomas a little flour on his face, you’d think you had [former Klansman] David Duke.”

Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown called Thomas not only “a shill for the most insidious form of racism, but also a man whose views are “legitimizing of the Ku Klux Klan.” Brown added that Thomas “should be reduced to talking only to white conservatives,” and “must be shut out” by the black community.”

Political scientist and lifelong Marxist Manning Marable asserts that Thomas has “ethnically ceased being an African American.”

Movie director Spike Lee, who believes that “racism is woven into the very fabric of America,” calls Thomas “a handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom.”

The late author June Jordan characterized him as a “virulent Oreo phenomenon,” a “punk-ass,” and an “Uncle Tom calamity.”

Columnist Julianne Malveaux told a television audience, “I hope [Thomas’s] wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease…. He’s an absolutely reprehensible person.”

From the podium of an NAACP convention, Thomas was denounced as a “pimp” and a “traitor” to the black community.

With comparable contempt, the Reverend Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference once said, “I have told [Thomas] I am ashamed of him, because he is becoming to the black community what Benedict Arnold was to the nation he deserted; and what Judas Iscariot was to Jesus: a traitor; and what Brutus was to Caesar: an assassin.

It appears that these leftists, who are so fond of criticizing Republicans and conservatives for rejecting the “big tent” ideals of “inclusion” and “tolerance” that supposedly characterize the Democratic left, could fit their own ideological “tent” on the head of a pin.

Bashear and John, as Brown familiarly referred to her two black friends, were disappointed, not to say outraged, that Obama treated the cop — and the cops — respectfully and seemed willing to let the Cambridge outrage (as they saw it) go. The failure to lynch the cop for an incident in which another black man was another victim obviously disappointed them.

Coincidentally, Geraldo, commenting on the O’Reilly Factor, agreed. You have to understand, Bill, said Geraldo — or words to that effect — every black man and Hispanic (but not Asians and Arabs or Jews or Mormons?) has a different experience with the police than white guys like you. Oh yeah, and then there are those minority cops who side with the man, Geraldo said, or words to that effect.

On what planet are leftists like Geraldo living? Are there racist cops? Yeah — but trust me, they come in all colors. Are white guys beat to a pulp because they’re white by rogue black cops? You bet. And there are video tapes to prove it. Only you’re not going to see them on the news.

But all this is somewhat irrelevant to the fact that Gates acted like an a-hole, impersonating a ghetto black when he’s a personal friend of the man in the White House. The whole incident was triggered because instead of cooperating with police, Gates reacted in a racist manner to the fact that the officer was white, and, instead of cooperating with him, insulted him by calling him a racist, phoning his boss and slandering him as a racist — thus threatening Crowley’s  job — and arrogantly telling him “you don’t know who you’re messing with.”

The victory for sanity that the beer summit represented was evident in the frustration and disappointment of Bashear and John. It would have been complete if both Gates and the President had apologized to the officer. That didn’t happen, but it’s unreasonable to think it would have. The fact is that the thin blue line held and had the majority of Americans behind it, and that’s very good news.

And BTW: What the hell was that fool Biden doing at this meeting?

Finally, here the are the statements of Crowley and Gates. Read the Gates statement and enjoy the respect that is being paid to the normally maligned law enforcement profession — another indication of why this summit was a victory for sanity and old fashioned American values over the racial grievance mongering of the left.