As a Harvard Law grad, Barack Obama must know that any honest evaluation of who acted “stupidly” in something like the Henry Louis Gates affair necessarily depends on the facts of what happened. What stands out about Obama’s strident condemnation of the police officers on national television last night is that he simply has no idea, and he probably never will. We know that the police were called when someone saw two men breaking into a house in Cambridge. It could be that the police officers showed up, saw two black men, had a racist response, and decided to arrest Gates without justification, even after he properly identified himself as the owner of the house. Or it could be that the officers properly responded to the call and acted appropriately in investigating the scene of a potential break-in, whereupon Gates became so enraged and combative that he crossed the line of illegal disorderly conduct. And there’s a wide range of possibilities between these poles.

Absent any way of discerning which competing narrative is accurate, most of the commentary on the matter seems like just another way for people to vent their general feelings about race and the criminal-justice system.