President Obama needs to be very careful about what to say when news that includes people he knows is brought to his attention. The recent flare up between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department is a perfect example.

Professor Gates had returned home from a trip to China and found his door stuck. His driver forced it open and a neighbor called 911 to report that she saw an apparent break-in in progress. Sgt. James Crowley arrived first on the scene.

What happened next is a bit unclear, but we do know that Gates yelled at the police and accused them of racism when they entered the house to follow up on the 911 call. Gates was then charged with disorderly conduct. I personally have found that yelling at a police officer is rarely a good idea, especially when they are doing the job that they are hired to do. When cooler heads prevailed the next day, the charge was dropped.

President Obama, who is Gates’ friend, stated that the police were “acting stupidly.” Now, to his defense, President Obama then apologized for his remarks and even called Crowley, and invited both the police officer and the professor to join him at the White House for a beer, but my point is that as president of the United States, he should not be commenting on a case that he did not know all the facts about. I would think that our president has enough to concern himself with at the moment. I would rather he concentrate all of his time and energy to the economy, as that seems to be our No. 1 concern in America.

As for the media covering this issue, rather than see it as a misunderstanding between a Harvard professor, who probably was very tired from a long airplane ride as well as dealing with the quality customer service that you normally get from airport personnel (please note sarcasm here) and a police officer, who was doing his job and maybe had been called one too many bad names by Gates and others that day, they chose to blow this up into a superstar storm of racism gone awry.

This was nothing more than a misunderstanding between one man and another man. Now I do not think that race relations in our country are perfect, as a matter of fact, I think it is far from it, but this is not the case to point to, although many will try. So in short, I hope they do get together for that beer, but Mr. President, please watch your words.

Health care debate

Health care in our country needs to be debated. It needs to be talked about and gone through thoroughly. I applaud what President Obama is trying to do, but I just do not like the timing of it.

I believe we need to take a hard look at the economy first. We need to make sure that the stimulus package is working, that banks are being watched, and that the housing crisis does not get worse.

Health care has waited for a long time and another year will not be sweeping it under the rug, but rather giving it a chance to be debated and studied. I do not want a thousand-page bill that most likely will not be thoroughly read by those voting on it to take any time that could and should be spent on our economy.

Let’s not let health care reform take us away from our economic reform.

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.