The sequence of events that lead to his arrest apparently began when Gates returned from a trip oversees to find his front door jammed and he and a friend began attempting to force it open. The woman who made the 911 call witnessed them doing this and notified police because she believed they were breaking into the home.

When the police arrived at the house they were quickly able to establish that Gates did live there. After that, Sgt. James Crowley requested that the professor come out of the home to talk with him further. It was then that Gates made the accusation that the officer was only asking him to do that because he is a black man.

Crowley claims that he made the request because there had been two men seen trying to get in and he was concerned that there may have been a second man in the home. In an interview with Boston’s Channel 7 News, Crowley explained his view of the event.

“I then asked him if there was anybody else in the residence. And my reason for asking that is two-fold: first of all, there was a report that there were two individuals,” said Crowley. “I see one, and it could be him, so where’s the second person. Or, there are two people in the residence that he doesn’t know are there. Either way, I wasn’t expecting his response, which was: ‘That’s none of your business.’ To me, that’s a strange response for someone that has nothing to hide.”

According to the group of police who were there, including one African American, Gates proceeded to get increasingly belligerent. It was because of this aggression that Gates was ultimately arrested for disorderly conduct.

The truth in this case is hard to discern, particularly because one of the motivations for Gate’s reaction was his emotions regarding race relations in America. It is understandable that a 58-year-old black man who was born before the Civil Rights Act was passed would have a predisposition to feeling targeted due to his race.

Widespread understanding of Gates’ reaction to white police on his doorstep, however, would not have even have a chance of fruition were it not for President Barack Obama’s equally emotion-based and obviously impulsive statement that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.” The President did say that he did not yet have all the facts of the case before he declared this view, thus his immediate reaction could only be based on his experience as a black man in America himself and his knowledge of Gates as a friend.

His controversial comment that the police “acted stupidly” marked the first time Obama has exposed the truth: that he has the experience of being a black man in this country just like anyone else. He may have addressed the issue of race in his speech during the Reverend Wright controversy, but his words were extremely calculated and he even seemed to present himself as slightly detached from the black experience. The unscripted moment witnessed a few days ago suggests otherwise.

President Obama has always been perceived as someone who “transcends race,” but he admitted today that quick emotional responses to accusations of prejudge against African Americans are “a part of his portfolio.” At this point he only hopes that his unintentional display of this previously unseen side of him will help spark discussions and serve as a “’a teachable moment’ to be used to improve relations between minorities and police officers.”

It certainly has created a great deal of conversation regarding the issue on major news networks, and that’s a start.

Interestingly, it turns out that the officer who made the arrest runs a training program for other policemen about how to avoid racial profiling.

The age structure in Iran makes what is happening in the Islamic Republic particularly relevant to the perspective this site offers, as it is currently one of the youngest countries in the world. The CIA World Factbook currently reports that the median age for Iranian citizens is 26.4 years old. Compare that to the United States, where, according to 2009 estimates, the median age is 36.7 years old.

All of this means that Iran will likely be influenced and impacted by Millennials sooner and with greater force than almost any other nation in the world. What happens in Iran will be one of the first indications of how, as an international cohort, this new generation will change the world.

Observing these kind of trends is precisely what Scoop is designed to do, making Iranian conflict more relevant to this site than perhaps any other news source. There will be continuing coverage.

The full story is part of CNN’s upcoming special Black in America 2. The segment dedicated to this topic explores the journey of Michelle’s family from the little white shack at Friendfield Plantation in South Carolina, which was “smaller than a Secret Service security shed on the grounds of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” to the White House and her position of First Lady.

Its a remarkable story.

A report by Jeremiah Owyang, the senior social media analyst at consultancy Forrester Research, titled Social Media Playtime is Over, found that “53% of marketers are determined to increase their social media budget during a recession, and 42% will keep it the same.” This means that a total of 95% of marketers are currently pushing the cost-effective method of social media marketing.

Forrester recently predicted that social media marketing budgets will “increase by more than 30 percent each year for the next five years, putting spending on pace to reach $3 billion by 2014.” This hypothesis is even more impressive when it is considered that only $258 million was spent on social media tools in 2008.

Unfortunately, because marketing via social media and networking sites is still in the exploratory and experimental stage, companies have yet to add staff to focus on these efforts. Many successful businesses have not needed to hire additional people in order to obtain huge followings on sites like Twitter.

“Rather than hiring external social-media savvy people,” says Jet Blue spokesman Morgan Johnston, “we looked internally for people who happened to be active on social media in their personal lives.”

According to Sawhorse’s Galant, “Everyone is making up the rules as they go along. It may take a year or more for firms to figure out how it fits into their company.”

Its just one more sign of the tough luck the new generation seems to have inherited.