When you read studies of situational responsibility, about group after group of study participants who don’t assist their “peer” who is “zapped” behind a screen or who “falls” off a chair – but for one person who objects, or gets up to help – well, Lucia Whalen is that one person. She’s the one person in every 10 or 100 or 1000 who sees something amiss and takes action, even though she’s not totally sure of what she’s seeing and its not directly “her business.”

In this situation, she called in and reported exactly what she saw (which we know because her words in the 911 call match precisely what was taking place – two men, luggage, forcing a door, perhaps they live there, perhaps they don’t). She did the right thing. And for her trouble she is vilified 24-7 by scores of loutish Chris Matthews types (and, of course, Chris Matthews) as an ignorant racist troublemaker, and then to top it off she is snubbed by the president of the United States.

Just a few weeks ago I called 911 because a young black man was lying curled up on a dark patch of sidewalk. I don’t know how many scores of people had noticed him and kept walking – perhaps they figured he was “sleeping it off.” I waited until the responders got there and gently helped him up and into an ambulance. Someone easily could have accused me of being a white woman freaking out because a black man was lying on the sidewalk. But screw that – he might have had a seizure, a stroke, a wound, an OD, who knows. Better to call and make the mistake of overreacting than let some poor kid just lie there without help because you’ve got some racial melodrama playing out in your head.

The situation in Cambridge was pure testosterone poisoning. Gates got his back up, then the cop got his back up, and neither wanted to back down. Wash, rinse, repeat. Men do this all the time.

More Lucia Whalens, please, and less men hopped up on their own egos.