FOR THE RECORD

We're not sure the beer-sharing by President Obama, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley July 30 provided the "teachable moment" the President was looking for.

Fallout from the incident that led to Mr. Gates's arrest in his own home, however, served to educate us that there were at least a couple of nitwits on the public payroll with less-thanenlightened racial views.

Last week started with the magazine City Hall bringing to light the blog comments of Lee Landor, a Deputy Press Secretary for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. She contended that Mr. Gates was entirely at fault in the incident, referred to the President as "O-dumb-a," and added, "Black people, Hispanic people, Indian people, Asian people, whoever, are being over-the-top racists in recent weeks, as highlighted in the media since the Sotomayor- New Haven issue."

By the evening of July 27, Ms. Landor had been forced to resign. Her mother subsequently defended her, telling the Daily News she was not a racist.

No, she just played one online.

Then there was Boston Police Officer Justin Barrett, who in an e-mail to a Boston Globe columnist referred to Professor Gates as having assaulted Sergeant Crowley "like a banana-eating jungle monkey."

His identity was revealed by outraged fellow cops after he bragged about the e-mail, and he was immediately suspended, with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino indicating he would be fired shortly.

"It's like cancer," he explained. "You don't keep those cancers around."

In a speech at a breakfast hosted by Crain's New York Business July 30, Rudy Giuliani contended that the Wall Street meltdown was not because of a lack of regulation of risky transactions involving subprime mortgages and the derivatives used to package them but because there was too much outside scrutiny.

"You have too many regulators, not too few," he contended, claiming the overlap led them to overlook key problems.

Our ex-Mayor since leaving City Hall has drank increasingly deep from the national Republican Kool-Aid bowl, which might explain how he could make this logic defying argument. But it's possible that he's onto something with this counter-intuitive thinking.

Such as, is it possible that the Bloomberg administration has been able to significantly improve on his own regime's success in reducing crime despite having 5,000 fewer officers on the job than during his last year in office because Mr. Giuliani hired too many cops? Could the nearly 41,000 on the force then have been tripping over each other while bad guys went undetected in the confusion?

We're not sure we'll hear Mr. Giuliani making that argument any time soon. It might chip away at his legacy, and there's no ideological upside for him, either.

He may have been kidding on the square, however, when he responded to questions after his speech about the chances of him running for Governor, as the State Republican Party is avidly courting him to do. Referring to somewhat more-tentative feelers it's sent to the last Republican Governor about running for U.S. Senate next year, he said. "There's no question that if you have to rely on George Pataki and me, you're in big trouble."

He also joked, "The only way I could get elected Governor is the way I got elected Mayor. Things have to be so bad . . ."

Cops and firefighters will be raising a racquet Aug. 23 when the two departments' teams square off in the FDNY vs. NYPD Tennis Championship that serves as the kickoff to that week's EmblemHealth Bronx Open tournament in Crotona Park.

The police/fire festivities will begin at 10 a.m. with the NYPD Color Guard and the FDNY bagpipers highlighting the opening ceremonies, and will also feature free tennis lessons provided by the New York Junior Tennis League. The winning team will receive a trophy from EmblemHealth, which will also make donations to the agencies' scholarship and widows and orphans funds.

General admission to both those matches and the opening rounds of the EmblemHealth Bronx Open from Aug. 24 to 28 is free. (Tickets for the finals Aug. 29 are $10.)

For further information, call (347) 417-8129.