In his 967-word statement to the nation about the Ferguson grand jury decision on Tuesday night, President Obama devoted precisely one sentence to the risks and sacrifices police officers make to keep the peace.
One.
Obama delivered a tepid, obligatory acknowledgement that "our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day." But he sandwiched it between a finger-wagging admonition that cops need to "show care and restraint" and a pandering discourse justifying the "deep distrust" that "communities of color" have toward law enforcement because of the "legacy of racial discrimination in this country."
Note: Multiple African-American witnesses told the panel that teen Michael Brown, suspected of robbing a local market, charged Officer Darren Wilson before his shooting death. The grand jury concluded that there was no probable cause for indicting Wilson after considering hundreds of pages and scores of hours of witness and expert testimony.
Yet, Obama's first priority was to dwell on racial injustice against "communities of color," and his first instinct was to warn police officers to restrain themselves.
Only after expending 756 words on the need to "understand" the "problem" that "communities of color" have with police did Obama address the thugs of color "throwing bottles" and "smashing car windows" and "using this as an excuse to vandalize property" in the name of social justice.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner had nothing to say about the hate-filled "F**k the police" refrain from rioters of color in Ferguson and anarchists of pallor in Oakland and Occupy Wall Street pot-stirrers of privilege poisoning social media.
The nation's self-styled healer of souls was mum in response to black radical grievance-mongers' calls to vengefully burn Ferguson to the ground -- a seething sentiment echoed the next day by Brown's stepfather.
Mr. Hope and Change stayed silent about the lynch-mob instigators calling for Wilson to be shot and his family murdered.
And while the uniter-in-chief has given several public shout-outs to Brown and his family, he has delivered no special national address addressing the families of police officers ruthlessly targeted by domestic terrorists and racist radicals.
Obama used his bully pulpit this week to bemoan the "real issues" of discrimination by some police officers. But he said nothing about the murderous strain of racial animus against America's men and women in blue.
It's part of a longstanding cultural war against cops that has permeated academia, Hollywood, media and "progressive" halls of power for decades -- from the "pig"-hating Weather Underground to mainstream rappers to MSNBC's Al Sharpton to high-ranking convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal's advocates such as former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones.
And the bloody beat goes on.
In October, a militant black nationalist and jihadist vigilante attacked white New York police officers with a hatchet. Zale Thompson maliciously wounded Officer Kenneth Healey in the head and slashed Officer Joseph Meeker in the arm. Thompson was no poor, uneducated youth. He is a College of New Rochelle liberal arts alumnus and one-time master's degree candidate at Obama's alma mater, Columbia University.
As the New York Post reported, Thompson was a radical "black power" proponent who converted to Islam, obsessed over jihad, spent months consuming pro-ISIS propaganda and "wanted 'white people to pay' for slavery."
Thompson was hailed as a "crusader for justice" by the Queens chapter of the New Black Panther Party. That's the same anti-white hate group whose members instigated racially charged chaos in Ferguson; racially charged intimidation at a Philadelphia voting booth in 2008 that went unpunished by the Obama administration; and racially inflammatory threats against the innocent Duke lacrosse players exonerated of false rape accusations in 2007.
A week after Thompson waged his racist anti-cop jihad, another police officer in Washington, D.C., was ambushed by an ax-wielding assailant in a chillingly similar attack. He remains on the loose.
To these men and women of all colors on the front lines, risking their lives against homeland security threats of all kinds, Obama last night offered hundreds of lines of warning and lecturing.
But not this one word: "Thanks."