Nonetheless, Politico's Ben Smith announced that:

After spending most of an hour patiently reiterating his arguments for changing the health insurance system, President Barack Obama turned his press conference sharply toward an iconic moment in American race relations: The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. earlier this week by the Cambridge Police.

Of course, based on how press conferences work, it wasn't Obama who turned the presser “sharply” in the direction of race. It was the reporter who asked the question. But that's not the tale Smith wanted to tell.