Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

A debate about stereotypes seems to be afoot amongst the bloggers at Psychology Today. One blogger says they’re just “empirical generalizations,” which all scientists use and that they are mostly true and get a bum rap. Another blogger is like, are you kidding me*? How do you feel about stereotypes? Do you think there are any out there that are less “stereotype” and more “gospel truth?”

*My sentiments exactly.

South Carolina’s dogged persistence in holding onto the Confederate Flag has long been a point of contention and a pet cause of the NAACP. At the organization’s convention last week, leaders announced plans to launch a renewed effort to get South Carolina officials, who moved the flag from its perch atop the state house to a memorial for Confederate soldiers in 2000, to remove the flag entirely.

Cord Jefferson (who is undergoing kidney transplant surgery as we speak — wish him luck!), asked readers last week if the flag is about heritage or hate — I say that heritage and hate aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive in this particular case. The Confederate Flag is a symbol of the South’s history, of which virulent racism and violence are part and parcel. The people who insist on waving it proudly are exhibiting, at best, an unabashed insensitivity to the painful memories and history that the flag represents for so many people, and, at worst, the ugly racism handed down to Southerners from their forefathers. There are a lot of people who disagree with me on this in South Carolina. Then again, there are a lot of people who agree with me. Incidentally, none of them seem to care too much about the NAACP’s latest anti-flag efforts. Why?

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Faced with a November election that will surely bring out a record voter turnout, local state and election boards are paying heed to a new study that suggests ballot redesigns are necessary to ensure that famous mistakes of previous elections are avoided.

Problems with confusing paper ballots in 2002, absentee ballots in 2004 and touch-screen ballots in 2006 led thousands of voters to skip over key races or make mistakes that invalidated their votes, according to the study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

“In the big election meltdowns … where thousands of votes were lost, ballot design was the primary cause,” says Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center.

Voting officials in Ohio, a swing state, are scheduled to be schooled by some “ballot design experts,” who are raking in the big bucks this year, I’m sure, in order to avoid some common mistakes in the fall. [USAT]

• Angela Simmons segues into a singing career. Good idea or no? [C&D]

• Meanwhile, her dad, Rev Run, her step-mom Justine, and her little sister Miley pose for Jet. [Bossip]

• And Rev Run’s former rap partner goes to the hospital… [People]

• In unrelated news, Denzel vacations with his two daughters in St. Tropez. [CL]

• Baltimore DJ K-Swift dies tragically in her hometown. [NB]

Four years after Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction,” a federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing a $550,000 indecency fine to CBS. “Like any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second-guessing,” the court said. “But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure.” In other words, that split-second flash of JJ’s breast was not worth all of that drama. Agreed. [Breitbart]

Thanks, Khia.

The German magazine Der Speigel reported Saturday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki supported Barack Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan. This put the White House into such a panic that an aide accidentally emailed the news story to an extended media distribution list instead of an internal email list. The story — that Maliki approves of Obama’s plan, not that the White House emailed the news to the world — made international headlines, but this morning, Maliki’s camp seemed to have backtracked. An aide to the prime minister announced that his boss had been “misinterpreted and mistranslated,” although he didn’t cite any specific comments. The aide’s statement might have had something to do with a little call the officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad put in to Maliki’s office to “express concern and seek clarification.” I’m just going to take a wild guess that Der Speigel stands firmly behind its reporting. [WP]

Porschla Coleman and Russell Simmons didn’t necessarily look broken up at Russell’s annual Art for Life benefit in the Hamptons, but then again word on the street is they do still hang out. And perhaps they were mainly just really good friends to begin with. And look at that — I have already spent way too much time thinking about the relationship between Porschla and Russ. Moving on: lots of people looking very overheated (it was unbearable in NY Saturday) were in attendance. My favorite picture: Governor David Paterson posing with the Real Housewives of New York.

So soon after it was announced that racial discrimination has been banned in Hong Kong, an English-language newspaper in Beijing has reported that blacks and other perceived “social undesirables” are unofficially banned from bars during the Olympic Games. The athletes who fit that description will have to save their celebrating until they get home, it seems.

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With the Dark Knight breaking all kinds of box office records in its opening weekend, it’s only right to commemorate the occasion with Prince’s very odd “Batdance.” It was on the soundtrack for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, which now seems like a gazillion years ago.

Photographical evidence of Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East, which began this weekend, is few and far between, since pictures are being released by the military. But he has met with Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, and this morning he arrived in Baghdad on a fact-finding mission about the current state of our favorite war. Details have been closely guarded in order to protect the presumptive nominee. [WP]