After drafting a lengthy and annoyed post this morning based on this NY Post story, in which a "source" said that Al Sharpton and Barack Obama exchanged heated words during a phone call about Sean Bell, which Sharpton saying that he had hoped Obama would side with the Bell family and instead saw the situation as "an opportunity to grand-stand in from of white people," something in the wording of the article gave me pause and I scrapped it. If Sharpton really wanted to say that, he probably would have said it himself in front of cameras. It's a good thing I scrapped it — Sharpton's people say that either the unnamed source or the reporters fabricated quotes from that conversation, which was actually positive. The rep also said Sharpton was alone during the phone call. Nevertheless, we'll surely see headlines all day about how Sharpton and Obama now hate each other, which we will be encouraged to accept as further proof that Obama is too black for whites and too white for blacks. Then again, some people might have seen a rift between Sharpton and Obama as a positive…

Sean Bell's dead and the cops have been cleared of all criminal charges for their role in his death. As finite as those two things seem — Bell's never coming back to life and the cops aren't going to jail — the situation is far from over. There's the inevitable civil case and federal investigation, which the New York Times editorial board hopes will provide "answers" that the criminal trial and subsequent verdict did not. There are the officer's jobs, which the New York Daily News editorial board thinks they should be fired from, pronto. There's the matter of police being allowed to shoot 50 rounds into the car of an unarmed person, which the New York Post editorial board thinks is A-ok.

This article reminds us, based on the dull sadness, disappointment, and resignation (as opposed to blind rage) of the black people a reporter talked to in Queens, that New York is a different place than it was during Guiliani's reign — when black folks were fighting mad after the white cops who shot Amadou Diallo 41 times were acquitted — and that Bloomberg is a very different mayor who is more invested in soothing race relations. The article also reminds us that this was a very different case. Two of the cops were black, and some think the cops simply made an error in judgment that had tragic consequences. Yet, even as some people consider what happened to Sean Bell to be a result of simple police negligence and an unfortunate series of events, others see a very clear racial link. Some people see a crime. Some people think the verdict is a cruel example of how little society values the lives of young black men. It all depends on how you look at it. I mean, Al Sharpton's planning to shut down the city. Protest songs are being written. Special investigators are being called for. Judge Arthur Cooperman's house is under 24-hour security watch. And yes, some people are filled with rage reminiscent of the aftermath of the Diallo case. They're wondering how this happened. Not only how things could have gone so horribly wrong on the night of Bell's death, but how the cops who were involved — particularly the one who fired 31 shots, got away with it.

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Al Sharpton, who's probably all emotionally conflicted right now over the Sean Bell verdict — a mixture of genuine anger and "Oh, goody! News crews! Photographers!" — got a little threatening and serious at a press conference with Sean Bell's fiancee this weekend. Before a very angry crowd in Harlem (there were shouts of "Kill the police"), Sharpton said that he would return in the coming week "to plan the day that we will close this city down," with some sort of massive display of civil disobedience. Al Sharpton threatening to shut NYC holds the same innocuous menace as Heathcliff Huxtable telling Theo, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out," except Sharpton didn't bring NYC into this world. If anything, he's one of the city's many eccentric children/characters who could have been raised no place but here. He also can't take the city out, and he runs the risk, as he often does when he gets involved in a cause of some kind, of trivializing the issue on a national level instead of calling positive attention to it. No word on what the NYC-breaking protest will be, but if it's about solving real, systemic problems in law enforcement and not one man's ego-driven grand-standing, and if it makes people think a little harder about the reason for the protest and not about Al Sharpton himself, color me pleasantly surprised. [AP]

Since the mainstream media outlets have never really asked, we'll just take it upon ourselves to tell them: Stop going to Reverend Al Sharpton every single time you want the "African American response" to this country's racial issues.

Al Sharpton is an egomaniacal, 53-year-old, reckless Baptist who should probably be in jail right now on charges ranging from drug trafficking to tax evasion. That man does not, nor will he ever, speak for me and my family. And just because he's always getting in front of a fucking camera when tragedy strikes, you don't have to take his picture and interview him. Got it? Thanks.

The family members of the four teenage boys accused of raping, sodomizing, and torturing a Haitian immigrant and her son in Dunbar Village, their West Palm Beach housing project, are trying to turn their boys into the Jena Six. The Dunbar Village Four? It ain't happening. Despite the uproar over the brutalized victim's rights in this case, even Al Sharpton attended an NAACP news conference in West Palm Beach three weeks ago, during which he complained that the Dunbar Village boys were being held without bond while white teenagers accused of raping two white girls in Boca Raton were free on bail. According to the Baltimore Sun, "In the Boca Raton case, the five white teenagers are accused of sexually assaulting two middle-school students after the group of seven engaged in a night of drinking Jan. 1." Two very different scenarios.

Sharpton says that he wasn't arguing for the black boys to be freed, he was arguing that if the black boys were being held without bond, the white boys should be, too. That sounds like some after-the-fact clean up, but whatever. It's not the time to rally around a group of sadistic rapists. Is it ever that time? If the family members are hoping to get the nation behind their boys like the Jena Six, who have already fallen out of favor with many who initially supported them, they're crazy. At this point, they should be at home, working on trying to keep their other kids from following down the same path. [BS]

• The Boondocks episode that will never air because the Cartoon Network deemed it a leeeeetle too critical of BET for comfort, has now been leaked in is entirety. Watch and laugh. [SOHH]

• Snapshots from Kanye West's blog: a homemade, four-passenger spaceship! Multiple pictures of it! [KW]

• Oh, this is just bad. So so bad. [C&D]

• Al Sharpton says he never endorsed Barack Obama because he would hurt him as much as he helped him. At least he knows himself. [NYDN]

I didn't think I'd ever see Terry McMillan, Felicia "Snoop" Pearson (The Wire), and John Amos in a picture together, but here they are. McMillan, Pearson, and Amos, along with Ruby Dee, Mo'Nique, Al Sharpton and others, got together in NYC yesterday for the launch of the Stay Strong Foundation's "Healing Starts With Us," a campaign to call attention to emotional and mental health issues in the black community. The impetus was Terrie M. Williams' new book, Black Pain: It Only Looks Like We're Not Hurting, about the author's struggle with depression and the stigma surrounding mental health problems in the black community.

[WI]

• The drugs and guns found on his tour bus weren't his, says Lil Wayne. In other words, he pleaded not guilty to charges. [E!]

• G.W. Bush mistakes Al Sharpton's daughter for his wife. Why were Sharpton and Bush fraternizing to begin with? Oh, Black History Month. [FBNY]

• Whatever happened to just googling and Myspace/Facebook-stalking your dates? [Jossip]

• The mastermind behind the Cheetah Girls, which has netted Disney millions and millions, lives in a cramped studio in Manhattan. Story old as time… [LAT]

• Juvenile…marijuana possession…yawn… [E!]

As I mentioned briefly earlier today, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, sent a letter to the DNC calling on officials to solve the problem of Michigan and Florida's delegates, which won't have a seat at the convention because Florida and Michigan election officials defied DNC rules by holding their primaries before Super Tuesday.

In a Feb. 8 letter to DNC Chairman Howard Dean, NAACP chairman Julian Bond expressed "great concern at the prospect that million of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted." Refusing to seat the states' delegations could remind voters of the "sordid history of racially discriminatory primaries," he said.

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Firmly ensconced in his glass house, Charles Barkley, who says he has serious plans to run for the governor of Alabama, threw some stones at Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton recently.

HOOPS legend Charles Barkley says he definitely plans to run for governor of Alabama, but wants no campaign help from rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. "I don't believe in them. They always play the race card, and you can't always play the race card," the former Houston Rockets power forward tells next month's Playboy. "Sometimes the race card is needed but not in every situation. We have to hold blacks more accountable for their actions."

It's sort of presumptuous of him to assume that Sharpton or Jackson are waiting breathlessly in the wings to hop on his campaign bandwagon, isn't it? But I'm sure Al Sharpton, ever the forgiving Christian, would take Barkley's phone call if he ever ran into one of those situations that "require" the race card.

It's fascinating that the two black men most likely to be called race baiters are calling for an end to the racial back-and-forth between the Clinton and Obama camps that the media is playing up and, instead, encouraging democrats to focus on the issues and stick together. Al Sharpton did it recently, and, in an interview with What About Our Daughters' Gina McCauley on Essence.com, Jesse Jackson is doing it, too. Check out an excerpt after the jump.

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• I hate agreeing with Al Sharpton. [FOX]

• It happens in law firms, too. [LAW]

• The "race war" is being played up in the media more than the race card is being played between Obama and Clinton — the candidates themselves, not the "camps." But whatever. I don't feel that divided. [WP]

• Hispanic and black lawmakers in Buffalo are at odds. All the way across the country from LA! [WKBW]

• John McCain makes sure we know that he didn't father a little black child out of wedlock, he adopted a little Indian child with his wife. Big difference! [LAT]

Despite rumors to the contrary, Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Las Vegas passed inspection and opened (in typical grand style) last night for LeBron James' 23rd birthday party. Lots of stars were in attendance, but expect more at tonight's New Year's Eve party — apparently, none of these people mind spending two nights in a row at Jay-Z's club. More pictures, including one of Rev. Al "Decency in Hip Hop" Sharpton throwing up the Roc sign with Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel, after the jump.

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In a year that saw a young black girl being held captive, raped, and forced to eat animal feces while being pelted with racial slurs, the guys that follow certainly don't even come close to representing the most egregious or violent racism that occurred in the last 12 months. Instead, these high profile white guys represent a new era in American race relations, which are somehow ever-evolving and completely static at the same time. The veil of political correctness has been lifted to show that racial ignorance, ugly stereotypes, and, in some cases, hate, are alive, well, sometimes subtle, and, scariest of all, thriving.

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