Ann Coulter is either crazy or so obsessed with notoriety that she says crazy things to get press. Perhaps she's even a combination of both. Either way, I rarely pay attention to much of anything she says, but on Friday's Hannity & Colmes, which I find to be one of the most detestable programs on cable television, she speculated that Hillary Clinton would enjoy waterboarding someone (this was a compliment) and compared Barack Obama to Hitler (coming from her, I'm surprised this was not also a compliment) and his book to a "dimestore" version of Mein Kampf. At what point are networks responsible for the hateful and irresponsible drivel their invited pundits spew? Is this crossing a line or on par with what we would expect on Hannity & Colmes?

CONTINUED »

When Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, thinks that other hosts on his network, in this case, the wonderful people on Fox & Friends, are doing too much "Obama-bashing," then they are really doing too much Obama-bashing. Watch as Wallace goes on-air to take his fellow Fox Newsies to task. Their wounded, infuriated faces are priceless, especially at the end.

• A PBS series premiering tonight will focus on heatlh issues plaguing the black community. [LC]

• Dr. Dre's still trying to get his money from Death Row Records. Good luck. [CD]

• Those black people and their rioting… [MM]

• The man who let his girlfriend sit on his toilet for two years has been charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult. [CNN]

• A human right's commission just ruled that the guy who put a sign saying "This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH" on display in his cheesesteak shop was not discriminating. [MSNBC]

Bill O'Reilly: He is a stupid man whose opinions are wrong, but at least he's consistent.

Just a few months after being absolutely shocked that Harlem residents aren't howling black brutes who would boil a white man and grope his wife as soon as look at him, the outraged and outrageous Irishman last night said this: "What’s the difference between the KKK and Arianna Huffington? What’s the difference?" All together now: WHAT THE FUCK!!!!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Billdo's upset that the Huffington Post, Arianna's eponymous news site, allowed some rogue commenters to say reprehensible things about the recently injured former first lady Nancy Reagan. That's right: He's comparing some boorish nerds flaming people on the Internet to a secret society that for decades dedicated itself to murder, torture and disenfranchisement. What a guy!

No, you'll never hear Bill O'Reilly call anyone a nigger, but how many tacit indications of his racism does Fox need before it shuts him down? As we know, where there's smoke there's fire. And sometimes where there's fire there's crosses! Which, of course, raises the question: What's the difference between the KKK and Bill O'Reilly?

• Are blacks fleeing from Los Angeles? [Economist]

• Colleges are going to have to start buying up metal detectors. Or find a way to screen students for homicidal tendencies. [WSJ]

• Newsflash: Fox News is ridiculous. Still, Sean Hannity drives me crazy. [NH]

• Don't go to the Soul Food Museum hungry. [IHT]

• An Obama word encyclopedia? This is unfair to Clinton and McCain! [Slate]

Pat Buchanan had a lovefest with Sean Hannity on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes Monday as they discussed Buchanan's new anti-immigration book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, And Greed Are Tearing America Apart , which is basically a white supremacy manifesto. Care for a couple of excerpts? Check them out after the jump!

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Anyone tired of the racism news cycle? You know the one — it happened with Michael Richards, Don Imus, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and even with the Jena Six. The initial outrage! The talking heads discuss it on cable news and play it for entertainment value! The perpetrators meet with Al Sharpton and/or Jesse Jackson! The story fades! Certain white people feel it's okay to say they didn't think it was a big deal to begin with and that black people say/do that stuff all the time and hip hop sucks and why is there a double standard in this country!?! And so on, and so on…

The Washington Post examined this trend in a recent story. Why do we treat these incidents as singular events instead of examining the larger problem of racism in this country? Why are we willing to complete this cycle over and over again instead of solving the problem? The answer they find is simple. If you examine Michael Richards and Don Imus as just cogs in the greater racism wheel, you're admitting something that many white people don't want to admit or honestly don't believe — that racism still lives in this country, and not just when a tired, has-been comedian says "nigger" at a comedy club.

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Quote of the Week

Fox News genius John Gibson on how he knew the shooter at a Cleveland High School wasn't a hip hopper (his code word for black):

"Hip-hoppers do not kill themselves. They walk away. Now, I didn't need to hear the kid was white with blond hair. Once he'd shot himself in the head, no hip-hopper." Gibson later stated, "I know the shooter was white. I knew it as soon as he shot himself. Hip-hoppers don't do that. They shoot and move on to shoot again."

…Gibson continued: "So when I heard the kid shot himself, I said, well, you know, ordinarily I would expect it to maybe be a rapper, thug, gangster on campus with his nine — 'I shining my nine, you know how I do.' But, you know, it turns out it was a kid who would shoot himself — well, story over, not a black kid."

If you read the transcript, you'll note how Gibson repeatedly tries to blame it on hip hop despite the fact that the kid was a Marilyn Manson fan.

Here's the problem: if black people didn't appear on Fox News, people like Sean Hannity would be able to run wild with their racist or uninformed accusations. But when black people do appear on the network, this often happens anyway. Yesterday, New York City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy appeared on Hannity & Colmes to discuss the council's resolution to ban the words bitch and ho.

Besides the fact that I think Al Sharpon-esque resolutions such as this are not the best use of time and energy from the governing body of a major city (read: pointless), Mealy should have been allowed to discuss what she was invited on the show to discuss. Instead, she found herself being forced to either defend or denounce a fellow council member who made a comment about slapping white people.

The resolution was not about race — until Fox got a hold of it, that is.

[NH]

Sorry Fox, it's obviously not just you. Last week I chastised your network for airing a video of Congressman John Conyers during a story about Congressman William Jefferson. ABC's World News did almost the same thing last night when they showed footage of disgraced (but still kicking as a city councilman) ex-DC mayor Marion "Bitch Set Me Up" Barry instead of Roy L. Pearson, the man suing his dry cleaner for millions for losing his pants.

I say it's almost the same thing because John Conyers was innocent, and his likeness was being associated with scandal-plagued Jefferson. In ABC's case, they probably already had the Barry footage queued to report on the politician's DUI acquittal yesterday. Also, both Barry and Pearson are bald, DC-natives, and completely imbalanced. It happens.

[Jossip]

Everybody makes mistakes. In Fox News' case, you've got to wonder how many mistakes are actually accidental. The genuises over there displayed a video of Congressman John Conyers, D-MI, during a story about disgraced Congressman William Jefferson. No, they don't have similar names. They don't look alike. They aren't from the same geographical region. But they're both black, congressmen, and Democrats, so I guess that's all that matters to Fox. They issued an apology following the mishap, but failed to mention Conyers' name at all. Shockingly, he is not happy about the error, and had this to say:

Fox News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced. This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network’s complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology.

Oh, Al Sharpton. I mean, Jesse Jackson. Or is it Charles Rangel? Whatever your name is, lighten up.

[TP]