THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT A Denver man was arrested after he went to the video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her, and knocked over video displays. The beef? I would love to tell you they were arguing over which college their four year old would attend, but the dispute was really over which gang the young child would eventually join. The man, who is Hispanic, wanted their kid to be a Westside Baller, and the black girlfriend thought, naturally, that their kid should be a Crip. "They have different ideas on how the baby should be raised," said Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval. "Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would 'claim.'" Are you going to call social services, Sgt. Sandoval, or should I? [EUR]

Margaret Seltzer thought she could write a memoir claiming that her name was Margaret B. Jones, she was half-white and half-Native American, she was raised by a black foster mother, and she spent her youth in South Central LA running drugs for the Bloods. She thought she could do this and get away with it. She was wrong!

Seltzer was really raised in Sherman Oaks, Calif., by her biological family. Her older sister outed her after Seltzer (as Jones) appeared in a New York Times article to promote her critically acclaimed memoir, Love & Consequences.

“Love and Consequences” immediately hit a note with many reviewers. Writing in The Times, Michiko Kakutani praised the “humane and deeply affecting memoir,” but noted that some of the scenes “can feel self-consciously novelistic at times.” In Entertainment Weekly, Vanessa Juarez wrote that “readers may wonder if Jones embellishes the dialogue” but went on to extol the “powerful story of resilience and unconditional love.”

In the vividly told book, Ms. Seltzer wrote about her African-American foster brothers, Terrell and Taye, who joined the Bloods gang when they were 11 and 13. She chronicled her experiences making drug deliveries for gang leaders at age 13 and how she was given her first gun as a birthday present when she was 14. Ms. Seltzer told The Times last week, “One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot.”

Seltzer's editors said they were shocked to find out that the story was a lie. For her part, Seltzer claims that she wrote the book after being moved by stories she heard through her work to combat gang violence in LA. Her publisher has cancelled her book tour and recalled all copies of the book. Well, there you go. Shamelessly stealing the stories of poor black people for your own financial gain probably makes for some bad karma. She better just thank her lucky stars Oprah Winfrey didn't make this part of her book club. This chick would have hell to pay. [NYT]

UPDATE: Read the original story about the "gang member" here. Please.

An investigation in Los Angeles has found that the Hispanic gang Florencia 13 hunted black gang members, often shooting black passersby if they couldn't find any with gang affiliations. Florencia 13 is one of a number of Hispanic gangs that have been fingered by cops in LA, where there is a race war going on among gangs (the violence goes both ways), for specifically targeting blacks.

There were even instances in which Florencia 13 leaders ordered killings of black gangsters and then, when the intended victim couldn't be located, said "Well, shoot any black you see," Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said.

"In certain cases some murders were just purely motivated on killing a black person," Baca said.

Authorities say there were 20 murders among more than 80 shootings documented during the gang's rampage in the hardscrabble Florence-Firestone neighborhood, exceptional even in an area where gang violence has been commonplace for decades. They don't specify the time frame or how many of the killings were racial.

As far as gang killings go, racial ones are still very much the exception, even in LA. Hispanics and blacks are far more likely to kill their own. Oh, that's a relief!

• Sixty Latino gang members, who authorities say targeted African American rivals, were arrested on federal racketeering and drug charges yesterday. The photo running with the story looks shockingly similar to something we've seen before. [LAT]

• What do you know? White people wear me out sometimes, too! [TD]

• Eminem is getting old. That's all. [DN]

• Louis Farrakhan gives a speech in Atlanta, and he might have made some good points if he had any credibility at all. [AJC]

• Whether it's right or wrong — and it's pretty much dead wrong, in my opinion — there's no way in hell Washington football fanatics are going to let go of the name, "Redskins." [BSN]

Oh, the lengths companies are willing to go to turn a bigger profit. Activists in NYC are infuriated by three new styles of New Era Yankees caps tailored to the Bloods, Crips, and Latin Kings.

Outraged local activists charge that New Era, the caps' manufacturer, and the New York Yankees — whose famous interlocking NY cap features a choice of a red and black bandanna design for the Bloods, blue and gray for the Crips and a gold crown for the Latin Kings — and Major League Baseball are deliberately marketing to gang members and wannabes.

Somewhere at New Era, an executive is about to be the victim of a corporate drive-by.

[FOX]

John Amos should have no problem recruiting a group of young, black men to participate in a "terribly exciting" documentary project he's working on. He wants to shackle some Bloods and Crips inside the slave ship Amistad and sail the Middle Passage. And film it!

Actually, it may be a tougher sell than I originally thought.

"Amistad America is launching its vessel this month (June 21) to sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia to England in conjunction with Great Britain's 200-year commemoration of the abolition of slavery," Amos tells the columnists. "Once it reaches England, Captain Pinkney — the first African-American to solo circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat — will take command and sail the boat to slave ports on the West Coast of Africa, Barbados and various other ports.

"Can you imagine the impact it would have on, say, four young men from conflicting gangs, like two Bloods and two Crips, who have been involved in a negative lifestyle, to take them on the Amistad to let them realize the history they're involved with and the historical opportunity that's been given to them? Let them get exposed to what their ancestors went through so they can have a better appreciation and realize the obligation they have to try and live a good life and fulfill their potential as human beings. Amistad America is totally receptive to it, and I've already spoken to a couple of other organizations. It's a terribly exciting project."

I don't care how many crimes a guy has committed, I don't think I wish the Middle Passage on anyone. But if it gets of the ground, Amos can promote it as Scared Straight, 17th century-style.

[EUR]