Behold, an article of great importance in Saturday's Chicago Sun-Times:

What really thrills me, what really feels liberating in a very personal way, is the official new prominence of Michelle Obama. The president-elect's better half not only has stature but is statuesque. She has coruscating intelligence, beauty, style and — drumroll, please — a butt. (Yes, you read that right: I'm going to talk about the first lady's butt.)
…
… As I gradually relaxed, as Michelle strode onto more stages and people started focusing on her clothes and presence instead of her patriotism, it dawned on me — good God, she has a butt! "OMG, her butt is humongous!" went a typical comment on one African-American online forum, and while it isn't humongous, per se, it is a solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay.

Congratulations, black women, even if you become the First Lady, people won't stop talking about your big ass.

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

It seems that liberals always think that the media is biased against liberals and conservatives always think the opposite. Recently, McCain has grumbled about media bias even though a recent study shows that the press treats him more favorably than Barack Obama. In your opinion, which way does the media generally lean?

R.I.P. Thomas A. Johnson, a pioneer in the field of journalism, died Monday in Queens at the age of 79. Johnson was the first black reporter to work at Newsday, and he went on to be the first black reporter at the New York Times. As a reporter during the 1960 in an all-white newsroom, he was called upon to both report the news and offer a perspective that no one else in the newsroom had. He won several awards for covering black servicemen in Vietnam and Europe, and is also one of the founders of Black Enterprise. [NYT]

At left is Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who, in 1994, alleged that a black man carjacked her and kidnapped her two sons. After a nine-day manhunt that did little more than augment racial tensions in Smith's community, the 23-year-old confessed to driving her car into a lake near her home, drowning her children inside.

Smith's story immediately came to mind when I read the article "Omitting Race: Politically correct or good crime reporting?" on the Society of Professional Journalists Web site. The title says it all: Some people consider it dangerous for newspapers to avoid racial identifiers when reporting on crime stories. Their argument being, why wouldn't you be as descriptive as possible when discussing loose criminals? Isn't it the most responsible thing for a paper concerned with community safety to do?

Sally Lehrman, the author of the article, says no.

Even if all we care about is catching the criminal, identifying race in a news report could easily do more harm than help. In one well-known case in Oneonta, N.Y., an elderly white woman whose home was burglarized remembered little except that the intruder was a young black man with a cut on his hand. Police collected the names of black male students at the local state university and stopped 200 young African Americans in all, checking for cuts. In the end, they never arresting anyone. When police and the community are blinded by ideas about what a particular race looks like, whole groups suffer from suspicion and the actual culprit can escape.

What do you think?

NYT REPORTER RELEASED FROM ZIMBABWE JAIL ON $7 BAIL Pulitzer-Prize winner Barry Bearak was released, on bail, by Zimbabwean authorities after being detained for penning a critical (factual?) article on Robert Mugabe. Bearak originally requested to keep his byline off the piece, for fear of retribution, but later allowed it to be included. “Under the terms of his bail, Mr. Bearak was released to a clinic; he suffered some injuries to his back as the result of a fall from the concrete bunk in his dark, crowded cell to the floor, seven feet below.."

Barry Bearak, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who had been covering Zimbabwe's recent controversial elections, was arrested today in the capital city of Harare. Officially, the Zimbabwean authorities are charging Bearak with "practicing without accreditation," but everyone knows his real crime is trying to let the world know how insanely steely and totalitarian President Robert Mugabe's administration is. Judging by this, pretty steely!

Related: Mugabe continues to refuse to step down, despite many claims that he lost at the polls. He is demanding a runoff election.

Attendees of the most recent annual Gridiron Club press dinner got quite a surprise when President Bush donned a cowboy hat and a shit-eating grin before breaking into harmony with some other assholes. Literally a swan song, Dubya's tune cracked wise about "Brownie," the man who contributed greatly to the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of poor people, and about how it's wonderful that the prosecutors are finally off Scooter Libby's lying ass. Basically he crooned that he and his friends are total fuck-ups who have ruined the world. Funny, right?

If the song alone doesn't fill you with rage, note that the POTUS performed this ditty in front of many of the most powerful people in journalism today; people whose job it is to inform you when our President is giggling about horrible tragedies behind our backs.

At the end of the performance, Bush received a standing ovation.

Weathered journalist Saul Friedman recently dipped his quill into his ink pot, steadied his hand and scratched out this argument: "If race is not an issue in this presidential contest (and I believe it is and will be), then how come virtually every mainstream black columnist has been effusively and unabashedly supporting Sen. Barack Obama, and highly critical of and even caustic towards Sen. Hillary Clinton?"

The rest of Friedman's essay, "Mainstream Black Columnists and Barack Obama," reads how a squinting man with his arms extended outward and his palms turned upward looks. In summation: "What gives?"

"I would expect all these writers to rightly denounce making race an issue," Friedman says at one point, before rattling off a lengthy list of prominent black newspaper columnists who have announced their support of Obama. "But I wonder if their near unanimity has made an issue of race. "Liberal white columnists have not been single-minded," he then posits.

Scathing! Or is it? Newsday's Sheryl McCarthy says no: "I see nothing wrong with that…For about 140 years blacks have been voting for…white candidates…And now there is finally a viable black candidate who happens to be a very strong candidate. Why on earth wouldn’t they support him?"

So, because Obama's the first to do it then why not? Sorry, but if that's the best black columnists can do, we've got to go with Friedman on this one.

• Sean Combs just got his version of 50's Vitamin water deal. [IHT]

• An Iowa high school principal pulled copies of a student newspaper that featured a student poll showing that 13 percent of the school was racist. How could the principal deprive the black kids of that valuable information? [E&P]

• Poor blacks in DC are getting more destitute as the rich get a lot rich. And the world keeps spinning on its axis. [Reuters]

• James Watson canceled a planned appearance next month in Louisville, KY, and I'm mad they hadn't already revoked their invitation. [AP]

• Who cares if I'm the millionth person to say it, this still bears repeating. Britney Spears is completely insane. [MG]

• Calling all citizen journalists, here's your chance to cover the election. [MTV]

• The judge allows approves public viewing of the child pornography tape at the center of R. Kelly's, uh, child pornography charges. The whole thing sounds like a bribe to get the woman in the tape to take the stand. [SP]

• A "mystical" black man. Skittles. Comedy. What's not to love? [QT]

• Diddy's annual white party just lost a bit of it's fire(works.) [E!]

A prominent black Northern California newspaper editor was killed Thursday* in broad daylight, and, as of now, no one really knows why. But looking at his track record, it's not a stretch to assume that the investigative journalist might have angered the wrong person.

Chauncey Bailey was the editor of the Oakland Post, a 49,500 circulation African American newspaper, and was known for asking tough, hard-hitting questions of local government officials.

"He was very controversial," said Derrick Nesbitt, who worked with Bailey on a cable access channel called "Soul Beat" from 1997 to 2004. "He was tenacious and would not let people off the hook, whether he was reporting on corruption in city government, the entertainment business or among rappers. He ruffled a lot of feathers because of it."

Most of his spats were intellectual, Nesbitt said.

He said he asked Bailey several years ago if he had ever feared for his safety because of his probing into corruption or gang violence. Bailey said he had received threats but had shrugged them off.

Bailey was shot twice, once in the back and once in the head, by a masked gunman on a street in Downtown Oakland. There's no proof that the attack was racially motivated, but like the Jena Six controversy, it all feels like something that would have happened in another time.

[SFGate]

*Thanks Blackmistressdiva!