Here's your mainstream urban media, folks. Doing its part to increase awareness of the stability of the black family. Yay!

The Times has their panties all in a bunch over raunchy men's mags that you can find at newsstands *gasp* not twenty feet away from Court Street's municipal building in Brooklyn. The fwap-mags "specialize in the scantily clad bodies of women of color: King, Smooth, Sweets, AsIs."

CONTINUED »

Whoops, LA Times. If you wanted to dig deep and ask the heavy questions about a candidate's experience, why did you wait until after the election to do it? If Barack Obama only had 3,723 billable hours as a junior associate at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard over a four year period, that is a reasonable fact that you can bring up in an article, and ask where his so-called experience comes from. But like, it would have been a good idea to do this before he was elected president.

CONTINUED »

There are live on-air gaffes that news anchors wish they could erase, like the common Obama/Osama mix-up.

But when Jesse Jackson whispered that he wanted to “cut [Obama’s] nuts off” before a Fox & Friends interview on Sunday was set to begin, it was a reminder that public figures often have a hard time keeping their private conversations to themselves when they’ve got a hot mic pack clipped to their hip.

It should be a simple life lesson: When you have a media outlet’s microphone attached to you , by default you should expect other people are listening to your conversation, and very likely recording it. Herewith, some famous examples of people who should know better, but obviously didn’t.

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• All of the many women currently in romantic relationships with Diddy should be ashamed of themselves. [NB]

• Kim Kardashian and her siblings continue to deny stealing $120,000 from Brandy and Ray J's mom. [People]

• How can we interpret the U.S. media's lack of hesitation in showing the dead bodies of non-Americans (or Katrina victims)? [Racialious]

• if I liked Hillary Clinton even a fraction of the amount that I used to, I would feel sort of bad about the way all of this has gone down for her. [JJP]

• Al Reynolds criticizes the media and says he married Star Jones for love. [SR]

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.

One thing Obama supporters hope their candidate can do is restore the world's faith in America, which has, to much of the globe, come to mean little more than McDonald's and violence. Can he do it? From time to time, we'll take a look.

It's a question most of us ask ourselves when his face pops up in our newspapers or on our television screens, when we hear his voice coming through our radios, when we hear his name in print. How the hell did Al Motherfuckin' Sharpton become the voice of all black people? A fabulous opinion piece in the Washington Post* examines just that question, asserting that, in the past, most leaders — Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, and even Jesse Jackson — were required to actually lead, in some way, before they got the black leader crown. But not Rev. Al.

CONTINUED »

• I guess Rocawear Arena doesn't sound any worse than the Verizon Center or FedEx Field. Okay, yeah it does. [AHH]

• The cynicism starts young these days. [BS]

• Who's afraid of the big, black voter? [CNN]

• Museum patrons dying to catch a glimpse of the new Smithsonian museum dedicated to black history before it opens can now do so online. [FOX]

Barack Obama gets mentioned in the conventional media nearly as much as Hillary Clinton, and, I'm just guessing here, a hell of a lot more than Dennis Kucinich.

Hillary Clinton was mentioned in 41 percent of all media articles covering presidential candidates in August, the same share of coverage Clinton generated since May, 2007. Barack Obama's coverage increased to 40 percent of media articles in August compared to 34 percent since May, an increase of 17.8% over his average.

While there has been some negative coverage on his foreign policy position, according to Biz360's Point-of-View Sentiment™ tone analysis, the majority of Obama's recent increase in coverage has been positive or neutral.

That one percentage point is all well and good, until you realize that in actual polls of voter, B.O.'s trailing Hill by about 19 points.

All three of the top Dem candidates — Barack, Hillary, and John — are mentioned far less in blogs, with Obama mentioned in 28 percent of online presidential discussions to Clinton's 31 percent. Here at Stereohyped, I'm just trying to even out the score, one Obamarama* at a time.

[PR]

*Although it probably doesn't count when I mention either Hillary Clinton or John Edwards in nearly every post.