It could be argued that women have played a larger role in this election than any other previous presidential tally in American history. Hillary Clinton made sure of that, drawing 18 million of the votes and breaking down barriers for countless ladies across the country.

When Clinton lost the Democratic party's nomination and it became clear nominee Barack Obama would not ask her to run for him, the Republican National Committee became more determined than ever to bring a woman onto their ticket, according to an RNC source close to the selection process. This source tells Ian Halperin, an investigative reporter who previously exposed Scientology's homophobic history, that the RNC's estrogen-heavy short list included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The hawkish, familiar and capable Rice seemed like be a good pick. Although she wouldn't draw as many women as Clinton, nor as many blacks as Obama, her placement could have skewed the numbers a little.

The only problem? All those lesbian rumors about Rice and gal pal Randy Bean, with whom Rice shares home ownership and a bank account. CONTINUED »

IT'S NOT RIGHT, BUT IT'S OKAY. At Whitney Houston's weekend concert in the Tobago, her voice was flat hoarse and listless, and she kept shouting out Trinidad, according to an Ebonyjet.com reviewer, who wrote that she overheard an audience member say, "I don't think her voice is still there." Plus side: she looked fabulous. That's what Paula Abdul tells the girls who did poorly on American Idol before the judges announce how criminally pitchy they were.

ABC News' John Quinones and his crack team of liars is back to make New Yorkers look calloused and cowardly, and to extrapolate some great truths about human instinct (but mostly just to make New Yorkers look like pussies).

For a special called What Would You Do? airing tonight on ABC, Quinones hired actors to portray public incidents of domestic violence. He then filmed the reactions of people who came across the scenes. The veteran newsman has done this a few times in the past, each time feigning shock when women by themselves walk right by raging men who are clearly unafraid of hurting women. But on tonight's episode, Quinones "[kicked] it up yet another notch" and made the fighting couples interracial. In one case, a white man berates a black woman, in another, a black man kicks his white girlfriend.

Watch above for specifics about what happened, but here's the gist: "As it turned out, race may have been a factor in terms of who intervened, and with which couple. Over two days of shooting, we noticed that women seemed less inclined to intervene when the abusive boyfriend was African-American and the victim white." Why? "African-Americans are stereotypically more aggressive than Caucasians … They [passersby] may have been more hesitant for that reason."

• Cambridge, Mass. now has the first black lesbian mayor in American history. It doesn't surprise us that this racial/LGBT first occurred in Cambridge, Mass. [QT]

• Why does it have to be the rap moguls? [PI]

• We need a serious black news show. BET news is clearly not cutting it. [WP]

• The makers of the for-blacks-only heart drug are halting marketing, laying off workers, and considering the sale of the company. Damn. [HC]

• Do British blacks still face racism? Is that even a question? [FLS]

As of about 5 hours ago, if you had mentioned Virginia Tech to me I would have scrunched up my face and made a noise. As a graduate of the University of Virginia, where there is no love lost for VT Hokies, I was never a huge fan of the school. But now that an unidentified gunman has massacred a campus in the state I grew up in, I'm not thinking about rivalries anymore. I'm wondering how one person could cause so much death and destruction and how the school will possibly recover.

CONTINUED »

Is this why we rarely saw any blacks or Latinos on Beverly Hills, 90210? [Source]
Young blacks are responsible for all societal ills in the UK, too. We're a powerful group. [Source]
Imus is off the air for good. Hallelujah? I'm not sure. [Source]
If you're a minority in LA and you live dangerously close to a hazardous waste sight, have you ever thought of the possibility that it's no accident? [Source]

So Georgia politicians don't want a portrait of Coretta Scott King to hang in the state house. What's the big deal? It's not like she was the silent partner of the greatest, most important civil rights leader our country has never known. Oh, right. She was. I guess that doesn't matter much to the Georgia legislature.

The resolution would have urged the Capitol Standards Arts Commission to hang the portrait next to a picture of her late husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the three-member House Special Rules Committee declined to move the proposal forward Wednesday.

“It’s just like calling Mrs. King a nappy-headed (N-word),” state Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam, told reporters after the hearing.

Wow, Rep. Abdul-Salaam. That's taking things a little far, isn't it? You are a representative in the state of Georgia, and, therefore, you should be used to this sort of thing. After all, some of your public schools are just now integrating their proms. [Source]

Most of what I know about Dr. Ian comes from his work as the resident health professional on VH1's Celebrity Fit Club, where he seemed more intent on ogling Top Model reject Toccara's womanly assets than helping her lose weight. I suppose he is now trying to make up for lost time with his 50 Million Pound Challenge, a weight loss campaign for African Americans that he kicked off this weekend in DC. The Washington Post interviewed the enterprising doctor and offered some disturbing stats.

"The numbers are unimaginable," said the campaign's founder and leader, Ian Smith, a prominent black physician, author and television commentator who wants the issue taken up on a national scale. "It's not just [an individual's] problem. It's a problem for all of us."

Nearly four in five black women in the United States are overweight or obese — the worst rate of any group — and nearly a quarter of black females ages 6 to 19 fit that classification. Although the percentages of black males with weight problems are not similarly disproportionate compared with the overall population, the numbers are extremely high and are growing. The already skewed prevalence of health complications within the community continues to increase, too.

I have to say, challenging African Americans to collectively lose 50 million pounds is a valiant effort to curb a problem that I feel has a lot to do with economic inequality — chicken breasts, fish, fresh veggies and fruit are more expensive than the McDonald's Dollar Menu — and is therefore pretty futile. The Website lists no end date for the challenge, which is good, because the pound ticker says we have lost only 7,060 lbs as of 4 am. Only 499,992,940 to go! [Source]

Am I slow for not realizing that all of this hooplah about blacks in baseball was related to the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's integration of pro-baseball? Silly me to expect people to care for no reason. [Source]
If you're black and smoke cigarettes, the American Legacy Foundation is coming for you. [Source]
Theater critics say Color Purple is enough, please no more black plays on Broadway. [Source]
Your FedEx packages may not be on time for a while, since the company just had to shell out $53.5 million to black and hispanic workers who say they were discriminated against. [Source]
The three best singers on American Idol, who also happen to be the three black female singers, likely won't make it to the bottom three. They'll be eating Sanjaya's dust in no time. [Source]

I've already been teetering on the edge of over-covering the Don Imus scandal, why not let it infiltrate every last corner of this blog? According to the Boston Globe, Barack Obama is in trouble with "black activists" for not strongly condemning Imus's insult to the Rutgers athletes.

Melissa Harris Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, said Obama missed an opportunity to prove himself to blacks and white liberals who would have wanted Obama take the lead in denouncing Imus.

"This was so easy, and his unwillingness to touch it tells me this is going to be his third rail, and race never goes away in politics," Harris Lacewell said. "Black people want to love Barack. They're doing everything they can to love Barack. We want to believe that Barack is better than this. But they will turn on him."

The Obama campaign declined to comment yesterday on its handling of the issue. One adviser pointed out, however, that Obama issued a public comment before the other major Democratic candidates — including Clinton and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Politics are so frustrating! If he were talking about Imus too much, people would say he was capitalizing on a bad situation, a la Al Sharpton. Basically, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, except Obama has more pressure on him than either Edwards or Clinton because it's a racial issue. At this point, I'm even tired of Don Imus, even though my blog belies that assertion. I don't require any presidential candidates to mention the man more than once. War, poverty, public health, education, and the environment are the things they should be talking about but can't because all of these activists require them to make statements about sexist, racist shock jocks. [Source]

It's dangerous to rush to judgment in any criminal case, but especially one as volatile as an alleged gang rape with racial overtones. But that's what we all did with the Duke lacrosse rape case, isn't it? Okay, let me stop dragging you all into my shit. That's what I did. Of course those rich, privileged white boys who play an aggressive, testosterone-filled sport raped that poor, black stripper, I thought. And if they didn't, well, black men have been falsely accused of raping white women for ages.

CONTINUED »

When Don Imus made his now infamous comment about the ladies on the Rutger's basketball team, he was probably trying to make the men in his audience laugh. Instead, he has incurred the wrath of women, particularly black ones, and it ain't pretty. Black American women have endured insults and indignities from men of all colors for generations. As Imus defenders have noted, hip hop culture has made it the norm for us to be referred to as bitches and hoes by our own, yet we draw the line at being called nappy by an old white man. The Chicago Tribune investigates why.

CONTINUED »

Wichita, Ka. has now elected it's first black mayor in history. Congratulations to the black mayor, who suffered through living in Wichita for the distinction. [Source]
Halle Berry tops Ebony Magazine's 2007 Power 150, because it would be unfair for Oprah to win it every year. [Source]
You'll never again want to drink coffee after you see this documentary, but you'll have to since you're addicted. [Source]
The British won't join our Southern states in apologizing for their role in slavery. They're too busy patting themselves on the back for abolishing it. [Source]
The "nappy-headed hoes" on Rutger's basketball team and their tormentor, Don Imus, plan to meet at an undisclosed location, where they'll hopefully beat crusty old ass. [Source]

It turned out not to matter that the Congressional Black Caucus decided to sponsor a presidential debate with Fox News — no one is going to attend anyway. Following John Edwards and Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama has bowed out of the Fox/CBC debate, choosing to take his oratory skills on over to the CNN debate with his opponents.

This may likely scuttle the Detroit debate – C.B.C.’s debate with Fox — since only the second tier of candidates are left. The caucus also has announced one with CNN, which these Democratic candidates have said they want to attend.

Bill Burton, spokesman for Senator Obama, said CNN seemed a more “appropriate venue.”

Phil Singer, spokesman for Senator Clinton, said: “We’re going to participate in the D.N.C.-sanctioned debates only. We’ve previously committed to participating in the South Carolina and Tavis Smiley debates.”

Spokesmen for both the Obama and Clinton campaigns said they would participate in the debates to be set by the Democratic party, beginning in July. Party officials said last week those would not include Fox.

Fox shouldn't be surprised, even though they did have the liberal influence of the CBC backing them up. For a democrat, I imagine participating in a Fox News debate would be somewhat akin to a black person joining in on a Klan rally. [Source]