Goddamn, The South! Y'know, we really do try to cut you some slack – seriously, we do – but you just make detesting you so easy sometimes.

During a July 30 interview on talking face Glenn Beck's radio broadcast, Toby Keith, Oklahoman and the musical genius behind the hit pro-lynching anthem "Beer for My Horses," told Beck that he thinks Barack Obama is highly successful with black Americans because "he don't talk, act or carry himself like a black person."

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Anyone who has read a gossip blog or picked up a music magazine or flipped through a tabloid in 2007 knows that Amy Winehouse is super talented, hopelessly addicted to drugs, vehemently opposed to rehab, and frequently looks like she's teetering on the edge of death. In other words, she's a complete mess, a train wreck most of us have a hard time looking away from, and, according to Salon, seems to be simulating a "familiar black stereotype." Say what?

[As] Shel Silverstein once asked of an aspiring bluesman, "What do you do if you're young and white and Jewish … and the only levee you know is the Levy who lives on the block?"

Winehouse answers that question by digging deep for scraps of authenticity. In addition to foregrounding her knowledge of R&B history in her lyrics, she mines her personal experiences for material, naming names, keeping those names in the news, and in the process, all but eliminates the barrier between biography and artistic expression, tabloid and Billboard. Only a complete novice could wonder what her songs mean, to which events they refer, or about whom they are written. Meanwhile, she acts out and "keeps it real" by defending her drug and alcohol addictions, and by standing by her jailed ne'er-do-well husband. The whole package smells like a bizarre simulation of a familiar black stereotype.

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Cracked compiled a list of the nine most racist Disney characters. High up, as you can imagine, was the little slave-girl centaur in Fantasia who so dutifully polished the blond centaur's feet. And don't get me started on Uncle Remus and Song of the South. But it should come as no surprise that many of the comments on the post are worse than even the most egregious of Disney's stereotypical characters. At least we can blame the Disney animators' ignorance on the era.

• Columnists at the venerable New York Times are fighting over whether Ronald Reagan was a racist or at least appealed to racists in order to win elections. Uh, he was a Republican president, so we all know the latter is true. [E&P]

• Google tells the Anti-Defamation League it can't/won't censor anti-semitic or racist search engine results. And why should they? [Ynet]

• All Hip Hop lists the top 10 rappers-turned-actors. What, no Beanie Sigel? [AHH]

• If only all educators understood that black students can't handle themselves in class because their church traditions are so raucous, it would be a much happier place. [BC]

If, by the time you in state office, you're still unable to figure out that it's not ever appropriate to call a black person "Buckwheat*," particularly the mother of your local NAACP president, then maybe you should start to rethink your career in politics. Oh, and getting pulled over for driving drunk doesn't help much either.

A state representative in a runoff election infuriated civil rights leaders after she ended a conversation with the mother of the NAACP's local president by saying, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat."

State Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, of Morgan City, acknowledged she made the remark during a Thursday night telephone conversation with Hazel Boykin to thank her for driving voters to the polls.

Buckwheat, a black child character in the "Little Rascals" comedies of the 1930s and '40s, is viewed as a racial stereotype demeaning to black people.

Hazel Boykin's son, Jerome, is the NAACP's president in Terrebonne Parish. She is well-known as a 1960s civil rights activist, helping to desegregate restaurants and the parish school system.

Dartez, who said she's not dropping out of the race, apologized and reminded voters that she voted in conjunction with the black caucus 93 percent of the time. This, of course, means she's well within her right to call well-respected, elderly black women "Buckwheat" whenever she damn well pleases.

*Thanks, BMD!

Famous-over-there BBC radio host Sarah Kennedy is in trouble in the U.K., and all because she was concerned about the safety of black people when they cross the street at night. Some people are so touchy.

"That's not just children," she said. "You know what happened to me yesterday. It was this black guy. It's lucky he opened his mouth to yawn or do something and I saw him. He was wearing a black hat, black clothes and he was just invisible…"

In 2000, the BBC was forced to apologise when, during a discussion about genetics, she suggested that black people made good runners because they were used to being chased by lions.

[DM]

Before you overly sensitive blacks get all up in arms, understand that this (white) Houston school system police officer who created and distributed a booklet called the Ghetto Handbook (subtitled "Wucha dun did now?") on the job has a black wife. And three half-black children! If you still don't get it, this means that he didn't do anything wrong.

[MSNBC]

Look, I'm not going to pretend I don't get a lot of stories and videos from TMZ, so I am saying the following with a small dose of hypocrisy.

TMZ sucks.

Exhibit A: this post about Eve.

The posts are usually written properly, but, suddenly, since they're discussing a black person, the writers revert to "black speak" and describe a paparazzi shot of the rapper at a hair salon as a photo of Eve "caught getting her hair did on Tuesday. Oh no they di'int!"

When you lack creativity, racial stereotypes are always a great writing tool to fall back on.

Why read books when there are conservative commentators to teach you everything you needed to know about race? For instance, much to the shock and awe of Dan Abrams and the rest of his guests on MSNBC last week, conservative radio host John DePetro said that the only reason white people go to Harlem is for drugs or prostitutes. He later added that Harlem is predominately black. So, duh! Of course white people would just go there for hookers and smack.

Disregarding the fact that this idiot has absolutely no idea that quite a few white people live in Harlem these days, and that, even if they didn't, Harlem would have more to offer than just drugs and prostitutes, this guy is a staunch Bill O'Reilly supporter. Obviously ol' Bill's heartwarming lesson on racial stereotypes didn't reach Mr. DePetro.

[MM]

Jermaine Dupri gamely does his part to perpetuate stereotypes in this new Dunkin' Donuts commercial. Keep up the good work!

[RMC]

Dear Bill O'Reilly,

I wondered about this letter. I might have said all I needed to say to you in previous posts. And even that might have been too much. There's really no reasoning with an egotistical maniac liar who has made a career out of being a bully.

As I said yesterday in in a post about Diddy (not a gangster rapper, incidentally, but I'm sure you would call him that if given the opportunity), that most people don't get to a high level of success by being nice. In your case, you got to where you are by not really telling the truth and building a reputation as a belligerent curmudgeon who is hateful to anyone that dares disagree with you.

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Bill O'Reilly's mad as hell (but really, what's new?), feels unfairly targeted (but really, what's new?), and says his recent comments were taken out of context (you get the picture). What Media Matters, and later CNN, did, according to O'Reilly, was twist his well-meaning lesson on racial stereotypes into something ignorant and racially charged.

CONTINUED »

Not only is ABC's planned sitcom version of the popular Geico caveman commercials a bad idea in general, it is also shaping up to be very questionable, racially speaking. Very.

ABC has already had to reshoot the pilot after receiving intense heat from television critics. Apparently, the cavemen are experts on the dancefloor, in the bedroom, and on the basketball court and football field. Hmmmm, are Cro-Magnuns honorary black men? Sounds incredibly offensive to me.

Wednesday's panel discussion here was the first time "Cavemen" producers have discussed the show in public, and they said people are reading too much into what they called a "fish out of water" story.

"Unfortunately, in our society, if you pick an offensive stereotype of any kind, it's going to bump into some ethnic group," said Mike Schiff, one of the executive producers. "Is the show about race relations? No. Is that a background to the show? Yes, of course."

Lawson, who wrote the original Geico commercials as well as the pilot, said that if the Cro-Magnons are an allegorical stand-in for anybody, it's not black people but outsiders.

Can I get a Hot Ghetto Mess-inspired boycott, here? Actually, I'm not sure we have that much to worry about — it can't air more than a few times before ABC pulls it and tries to pretend like it never existed.

[PDN via Racialicious]

Naomi Campbell kills it on the Paris runway, thanks to John Galliano. [WI]

Don Imus, you couldn't have waited at least a year? [GH]

I wonder how Indian 7-Eleven employees feel when confronted by Apu from The Simpson's every time they go to work. [RCLCS]

Black writers have a harder time developing lasting careers. Reason No. 1 is simple. [BV]

James Earl Jones was chosen read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence aloud in Philly to commemorate Independence Day. And our slave-owning forefathers are rolling in their graves. [SP]

If nothing else, some rich whites welcome Hispanics into our country to provide a necessary alternative to black lawnmowers and maids. So said John Derbyshire of the National Review, possibly the most ignorant man to ever write a magazine column, during a wild tangent in a piece that was supposed to be about the immigration debate.

In some offline conversations I’ve been having, and on some websites I’ll leave you to search out by yourself, the opinion has been expressed that some portion of America’s white elites welcome Hispanic immigration as a way of sticking it to American blacks. That portion, it is suggested, would prefer to have its lawns mowed by small, polite, brown people, rather than large, surly black ones, even if the price is the same in both cases.

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