At least one person on Spain's basketball team has learned that it's not exactly appropriate to mock the facial features of an entire race of people for laughs, even if he isn't exactly apologizing for it. Team Spain player (and LA Laker) Pau Gasol said, "Some of us didn't feel comfortable doing it. To me it was little clownish for our part to be doing that. The sponsor insisted and insisted. They pushed because they're the people that pay the money. It was just a bad idea to do that. It was never intended to be offensive or racist against anybody." The team's coach refuses to apologize, saying that it was just a joke. Nevertheless, the International Olympic Committee thinks that the matter has been resolved — just like the issue of those allegedly underage Chinese gymnasts. [People]

I'm was so proud that the athletes of the world were somehow able to avoid the temptation to take pictures of themselves pulling the corners of their eyes to mock their Olympic hosts. Then the Spanish men's basketball team had to go and ruin everything. [AAM]

• Georgia blacks are like the new South Carolina blacks! [WTVM]

• Poor women! How can they possibly choose between a racial first and a gender first? Can political reporters possibly choose a better election story? [ABC]

• Spain's ugly history of racism in sports. [Telegraph]

• Tom Joyner and the NAACP launch a voter empowerment hotline. [ADW]

• Happy Super Tuesday, y'all!

It doesn't matter if you have absolutely no idea what the lyrics in the above clip mean (I took French in school, unfortunately), but the message in this commercial for Spain's Iberia airline is clear even if your sound is on mute. Don't get it? Basically, if you are a white European infant, you can fly Iberia to Cuba, where big-lipped, big-bootied black women will massage you and do suggestive dances. Ole!

Iberia's website ran the video as part of a contest offering free trips to celebrate the site's 10th anniversary.

The clip was taken down last week after less than 10 days on the page, following a complaint by the Federation of Consumers in Action, although it has resurfaced on YouTube.

Ileana Fuentes, executive director of the Miami-based Cuban Feminist Network, said the cartoon played to the idea that Cuba was the place to go for Spanish men to have easy sex with poor, black women.

"Obviously, it is an ad aimed at the male population. It is a male, white baby being told … 'yeah, you can go to this island and these nice sexy, sexual black women will pamper you to death. They will do anything for you.' That is a sexual tourism ad of the subtle kind," Ms Fuentes said from Miami.

She called the ad sexist, racist and colonialist, saying it used "the black female Cuban body as bait for increased air fare sales. That is what it is".

Why this Cuban Feminist Network would want to deprive a little baby of favors from highly sexualized, racial stereotypes on an island vacay is, frankly, beyond me. But since we're talking about it, I wonder how many horny Spanish men pulled out their credit cards the second they saw the poorly animated, bulbous lips of Iberia's version of the Cuban woman.

[ANN]