Mardsen's argument: Europeans should be better represented in the symbolism on display at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, because right now, the logo's some kind of Indian stone carving, and what'd those lazy bastards do but carve stone and get drunk on Scope while we, you know, built complete civilizations? Psh.

No, really. Other than the implied Scope thing, that's essentially what she wrote:

It's no coincidence that the best countries in the world are either European or founded by Europeans. Everywhere they go, European immigrants make things better – until they're asked to leave, at which point everything usually descends back into chaos. Not that they ever get any thanks for it.

She then defended herself after being called a racist, noting that she just wanted to have her cultural identity recognized on the logo! No harm, no foul! Also never recognized: the C-Grade Canadian versions of already mediocre inflammatory-for-the-sake-of personalities. We need to laud their efforts more often for contributing to the ability to put things in perspective. Like mediocre ethnocentrism. At least Michelle Malkin's funny-insane. You're just C-Grade Canadian boring.

Blue Heron Farm, which is located somewhere in the Chillmark section of Martha's Vineyard. White House staffers apparently vetted twenty different places on the island before settling on the estate. What's it got going for it?

The four dwellings on the estate are dominated by a white Victorian farmhouse, and the property overlooking a finger of the Tisbury Great Pond includes an apple orchard, flower and vegetable gardens, stone walls, a swimming pool, a golf practice tee and a small basketball court.

Not bad. Also, they can bring the mutt. Places like it go for $20,000 a week in the area, but the White House isn't disclosing how much Blue Heron's gonna go for, though they do note that the First Family's gonna be picking up the tab. Now: why Martha's Vineyard? Easy: Chelsea Clinton's wedding, which has been denied time and time again by Clinton staffers and people who didn't get invited.

Interestingly enough, the New York Times is running a travel guide on the Vineyard on Sunday. The lede:

The Democrats are back in power, which means Martha's Vineyard is on the political radar again. The Kennedys have been coming since there were actual vineyards, Chelsea Clinton is reportedly tying the knot on the island and - oh, didn't you hear? - the Obamas are on their way. But part of the Vineyard's appeal is how easily it shrugs off snobbery, unlike other fancy playgrounds. (We're looking at you, East Hampton.)

Woah woah WOAH holy shit! Not good! Didn't they get the memo from the Sunday Styles? The voice of the people is the voice of bullshit. Who gave these guys the key to the car? Not good. BOUGIE FAIL. Can they redeem themselves in the eyes of the Styles Gods?

It's a picture-perfect beach shack - without the beach. Housed in a tiny, weathered shingle house on a small side street in Menemsha, the Bite (29 Basin Road; 508-645-9239; www.thebitemenemsha.com) has been serving what many regard as the island's best fried clams, oysters, squid, shrimp and scallops for more than 20 years. There are only two picnic tables, so bring a couple of icy beers, get a small order of clams ($12.95) and take the paper bag of crispy deliciousness to the dock and watch the fishermen. Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan and Henry Louis Gates are all regulars, and if the road is blocked off when you go, get your camera ready - word is that the first family is going to pay a visit.Open May through October.

Dangerous territory with Styles peeps: any restaurant where you can eat for under $50 is a shonda. But the subtle implication that ANGRY EDUCATED BLACK DUDES (AND THEIR FRIEND BILL CLINTON) LIKE FRIED FOOD should be good enough to suffice the Weekly Print Deities of Liberal White Bougie Privilege...for now.

Obamas Not Roughing It [NY Daily News]
36 Hours in Martha's Vineyard [New York Times]

Apparently so. Lopez Twittered the revelation last night, noting that: "Nice guy.Very shy and quiet. Loves moose hunting. Told me he's a half Mexican! Whoa." Woah, indeed. We're not going to imply that Sarah Palin's family - who reportedly gave daughter Bristol a car to breakup with Levi - are racists or anything, but, uh, wonder if they knew this, right?

Latino blog Guanabee tried to do some deductive research on the matter: his mother's name is Sherry, so they doubt that she's the Mexican half, and according to them, his father hasn't made any appearances since Levi started hitting the press circuit. It's a little hard to believe that this hasn't come out or been a headline until now, because the fact that Levi's mom raised her kids single is a pretty significant point in the whole Palin-Johnston child-rearing saga: a vice-preisidental candidate, and (incredibly) possible future presidential candidate - who ran a platform of traditional family values - gets her daughter to dump the father of her baby (and raise the kid "single") for a car.

Palin's conservative and right-leaning on family welfare issues, and some of the most in-need citizens in this country facing a welfare crisis are single parents. And Johnston, the teenage father of Palin's out-of-wedlock-born granddaughter, was raised by one. I'm not sure what the exact idiom on family issues being cyclical is, but feel free to pipe in with one: this is kind of the perfect example.

Levi Johnston Is Half Mexican. SARAH PALIN'S GRANBABY IS MEXICAN. [Guanabee]

He is quite right in one narrow sense: things suck for embittered working-class white people! But, as contrary to reason as it may sound, this is not because of Hispanic women. Or even black people! It's basically because of other, richer white people.

It is fun to be reminded, sometimes, that Pat Buchanan, a charming and intelligent person who was good friends with Hunter Thompson, is a crazy bigot.

(P.S. We know Cali is white and brown.)

Citi's chairman, Richard Parsons, the ebullient former Time Warner CEO, was spotted driving up to the White House Monday afternoon. Who was he meeting with? Valerie Jarrett, a top advisor to Barack Obama. The object of their meeting? Brokering some deal to shore up the finances of Citi, run by one Vikram Pandit, with the government taking up to a 40 percent stake in the troubled bank.

How typical that Wall Street and Washington's ruling classes only cede power to people with different skin tones when the situation gets desperate. It's progress, of a sort. How typical of the white male power establishment, though, to hand over the prize only after it's gotten tarnished.

Specifically, we are a nation of cowards when it comes to "talking about race." He's apparently never seen the internet—if he had he'd know that we're a nation of retards. But in the larger, more polite public sphere, he is completely right.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, nation's first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."
[...]
"Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad," said Holder.

B-b-but Attorney General Holder, haven't you heard that some of White America's best friends are black? No, seriously, they even tell pollsters about it!

ABC News polls show there has been sharply increased social interaction between black and white Americans in the past few decades. In June, 79 percent of whites reported having a "fairly close personal friend" who's black, up from 54 percent in 1981. Ninety-two percent of blacks reported having a white friend, up from 69 percent a generation ago.

Similarly, a 2005 poll found that 48 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks said someone in their family had brought a friend of the other race home for dinner — also far higher than when the data series began in 1973.

Problem: solved!

Besides, we elected a black president, so obv we are all cool with each other. We hope you guys enjoy your little history month!

Oh, Drudge has linked to this, so the OUTRAGE can begin! First out of the gate is Jonah Goldberg, the man who called FDR a fascist in a best-selling book. He finds the speech "both hackneyed and reprehensible" because people always make people talk about race too much as it is and he's sick of it! Of course he weighed in before he actually read the speech. Afterwards he is ok with it but he reserves the right to be really outraged about it again, later.

Have at it, cowards!

The latest offense? Jodi Kantor's New York Times story on how multi-culti our new First Family is, what with being Kenyan and Indonesian and Kansan and the first lady is descended from slaves. But how is this an offense against Real American Whiteness? Well Obama invited his aunt to the party for his inauguration, and she is an illegal immigrant! Noted non-white defender of whiteness Michelle Malkin is on the case!

The right-wingers untouched by yesterday's festivities (and to be fair, plenty of them were touched—Pat Buchanan, no racial progressive, was almost glowing after Obama's speech last night) and stories about his non-presidential familial circumstances are, of course, not racist at all, ever, and they have lots of black friends, but they just don't care for all this liberal white crowing about "diversity" as if that was some sort of noteworthy and virtuous thing.

Jay Nordlinger, for example, hated that speech because it was so mean to Bush, and therefore it was insulting to every white person who voted for Bush. BUT: "Speaking quite personally, I have never been an Obama-hater. I have never been much of an Obama disliker!" (This coming on the heels of his complaining about "ethno-racial variety", a bizarre phrase.)

Everyone's dander is up already, because The Atlantic wrote a big story on The End of Whiteness, which is about how it's more worthwhile to market shit to people based on self-selected non-racial group identities than just "to whites" and "to ethnics."

Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time ... [These immigrants] are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American.

Not everyone was so enthused. Clinton’s remarks caught the attention of another anxious Buchanan—Pat Buchanan, the conservative thinker. Revisiting the president’s speech in his 2001 book, The Death of the West, Buchanan wrote: “Mr. Clinton assured us that it will be a better America when we are all minorities and realize true ‘diversity.’ Well, those students [at Portland State] are going to find out, for they will spend their golden years in a Third World America.”

Hah. Pat was right, but not for the reason he thought he would be right, at all!

As "View From the Right explained, The Atlantic just published the piece because liberals want White People to be in the minority, and not because that is actually a "foregone conclusion" based on all available data. Why is the left consumed with the end of 'White America' asks some other joker, who then plays the always-fun "what if this had been written about BLACK PEOPLE I bet I'd get in trouble!" game.

Sorry, White People! You'll just have to settle for whomever will probably be president after Obama!

1. Baby Mama.Hateful fear-mongering neo-fascist moron Michelle Malkin—who we thought had given up on Fox after her beef with Geraldo?—popped up the other day to abuse Michelle Obama. The on-screen chyron, inexplicably, referred to the candidate's wife as "Obama's Baby Mama." Because he's black, and that is a term black people use, you see. Because they have so many children out of wedlock... unlike the Obamas.... Really, it makes absolutely no fucking sense. Whatever.
Result: A producer admitted to exercising poor judgment. See, he accidentally judged black black people to be irresponsible and all-the-same. Whoops!

2. Madrassa!
So you know those racist crazy emails the relatives you don't like that much send you? Those emails ended up at Fox, and they did a whole news story on it! Fox reported that Barack Obama secretly attended a Muslim Madrassa, which is secret Islam-talk for "terrorist school for Islamo-fascist tots." In fact he went to a secular public school, but it was in Indonesia, where, as we all know, people speak funny crazy terrorist talk instead of Christian English.

Result: As seen in the clip above, CNN took Fox to task in a heartening segment correcting all the rumors. Steve Doocy, though, just acted like an ass when it came time to "apologize."

3. Assassinate Osama!
Former Washington Times editor Liz Trotta: ""And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could." Ok, Liz! You fucking nutcase.
Result: She apologized. That was about it.

4. Lynching Party USAThis one's actually a little tricky. Shouty mad-man Bill "FUCKING THING SUCKS" O'Reilly suggested to a caller that we (we?) should not organize a lynching party and go after Michelle Obama. It is actually on odd case, because Bill—who was astounded to learn recently that some black people use silverware just like grown-ups—used incredibly racially-charged language in what was actually an utterly uncharacteristic defense of Michelle Obama. But Jesus, Bill, "lynching party"? Maybe you shouldn't have done it live.
Result: The requisite apology, complete with the typical failure to take responsibility for his own goddamn words (he blames Clarence Thomas! So many high-tech lynchings, these days, what with the internet not having been taken back yet and all).

5. Terrorist fist-jab. Interchangeable blonde hostess E.D. Hill (right) opened a segment on the meaning of the "body language" behind Barack Obama's affectionate fist-bump with his wife by calling it a "terrorist fist-bump," an insane characterization comparable only to the craziest of anonymous online commenter discourse.
Result: E.D. Hill gave a disingenuous half-apology. Then, oddly, her show was canceled. This particular slur, while idiotic and disgusting, was not much worse than the rest of the ones presented here. So... sea change on the way? We've been wrong before, of course.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg (hello, Jeff!) asked Barack Obama whether "Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas." The thing is, the answer to that question is "yes," but you're not allowed to say that. Obama didn't.

No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

Naturally, this was distilled into "Barack Obama thinks Israel is a sore." Thankfully it was just GOP hack John Boehner who said it, this time, and not a Clinton surrogate. So maybe she has given up!

At HuffPo, Sam Stein ponders whether Obama even needs to pander to the Jews. It's worth noting that McCain is the kind of terrible hawk who more conservative Jewish people might support. Also they contribute lots of money!

Basically the campaign continues to give all of us reasons to look America square in the eye and feel terrible about everything.

More than half of voters in West Virginia said they would be dissatisfied if Obama won the nomination. Half said they believed he shared the views of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Half also said Obama was not honest and trustworthy, and half said he did not share their values.

If there was one running theme among West Virginia voters that we picked up on after a week of stories about them, it's that they all need Barack Obama to personally look each of them in their eyes and tell them he's not a Muslim. Of course, if he did that, they would probably get scared and call the police, so maybe the Obama campaign's strategy of pretending the state didn't exist was the wisest one.

But it was still a fun trip into America's heart of darkness, right? Reporters sent into a depressed sinkhole they forgot was a state until it suddenly became briefly almost important, thanks to a drawn-out primary season. There they discovered how many ways they could repeat the same story: old white people are misinformed! No one bothered to ask how it got so bad, obv. All attempts at setting the record straight were abandoned as unjournalistic.

Oh well. God Damn America, everyone! West Virginia, we shall never care about you again. Until 2012 maybe.

These magazines are just playing into the stereotype of black people opening their mouths all wide. And so soon after after Bill O'Reilly taught us that "there wasn't any kind of craziness" at all at a Harlem soul food spot.

Of course, an open mouth pose is not a trick to eliminate a double chin. It can only mean one thing: sex. Scary and dangerous black people sex. As Emil Wilbekin, editor of Giant, which often features black women with open mouths on its cover, says, "that raises my eyebrow as to how African-Americans are portrayed on mainstream magazine covers. You would not show Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johansson screaming."

Indeed, white actresses Charlize Theron or Scarlett Johansson would never be shot with their mouths open in a sexual way. Never, never.

Maybe these covers are chosen, subconsciously, because of their vague resemblance to classically racist imagery. And that's totally f'ed. But also totally f'ed: smart people wasting their time with Vogue.