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.