Seriously, we cannot actually imagine watching this and cheering on the shrieking old white man. Even if we agreed that ACORN was a terrible criminal organization bent on helping all the prostitutes in the world fill out their taxes while registering illegal immigrant cartoon characters to vote, we would still be incredibly uncomfortable watching Tim Jones scream at a couple fucking kids (one of whom he definitely calls "boy" in his charming Boston accent) and their mother.

The crime of these terrible black people? Selling "Don't Tread On Me" signs at the 9/12 rally. Which, you know, got to admire their entrepreneurial spirit! It's just too bad they were at the 9/12 rally selling the flags for ACORN, an organization that does not actually send employees to rallies to sell flags.

But according to ACORN spokesperson Ian Phillips, the only flags any of their members sell would be to their members at conventions. None of their people were at the Sept. 12 rally as vendors or for any reason representative to ACORN, and whomever was being targeted by Tim Jones in the video might have been unfortunate pawns in a rather racist game of his.

"It wasn't us," Phillips told One People's Project. "Unfortunately, you know this better from the work that you do, the kind of bogeymen that they've created over the years of some kind of freeloading person of color. Now they have transferred and said all these folks are with ACORN."

Phillips says this kind of scapegoating is something that the organization has had to deal with, well before the Leadership Institute's James O'Keefe videotaped various ACORN staffers suggesting ways to violate the law. Earlier in the year there were warnings from conservative figures like Fox News' Neil Cavuto that ACORN was mounting a counterstrike against this element. "In Florida, they put it on their list groups that ‘ACORN is going to be there, come out in force and tell ACORN what you think of them or ACORN is going to infiltrate, If you see anyone holding a camera, they're from ACORN,' but we never come to these things," he said. "We never engage these kooks. We don't go and film, none of our staffers do."

But against the word of the ACORN spokesman, we have the word of Tim Jones, hero, whom no one knows anything about, except that he declared that these people were from ACORN, because he heard them say it to a cop. And then Tim Jones whipped up a crowd of people to join in the screaming and chasing.

Once again, these people hate America.

First, according to an entertaining Salon report, a white lady stood up and said her mom had died because she couldn't afford chemo. Michael Steele put her in her place! Then the police escorted the lady away. Here's a video of it! The conflict starts about two and a half minutes in.

With the rude "my mom died" lady under control, Steele was free to bring this inspirational message to the crowd:

"It's important to be here, to show you that from 8th Street NW to this moment, it happens," he said. "It can happen." Which was true enough. But since nearly everyone he called on said they wanted to go to law school — the talk was, after all, co-sponsored by Howard's Political Science Society — the message flirted with condescension.

With hard work and a role model like Michael Steele, you too can one day break out of the ghetto of Howard University, future law students! The man is a master communicator. Give him that.

RELATED TRUE STORY: Hillary Clinton Laura Bush once went and gave a speech at the Howard student center which is right over the cafeteria on Soul Food night and was ROUNDLY CONDEMNED not for her speech, but for messing up Soul Food night, which was the best food night.

Shout out to Drew Hall.

Click to enlarge it, why don't you?

Big shout out to non-racist Gawker image wizard Steven Dressler for the chart.

The Boston Globe has the police report, and it reads like Crash. UPDATED BELOW: Also, Gates' attorney, Harvard professor Charles Ogletree, has released a statement, and it reads like The Age of Innocence.

Gates came home in the afternoon with another black friend. The lock on his front door was jammed, and he had to throw his shoulder into the door to get it open. A white lady saw the two men and thought, "Oh, two black guys are breaking into the house," so she called the cops. By the time they showed up, Gates had successfully gotten into his own home and was doing whatever free God-loving Americans with the same rights as you and me do when they enter their homes:

Gates didn't like the fact that the cops showed up to hassle him about having to break into his own house, which almost certainly would not have happened had he been white. He was not very friendly to the cop, calling him a racist, saying that he didn't know who he was messing with—he didn't!—and trying to get the Cambridge chief of police on the phone.

Gates sounds like an ornery cuss, and the insult of having to explain himself to the police for having to enter his own home seems to have caused him to lose his temper. As Gates was yelling at him, the officer insisted on moving the conversation outside—allegedly because the "acoustics of the kitchen and the foyer" made it hard for the cop to use his radio. But low and behold, once they got outside, Gates' "tumultuous behavior...outside his residence" got very disorderly very fast. So Gates got popped for yelling at a cop.

So in case you were wondering: No, not even the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, in the sanctuary of his own home, which is itself practically in the middle of the most prestigious university in the world, which is Gates' employer and playground, is immune from getting hassled because he is black.

Oh, and the white lady who called the cops on him, Lucia Whalen? She's a fundraiser for Harvard Magazine.

Like we said, Crash. And why was the lock broken? Because someone had tried to break in. We think it was that Iranian kid.

Update: Charles Ogletree, Gates' friend and attorney, released an oddly understated recounting of the above without any of the yelling, and without any mention of racism. In Ogletree's account, Gates was returning from a trip to China, had trouble getting in, and with the help of his driver managed to get the door open. The next thing he knew, there was a cop at his door. Gates gave the officer his ID and asked him for his name and badge number. According to Ogletree, the officer never responded, put Gates under arrest, and jailed him for four hours. Here's the statement; the full police report is below it.

This is a statement concerning the arrest of Professor Gates. On July 16th, 2009, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of Harvard University, was headed from Logan airport to his home at 17 Ware Street in Cambridge after spending a week in China, where he was filming his new PBS documentary entitled "Faces of America". Professor Gates was driven to his home by a driver for a local car company. Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates's luggage into his home.

Professor Gates immediately called the Harvard Real Estate office to report the damage to his door and requested that it be repaired immediately. As he was talking to the Harvard Real Estate office on his portable phone in his house, he observed a uniformed officer on his front porch. When Professor Gates opened the door, the officer immediately asked him to step outside. Professor Gates remained inside his home and asked the officer why he was there. The officer indicated that he was responding to a 911 call about a breaking and entering in progress at this address. Professor Gates informed the officer that he lived there and was a faculty member at Harvard University. The officer then asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard. Professor Gates said that he could, and turned to walk into his kitchen, where he had left his wallet. The officer followed him. Professor Gates handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver's license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates's photograph, and the license includes his address.

Professor Gates then asked the police officer if he would give him his name and his badge number. He made this request several times. The officer did not produce any identification nor did he respond to Professor Gates's request for this information. After an additional request by Professor Gates for the officer's name and badge number, the officer then turned and left the kitchen of Professor Gates's home without ever acknowledging who he was or if there were charges against Professor Gates. As Professor Gates followed the officer to his own front door, he was astonished to see several police officers gathered on his front porch. Professor Gates asked the officer's colleagues for his name and badge number. As Professor Gates stepped onto his front porch, the officer who had been inside and who had examined his identification, said to him, "Thank you for accommodating my earlier request," and then placed Professor Gates under arrest. He was handcuffed on his own front porch.

Professor Gates was taken to the Cambridge Police Station where he remained for approximately 4 hours before being released that evening. Professor Gates's counsel has been cooperating with the Middlesex District Attorneys Office, and the City of Cambridge, and is hopeful that this matter will be resolved promptly. Professor Gates will not be making any other statements concerning this matter at this time.

If You Are White:

• Your black roommate makes you uncomfortable.
• You make your black roommate uncomfortable.
• You are far more likely to "break up" with your roommate if they're not white.
• You will not be affected academically by your roommate's race, because you care only about your own kind.

If You Are Black:

• You will do better academically if you have a white roommate, maybe in an effort to overcome your inferiority complex.
• Or maybe because you just don't like them and can get some work done.
• If you have a white roommate, your own "positive emotions" will decline.

If You Are Asian:

• Not only are you more racist than any other group, you also make those around you more racist. Scientific fact!

If You Are of a Race Other Than These:

• You are not as interesting to social scientists.

Picture on left: the original. Picture on right: the actual cover of Toronto's "Summer Fun Guide." The juxtaposition is just...yea. The city's spokesman responded to skeptical questioning like so:

"That's an interesting conversation," Mr. Sack said. "This does not look like a nondescript white family, it looks maybe Latino."

Well then.
[National Post via Adrants]

We'd like to thank you, the Gawker commenters, for flooding the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's blog with, hopefully, searingly insulting comments: "Greenbaum said that comments were pretty bigoted until the website Gawker.com picked up the story and readers from that website signed on to his blog to rebut the bigots." Unfortunately you did your job so well that this meta-story has now been written about again, this time on a Chicago Tribune blog, causing an outpouring of people ready to tell you how they are probably much less racist than you will ever be:

1. My family is much better than yours, racists.

How wide is your world? Some of us have dozens of friends in inter-racial marriages and relationships. That is not an exaggeration. Our family literally knows dozens of people who are every combination of White/Black/Asian/Hispanic/Middle Eastern in happy marriages with gorgeous kids.

If you live or worship in a community that teaches that we are all brothers and sisters and members of one human race, this is considered healthy and normal.

But, for those who believe that there is no more racism, or that America has grown out of racism, well, here you are, what more proof do you need.

And one last thing:
Cute Couple!
Posted by: nonpartisan | Apr 20, 2009 11:58:20 AM

2. Down with racism, up with censorship!

Who cares about the race of two people kissing? I think the entire preoccupation with race—the race and race-baiting industry—should be put to rest for good. A truly non-racial, non-racist society just wouldn't pay attention to these things at all. I think this entire column should dissappear. No offense regarding the author's talent as a writer. Blacks and whites can mix or stay segregated if they want. If skin color is a superficial indicator, as society has mostly come to accept, why are we paying any attention to it at all? Let consenting people do what they want as long as they are doing no harm to themselves or to others.
Posted by: ttj | Apr 20, 2009 12:59:28 PM

3. Interracial dating is fine with me. Gays, on the other hand...

Black and white don't bother me. Lasst night on "Brothers and Sisters" two gaay men kissed-more than a passing kiss. I'm not a homopobe but was uneasy watching that.
Posted by: Joanne Coquillard | Apr 20, 2009 7:58:10 AM

4. I'm so not racist that I have circled around to become racist, or maybe just a nut.

I'm white, my husband is black. We've been together for about 20 years. We have always been very careful how we interact in public. Not just because of our races, we also don't think it's appropriate to get too physical in public. The other reason is because of some of the looks and comments we're intended to overhear. Although I would like to answer back, it's not worth the risk. I do believe everyone is entitled to their opinions, I just wish they would keep them to themselves.
Posted by: Wendy C | Apr 20, 2009 9:03:45 AM

5. Black girl kiss at age 14 FTW!!!!

Traveling with my students on a bus last February (2008) we were watching the movie HUTCH with Will Smith and gorgeous Eva Morales (I think that's her name). When a kiss between them seemed likely, I told the other teachers that if they kissed, Obama would win the election.

As a white, the first gal I kissed at 14 was black with braces.
Posted by: KAG | Apr 20, 2009 9:07:10 AM

[Chicago Trib; Previously, Missouri Rednecks. Pic via]

The paper chose to illustrate its wantonly sexual and scandalous story "The 7 Best Places to Smooch" with this photo of a (real!) interracial couple, locked in what is clearly a smooch, right out in the open, in front of children. So this caused a "controversy" which the paper dutifully blogged about, and that post itself has already generated 21 pages of comments, so let's see some of the very best!

1. Why can't anyone give an intelligent answer, hmm?

2. What about my rights to bloody dead animals and all-white baseball leagues?

3. Stop calling me mentally unstable!

4. FACTS, people.

5. Finally, an intelligent voice. Gimme datazzzzzz.

[via St. Louis P-D. Yes, this was too easy to be respectable, oh well.]

The fact that D.L. Hughley got a CNN talk show was just mystifying from day one. And he didn't surprise the world with his hidden news acumen. The fact that David Alan Grier got to host what was billed as the black Daily Show was...at least enough to make everyone feel a vague sense of hope, for a few minutes, until the show aired. Turns out it was unoriginal and unfunny. Oh well! David Alan Grier was pretty funny on In Living Color but not so much since, so maybe they should have picked someone actually funny to host this show, Chocolate News, and perhaps CNN could have searched far and wide and eventually located a black person with slightly more journalistic chops than standup comedian D.L. Hughley. They are rumored to exist in the far-flung corners of our land!

Giving shows to people who aren't good is the real conspiracy.

I mean, we know Politico is basically a ceaseless factory of Drudge-bait concocted angles, but really. "Dog-whistle politics." This is why black people are hearing all sorts of secret things from Barack Obama that whites are totally oblivious to. Like once when Obama went to Ben's Chili Bowl? And he said "Nah, we straight?" And whites were like OMFG what was that about? But blacks knew what he meant?

A video of the exchange became an Internet hit, and there was a clear moment of recognition among many blacks, who got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, "mad cool."

Sorry Politico, can you just clarify what "mad cool" signifies? You're losing the whites here. More secret Obama black-talk:

In January remarks about the economy, Obama made a reference to "American dreams that are being deferred," a phrase black audiences understood without a citation as black poet Langston Hughes'. First lady Michelle Obama often cites her upbringing in the "South Side of Chicago."

Who is this "Langston Hughes?" Where is this mysterious "South Side of Chicago?" As a white, I have no idea! And furthermore, what is that thing that Obama's doing with his leg—is he injured?

Beyond speech, blacks have picked up certain of Obama's mannerisms, particularly his walk, that signal authenticity. Bush had his cowboy strut, and Obama has a swagger - a rhythmic lope that says cool and confident and undeniably black.

Thanks Politico! Whites would be lost without you. [So dumb]

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!

It's quite simple, really. Most evil multinational corporations are forced, by custom and the demands of PR, to buy ads every MLK Day featuring some sort of montage of differently-colored people, with their logo and a message like "ExxonMobil: We employ black people." But more eloquently stated.

Full page ads aren't cheap! So Obama has performed a great service this year. See, he is black; his inauguration is the day after MLK day; so companies can hold their diversity ads, run them tomorrow, and celebrate both their wondrous commitment to racial harmony and our wondrous new racially diverse president!

The proof is in the pitiful lack of full-page diversity ads in the Times A section today. Seriously, is this all the love corporate America has? Ha, no silly, tomorrow there will be an outpouring of love for our new black president—and love for him is de facto love for Martin Luther King and many other diverse human beings! Just watch. In the meantime, at least Colin Powell made an appearance in one of today's ads. Wouldn't want to forget him, on this day.

Update: This one ran on the back page of the Arts section, but seemed worth including.

The New York Times, a newspaper read closely by many whites as they search for answers to their thorny racial quandaries, discovers that using the topic of our new black and white president Barack Obama as an icebreaker of sorts may help to put African-Americans—and normal Americans—at ease.

Take 43-year-old white Becca Knox. She married a black dude six years ago, and still hasn't come up with a single thing to say to him:

Even Mr. Rice’s wife, Becca Knox, 43, who is white, said that despite being married to a black man for six years, finding a comfortable way to talk about race with people of other races, particularly African-Americans, that is sensitive but not self-conscious, candid but not offensive, is still “a constant, constant struggle and process.”

A quiet, self-conscious six years of marriage, they've been. But since Obama's election, blacks and whites are talking about him, together. He is the only polite topic of racial conversation now! He is the "omnipotent icebreaker." He's even bringing together blacks with white gays. We have nothing to add to these final paragraphs:

On the morning after the election, Kristin Rothballer, 36, who lives in San Francisco, kissed her female partner goodbye on the train while commuting to work. A black woman who sat down next to her turned and said she was sorry that Proposition 8, the amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, looked like it was going to pass.

“We grabbed hands,” Ms. Rothballer recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I really want to congratulate you because we have a black president and that’s amazing.’ ”

“Our conversation then almost became about the fact that we were having the conversation,” she said.

Something moved her to apologize to the black woman for slavery.

[NYT. Please note the myriad underlying psychological complexities of the lead photo when you click that story link. Awesome, or too awesome?]

Before this Obama election gets too grounded in our national psyche, let's go ahead and banish the hopeful assertion that this marks the beginning of a "Post-racial" society. As has been pointed out by everyone from Tavis Smiley to TAN, we're not post-anything. Race is just as strong of a psychological factor as it ever was. Our socialization has changed, and our expectations have been moderated, but America is far, far away from being a place where people "don't see" race.

As the only black commentator on CNN noted last night, Obama's 2009 inauguration will come exactly 100 years after the founding of the NAACP. The founding of that group came 100 years after Abraham Lincoln's birth. There you have the three easy stages of American racial history: the fight to end slavery, and Reconstruction; the long movement for civil rights; and whatever we're moving into now.

The civil rights movement was concerned with laws, and it won all of the big battles that it set out to win. It's clear that laws don't totally erase inequality or racism. The NAACP is a now shell of its former self, a victim of its own successes. All of those people of my parents' and grandparents' generations who openly wept seeing the first black man elected President last night were surely, on some level, overwhelmed by the enormous distance that blacks in America have come; from slavery to the White House, which Obama's anecdote of his 106-year-old supporter so neatly alluded to.

But Obama is a transcendent figure, and pegging his election as a new, inalienable plateau in race relations is a mistake. When Al Sharpton was a presidential candidate only four years ago, I'll bet that many of the people who voted for Obama yesterday would have guessed that they'd never see a black president in their lifetimes. Obama's mystical ability to appeal to everyone should be celebrated; but what does his election really represent for Black America?

Lots of people are just happy that one of their own has finally made it. There hasn't been a truly strong "leader" of Black America since MLK and Malcolm X were assassinated, and if you want to cast Obama in that role, he'll probably do for now. The symbolism of his success is worth a lot, but it won't change everything. Toure wonders how black men will be able to say 'Fuck the system' when the system is run by a black man. Obama himself is more a product of the hip hop generation than the generation that marched in Selma. And with every year that passes, and every successive generation that's born, our country becomes less white, more diverse, and less like the easy black-and-white dichotomy that seemed so clear to our parents.

It's impossible to view race honestly through anything other than our own personal experiences. I know what this election means to me. Want to know what it means for black people? Ask a black person. Obama got elected because people honestly feel he'll do a better job. And he probably will. John Lewis, and Jesse Jackson, and, yes, even Al Sharpton are all American heroes. But while the issues they fought over haven't been resolved, their time in history's spotlight is gone just as sure as John McCain's is. The more relevant question may not be "What does Obama mean for Black America?" It may be, instead, "What does Black America mean any more?"

And if every non-black person goes out and has a conversation about that question with somebody who might actually know the answer, we'll all have made some good old-fashioned racial progress. That's how Obama helps us be better, even if he doesn't do a damn thing. "It's about you."

[Pic via Flickr]

American National Socialist Workers Party head Bill White may be a neo-Nazi, but he's not voting for John McCain.

"Right now," said White, head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, "we're facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you've got two terrible choices."

The hate groups are demoralized! On the eve of what should be the best election for them in years! Former KKK member and convicted lyncher James Knowles doesn't even hate Obama! The hate group experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center say the white supremacists "are in a more or less stunned position right now. They haven't been able to figure out how to proceed just yet."

The problem is that the embittered poor rural white dudes who might align with these groups in bad times (and these are bad times) aren't threatened by Barack Obama. No, they are worried about more important things:

There have been only sporadic reports of racist mailings, though Democrats say they are on the lookout for more. And there has been scant evidence that Obama's candidacy has helped hate-group recruitment, unlike the recent debates over immigration policy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White supremacist leaders, while threatening some political action before Nov. 4, similarly attribute their relative lack of activity this year to demographic and societal changes they cannot stop. But they also point to a Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, whose liberal immigration views and staunch support for Israel are against everything they stand for.

See? McCain is precisely the wrong man to win over the neo-Nazis, because he's totally in favor of the Mexicans coming in and stealing all our jobs, and our women! Across the shittier parts of Real America, the immigration debate stirs up way more bile than the threat of a black man being president.

So while McCain and Palin stir up some dark, dark behavior from their supporters, they're still not connecting with the enraged hate groups who might help turn out some of those racists to the polls. If he'd picked, say, Lou Dobbs instead of Sarah Palin, he might be getting somewhere. Hating the blacks is passe among redneck idiots. Just ask North Carolina Sheriff Steve Bizzell, who helped his state "team with federal authorities to train local officers to identify and track jailed illegal immigrants, speeding up the deportation process." He just recently said this:

Then Bizzell, in an interview for a newspaper report on immigration reform published last month, complained that ''Mexicans are trashy.''

He pointed to several children playing in one community as if they proved his next generalization about Latinos: ''All they do is work and make love.''

He said Latinos spread a culture of drunkenness and violence through his mostly rural county, a short drive from Raleigh.

And poor John McCain, who favors amnesty and daily "siestas", cannot capitalize on this at all. What a sad state of affairs.

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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.

We will say this for "Stuff White People Like"—if it was a list, it might be quite funny. "Expensive sandwiches" is a funny phrase. But, christ, the execution? The writing? We make no bones about the literary or even humorous merit of our daily output, but please compare "Stuff White People Like" entry #14, Having Black Friends, to that once-controversial piece of ancient internet satire Black People Love Us, a site that identifies its targets with more care and pierces them with more skill.

"Stuff White People Like" is a retrofitted Sinbad routine. It's the internet equivalent of Michael Scott re-telling a Chris Rock joke. In The New Republic, the man who attemped to popularize the terrible let-us-never-speak-of-it-again term "grups" not only leveled these criticisms but also pointed out why "white people" love "Stuff White People Like." Three reasons: "it's funny 'cause it's true", "it's funny because I'm superior to those white people", and "white people dance like this."

In The Root (an online magazine this white person likes), Gary Dauphin puts it succinctly: "Usually, even jokey talk about whiteness has a whiff of danger to it, but SWPL is likely the safest, most affable racial satire ever, a loving high-five between friends passing as critique." (He also points out that white people like stealing and repurposing elements of black identity.)

And, yes, those are the intellectual criticisms. But didn't we mention that we're also sick of the hand-wringing? The side-choosing? It's just a stupid occasionally entertaining blog! But then the author—who is apparently Canadian, and thus an authority on what white people like, even though he has friends of varying ethnicites—received $300k to turn it into a book and so now we're probably going to have to hear even more debates about What It All Means whenever this book is actually published, unless of course by then President Barack Obama has led us all into the glorious post-racial fruitopia of tomorrow.

Long story short, too-clever-by-half liberal arts school graduates like blogging, regardless of race. And the rest of the nation, white, black, or otherwise, doesn't give a shit.