A Weekend-Ass Roundup.

The first presidential debate is Friday. (photo from The Big Picture blog.)
  • Some folks are Cali are worried that  Prop 8 — the ballot measure that would amend the state’s constitution to ban gay marriage —- could get a boost from the large numbers of black people hitting the polls to vote for Obama.*
  • The AP finds that a big chunk of racist white people won’t vote for Obama because he’s black (duh?), but actually tabulates how many points that costs him in the polls (six, enough to play a big role in a tight election). Nate takes issue with the methodology, and says that Obama actually overperforms in the South, possibly as the result of a “reverse Bradley effect” among black voters who play their intentions close to the chest. JJP question why the article came out when Obama is ahead in the polls again, and points out that the article was written by Ron Fournier, a well-known McCain supporter.
  • Still, folks would rather watch football with Obama and have him teach their kids.***
  • Ann Woolner of Bloomberg is pissed at the government’s trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street. (Headline : “Sue Them, Jail Them, Make Them Pay for Meltdown.”)
  • Having explored every other avenue of spreading mistruths, the McCain camp is now lying pre-emptively. Now that’s talent.
  • Palin says that she would push for more governmental transparency by putting the “government’s checkbook online.” Um, turns out Obama already did that.  Epic Fail.
  • In going after Palin, Margaret Cho ends up employing the same sexism that she would typically condemn. Shakesville (rightly) calls her on it. (I, for one, hope someone calls Cho on her pathological unfunniness.)
  • In a similar vein, your boy Charlie Rangel called Palin ‘disabled.‘ Stay classy, Chuck.
  • Obama keeps saying that 600,000 people have lost their jobs since January. But says he’s actually off by 19.4 million. [Ezra]
  • The Respectable Negroes list of  news media euphemisms for white folks reaches 40. Can they make it to 60?
  • Three strong pieces in the New Yorker: Steve Coll’s feature looks at Sarah Palin in the context of Alaskan politics, a dope profile of Spike Lee, and a must-read essay on the way history has treated the story of Sally Hemings as well as Annette Gordon-Reed’s new book on her descendants.
  • The Ethicist says strip shows are to gender what minstrel shows are to race.
  • David Simon, the angry genius behind The Greatest Show in the History of Television, sets his sights on the Lincoln assasination.
  • Saudi women love them some Oprah.
  • Ta-Nehisi laments the shitty way Hollywood has treated female superheroes (and realizes that Michelle Obama is Storm).
  • *This deserves its own post. I’ll get to it later.

    ** Ditto, this.

    *** Comprehensive ex education!

    G.D.

    G.D.

    Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
    G.D.
    • quadmoniker

      I’m not sure I agree with Ezra and his source on the job loss thing (for whatever my humble opinion counts.) Some jobs are cyclical, some jobs that people lost might have not been good for them, etc. I would hesitate to assume that all the new jobs people got were bad or worse. I for one know someone who was fired and got a bangin’ job. Maybe the way Obama talks about it is confusing, but I think net job loss is the more descriptive number. The 600,000 are the people who are looking for their jobs and CAN’T find one. That shows how slow are economy is in absorbing those people, and no matter what kinds of jobs the other people found, I bet they’re less miserable than the dudes who can’t find one at all.

      Also, on the Southern polls. Someone, somewhere, and I don’t remember who, said that elections have shown that in the deep south white people are MORE motivated to go to the polls when African-Americans turn out in large numbers. I think it’s safe to assume they do so to vote in the opposite direction. Just a thought.

    • verdeluz

      guffaw @ chuck rangel. you know, if your reputation is already that beat up, you might as well just go for it. and after the ‘fungible’ video, i’m not inclined to disagree with his assessment.

      some of the comments on the preemptive lying post are pretty great, too.

    • Businesses lose money and go bankrupt every day. Wasteful enterprises need to go bankrupt- our modern, wealthy lives are possible only because markets redirect wealth from less productive enterprises to more productive ones.

      If unsuccessful entrepreneurs were punished for making losses, successful entrepreneurs – and our economy – would be destroyed as well. The real criminals are the politicians forcing you to pay for the market’s mistakes. Unfortunately, people like Ann Woolner are only encouraging them to continue to rob us – and cripple the market.

    • Good round-up.

    • quadmoniker

      David V:
      Three of the five Wall St. investment firms don’t simply disappear in the space of a few months all the time. People are reasonably comparing what’s going on now to the months before the Great Depression. Unsuccessful entrepreneurs are punished, as you say, when their businesses fail. These banks had gotten too big for their failures to be contained to one economy, or even one country, and one sector, if we’re to believe the country’s top economists. And they got that way because they were allowed to grow unchecked after several years of serious deregulation, of politicians dismantling the protections that were put in place after we learned our lessons from the Great Depression. What you’re talking about is economics 105 or something, what’s going on now is much more serious.

    • Good web site, thanks.. Happy Ramadan for everyone..