There’s really nothing left to say. And I lost most of my notes after I used some hand sanitizer earlier.
Let’s see if we can cobble together a roundup from the smudges on my palm:
1. The New Orleans Saints are Super Bowl champs. And they won in front of the largest TV audience in history, dethroning the series finale of M*A*S*H. (Blackink)
2. In other news from the game: Peyton Manning is still awesome. Why stats nerds love the Saints. Tracy Porter, the game’s fourth-quarter hero, deserves praise for his bold choice of hair cut. James Carville is elated. Hip-hop reacts to the proceedings. Slate rates the best and worst ads of the night. Amanda Marcotte ponders the misogyny streak in ads last night. Check out some of the behind-the-scenes fun at the Super Bowl, with the Page 2 staff of ESPN and Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald. (Blackink)
Enough of that already.
3. Back in Louisiana, Chocolate City got a shot of vanilla: Louisiana Lt. Gov Mitch Landrieu prevailed in a virtual landslide Saturday. Landrieu, brother of Blue Dog U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, becomes the first white mayor of New Orleans since his father, Moon, in 1978. (Blackink)
4. Jordan Flaherty at Racewire warns that, regardless of Saturday’s outcome, New Orleans will need a lot more than a new mayor. (Blackink)
5. Also, Undercover Black Man provides a little historical background on Moon Landrieu. (Blackink)
6. Several outlets are reporting that the New York Times is sitting on an explosive story about Gov. David Paterson of New York, and that Paterson is preparing to resign should it drop. There’s a lot of speculation over what the supposed story is about, but all the rumors point to Paterson’s sex life and gambling. (G.D.)
7. Finally, some good news for Haiti: the G7 has promised to cancel the devastated country’s bilateral debts. (Blackink)
8. Jesse Taylor at Pandagon asks a great question that we know will never be sufficiently answered: “If the anti-choice position is so true, so mainstream and so critical to the future of our nation, why did Focus on the Family spend $2.5 million to avoid saying anything whatsoever about it?” (Blackink)
9. Erick Erickson needs to be excused from polite company before it gets ugly. (Blackink)
10. The Washington Post pitches a number of alternatives to the U.S. Senate’s current system of representation. And all of them seem preferable. (Blackink)
11. Steve Benen adds some context to criticism of Michael Steele’s off-hand remark last week that Americans making a million dollars, after taxes, are not bringing home “a lot of money.” (Blackink)
12. The Daily Intel points us to this sad but hardly surprising study – and accompanying blog post in the NYT – showing that potential adoptive couples are seven times less likely to pursue an African-American baby than they are a baby of another race. (Blackink)
13. Read this fabulous Washington Monthly feature on Texas’s efforts to rewrite history books. In the name of conservatism, of course. (Quadmoniker)
14. Over at TAPPED, Monica wonders if the voters of Colorado Springs, Colo., will finally understand what their taxes pay for. (Blackink)
15. Via Racewire, a new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA has found that charter schools “stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.” (Blackink)
16. Great piece in New York Magazine on the folly of kindergarten IQ tests. (Jamelle)
17. At the University of North Carolina and an increasing number of college campuses, every night is ladies’ night. Who knows how serious of a problem this really is? But this quote seems really problematic: “’My parents think there is something wrong with me because I don’t have a boyfriend, and I don’t hang out with a lot of guys,’ said Kate Andrew, a senior from Albemarle, N.C.” No, the problem there seems to be with the parents. (Blackink)
18. Over at Sepia Mutiny, Anna explains why finding her Facebook doppelganger was a different kind of a struggle. (Blackink)
19. Cosmo makes flirting seem really awkward and creepy. (Blackink)
20. If there is no “gay center of the brain,” then you don’t have to be gay. Or something like that. (Blackink)
21. The entire, unedited video of Jon Stewart’s appearance on the “O’Reilly Factor.” (Blackink)
22. Carrie Prejean is engaged to be opposite married! (Blackink)
23. A remake of “We Are the World” is bad enough. But the addition of a rap verse with LL Cool J, will.i.am, Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg is worse. Also, judging from the picture (top right), I think Fonzworth Bentley is involved. (Blackink)
24. The Root introduces “Black Twitter: A Starter Kit.” But really, how seriously can you take the list when the Grape Drink Mafia isn’t included? (Blackink)
25. Since I was banging ATCQ’s highly underrated album “The Love Movement” this morning, I hearby nominate this J Dilla Appreciation Week. James Yancey would have turned 36 on Sunday. He died on Feb. 10, 2006.
Sorry if this week’s edition seemed a bit uneven. I’ve still got a football hangover.
