Pick A Card, Any Card... (Updated!)

...ah, the RACE card. Excellent choice. This week, President Obama set up an evening of drinking with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates and his arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, at the White House. I was hoping someone would post viral video of the meeting called "2 Guys, 1 Cop," but nothing (have you no sense of humor, interwebs???). For those of you not following the story, here's a BRIEF recap: police got called to Gates's home about a break-in, found it was GATES inside, he got belligerent and got arrested, then accused his WHITE arresting officer of racism because Gates is BLACK. Come to find out, Sgt. Crowley is actually the guy in the office who's so NOT judgmental by color that he actually TEACHES his fellow officers how to avoid racial profiling. So, after the arrest, Obama's talking about health care and a reporter asks him what he thought about the arrest. Obama said he thought the police acted "stupidly." He later adjusted his remarks to give the police a little more credit than that and invited Gates and Crowley to the White House for a pint of ale (and then BIDEN showed up). Normally, this would have just been another arrest that would have led to hearing from the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Why did Washington get involved? I blame my brethren, the media. Sure, people will argue that Obama didn't HAVE to comment about the arrest because he didn't have all the information. But he was pressured into it because a reporter asked the question. And do you know WHY that reporter asked the question? It's because President Obama is...wait for it...black. *gasp* I KNOW! It hadn't really occured to me either until I looked really closely at him. Anyway, my point is, the media wouldn't have asked Bush (either one of them) about the arrest, Harvard scholar or not. They took the opportunity to hold Obama's feet to the fire and see if he was smart enough to blow out the flames. How does that reporter sleep at night?

Moving off the topic of race...Michael Jackson's memoir is about to be reissued to bookshelves. Oh, but this time, there's something special planned. A MYSTERY CELEBRITY will write the introduction to the book. Everyone's keeping pretty hush-hush about who it is, except to say that it's a well-known celebrity who knew Jackson well. I'm going with Webster himself, Emmanuel Lewis. It'll probably go something like "I'm the longest sexual relationship he ever had with one person because I looked perpetually like a little boy." Either that or they're going to ask Bubbles the Chimp to fling poo all over the page.

Y'know, it was only a matter of time, but I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner: a woman in New Zealand got pulled over for drunk-driving, and she blamed THE H1N1 VIRUS! She told officers the three glasses of wine she'd just consumed were more potent to her system because she was just recovering from the virus. The judge didn't buy it, saying the H1N1 virus was the "in" submission for defendants in his courtroom. Really?! How many "Not guilty by reason of H1N1" cases go through New Zealand? "Your honor, my client clearly set fire to that farm because he wanted to take revenge on the pig that gave him the virus..." "Well, counselor, if your client hadn't been a pigfucker in the first place, he wouldn't have caught ANYTHING. Instruct him next time to use a condom."

Speaking of disgusting, some librarians in Texas are putting together a calendar that's more "cake" than "beefcake." Yes, they're showing skin on the calendar to raise money for disaster relief for damaged libraries. I checked out some of these women, and I think I'd rather buy a male firefighter calendar. Sure, these ladies have tattoos and are showing a lot of skin, but they're not really pleasant on the eyes and some of them are probably too old to even CONSIDER being in a calendar. I know I'm not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but even I'M not going to buy a book with wrinkly pages! I'm okay with these ladies being leather-bound, but I'd prefer to be talking about their clothes and not their SKIN. And the best part is I went to the Texas Librarians Association website again to get a picture to post here (tla.org), and all the pictures have been removed. In fact, the only thing on the page is the words "Move along, nothing to see!" Yeah, no kidding.

UPDATE! Thanks to Katie for offering me the correct link with these lovely ladies of the TLA:






-B-