This is hilarious, Obama should avoid trying to sound tough and definitely stick to calm, cool and reserved. Take a listen to this hilarious auto-tuned song based on the Matt Lauer “ass kick” interview.

Time magazine has come out with their annual 100 “people who most affect our world.” The Time Magazine list is always interesting because it helps to reflect how the media views who influences their thinking; however, I do not view the list as any indication of the people who actually affect the majority of the world. For instance, the list tends to skew heavily towards people who captivate the imagination of a section of the media as opposed to those who actually affect real policy, politics, economics, or scientific discoveries that are known in their field but not the popular media at large.

Anyway, I take the list with a grain of salt… but I did try to pick out African-Americans on the Time 100 list.

1.) Barack Obama (naturally), written up by DAVID REMNICK.

2.) Serena Williams By BILLIE JEAN KING

3.) Oprah Winfrey By PHIL DONAHUE

4.) Prince By USHER

This list may not be exhaustive, but it is definitely interesting. I think the most interesting part of the Time Magazine list, is that the words are supposedly penned by peers.

Interestingly enough, Glenn Beck’s write-up was penned by Sarah Palin…

Corey Poitier, a black conservative Republican who is running for congress in Florida, used terse language to berate President Barack Obama. At one point telling the president “Listen up, Buckwheat this is not how it is done.”

(h/t) MSNBC and theGriot.com, which has the following information from Poitier:

According to Poitier, who has been receiving countless e-mails regarding his comment, the Obama reference was not meant to be offensive, nor racist. On the contrary, he says. Poitier defended himself stating that he was describing the health care bill and not Obama as “dumb and silly.” The candidate even went on to say that he was surprised that the public took his comment as directed at the president.
“I wasn’t meaning him any harm. Maybe it was a little insensitive,” said Poitier, who is himself black. “It’s a term that my brother and I use. It was kind of a way of saying, ‘dummy,’ like when I say to my brother, ‘Hey, Buckwheat, cut that out.’ That’s what it was…People love Buckwheat.”

This has got to be one of the dumbest explanations I’ve heard for offensive racial stereotypes– people loved lots of characters based on racial stereotypes…

Health care passes after 18 months of debate and a night full of intense struggle.

Check out 44 do his speechifying thing!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Since I’m a simple man or perhaps a simpleton I will concisely explain Tavis Smiley’s problem with President Obama.

The Prez is insufficiently “Tavis”.

At the very least El Presidente doesn’t seem to realize how important a person Tavis is.

Tavis Smiley is the Chuck Norris of self appointed black leaders. Cross him at your peril.

IrishPirate

In response to “Toward a Black Agenda,” @theatlantic.com by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Harold Ford Selfish Party Hack

(Ford isn’t even a partisan loyalist, he really is only concerned with having a position IN the establishment).

We all know politicians (and even their families) have monstrous egos. From the average do-gooder running for local office, up to the presidential races, all the entrants believe that they can do the job — or even worse are running for office for the publicity (Al Sharpton, Carol Mosely-Braun, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel).

My all time favorite is Alan Keyes, who has run for president in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2008 as well as been a Republican nominee for senate (in various states) in 1988, 1992, and 2004.
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I listened to all of Tavis Smiley’s initial morning show commentary, and it seemed disjointed and amorphous. It featured a strained metaphor of a choir rehearsal — although oddly including Farrakhan.

So, I could see how the show could cause a lot of trouble, given Smiley basically called out a lot of people that listeners would immediately recognize e.g. Ben Jealous, Al Sharpton and others; yet, Smiley did not do a good job of attributing direct quotable positions to those names. Worse, from the stand point of those mentioned, Smiley sort of placed them in a very awkward position of seeming to be against Smiley’s unspecified “Black Agenda.”

From the start there were several strikes against the Smiley characterization of “black leaders,” no clear “black agenda,” no specific quotes about people mentioned by name, and no real context of their leadership. Smiley just sort of went through a awkward statement casting himself on the side of Black America and basically “Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Charles Ogletree, Valerie Jarrett, Marc Morial, Dr. Dorothy Height” as some sort of villains — but “love-ing-ly.” ROTFLOL

Further, Smiley definitely characterizes the question “Is there a need for a black agenda,” without following up on specific outline of that black agenda on the air, while promoting the resolution of his issues against Al Sharpton and others to be decided at Smiley’s own venue.

Tavis Smiley basically said, “I’m on your side” while these guys — with all do respect “don’t care about black people” (In my Kayne voice–appropriate since the proposed site is in Chi-town).

Quotes from the Tavis Smiley Talks after the jump
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