John McWhorter—Bill Buckley-esque NY Sun columnist and bizarre racial thinker—has taken his bizarre racial thinking act over to the New York Times for a day, presumably because conservative black academic columnists are hard to come by in New York City on a holiday weekend. In a video debate on the Times' website, McWhorter advances the novel theory that Barack Obama doesn't have to worry about racism; just his race. Here's an example of a statement that he says is not racist: "I won't vote for a black person because he's a radical type and would bring in Farrakhan." And hey, how come black people can hang around each other and it's okay, but white people can't? It's because "white people aren't allowed to be diverse." Okay! The other guy is, frankly, no match for McWhorter's secret redefinitions of words that negate their own meaning. The baffling debate, after the jump.

"'Not too long ago, she was like the pope,' rarely criticized by her ardent supporters, said Janice Peck, an associate professor of mass communication at the University of Colorado." [Times]

When the Times shut down comments on Emily Gould's still-physically-unpublished magazine cover story Friday, we — OK, I — speculated the newspaper "might be having second thoughts" about the value of generating online buzz, "barring some kind of technical concern." Well, there doesn't appear to have been any technical concern, but, based on information from one Times source, it sounds more likely comments were closed to shift staff to newer stories.

Lee Siegel, who was suspended from the New Republic for posting anonymous Web comments to defend his own writing, has elaborated on why he has no shame about having pretended to be someone called "sprezzatura." Count the excuses! His cruel, greedy editors were at fault, because they would not delete offensive comments. The online commenters were at fault, because they did not understand how criticism worked, were conformists and needed to be challenged with a taste of their own medicine. He, Lee Siegel, was at fault because he kind of meant to get caught. And, finally, the Bush administration was at fault for undermining trust in authorities like Lee Siegel:

Fox News correspondent Liz Trotta said on air this weekend that she'd like to try and kill Barack Obama now that Hillary Clinton has wussed out on her comments about Obama's impending, Robert Kennedy-style death. Trotta started to talk about the idea of an "Osama" assassination, then corrected herself, saying "Osama, Obama — well, both, if we could." Then the former Washington Times bureau chief laughed like a brainwashed Moonie assassin. Trotta apologized in a later broadcast for her "lame attempt at humor," adding, "it is a very colorful political season." Immediately prior to the apology, Trotta had just spent a few minutes pontificating about Clinton on-camera again, because she isn't fired, because Fox News stands behind their crazy talking heads. After the jump, a clip with both the assassination comment and the apology.

What's your favorite Adult Swim cartoon? Lately, I'm favoring Shin Chan over the rest, but they're still all pretty great. After the jump, 35 classic "Shinisms." If you're actually still at your computer on this glorious summer Sunday, go ahead and post some Adult Swim goodness of your own.

Oh noes! Publicist/stylist/funboy-about-town Kristian Laliberte's Facebook page was hacked and someone's been sending his friends the most horrible messages! "Dear All," he writes. "This is Kristian and this message is real. Sometime between midnight and nine am, my facebook account was hacked into. A similar experience happened with my gmail two weeks ago-where fake emails were forwarded to an unknown address. The perpetrator sent slews of disgusting fake messages to many of my contacts, but I do not know who all received these. I am categorically letting everyone know that this happened and I'm so sorry if you were upset for one moment and caught up in this mess." Clues as to the perp's ID and a sample of the offending emails below.

Kermit the Frog, Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Fozzy Bear, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy, Gonzo and Janice team up in this hilarious new comedy about love and sex in Manhattan. If you ask me, that Janice kid is going places fast! Trailer after the jump.

I keep trying to tell you people: The sharks are everywhere and they crave human meat! But does anyone listen? "A shark injured a 49-year-old American surfer Saturday off the Pacific coast of Mexico, in the third attack in a month. The Mexican Navy deployed personnel to warn people about sharks at beaches in Zihuatanejo, a resort northwest of Acapulco, according to a Navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. He said authorities have not closed beaches in Zihuatanejo, but people were being advised against swimming." No big deal, you say? Well guess what happened on Friday?

Monkeys, sea monkeys, X-Ray specs-strange, unnatural powers! All these could be yours for just a few bucks and some proofs-of-purchase via the ad pages of your favorite comic. Some classics after the jump.

The dreamy beach warrior who rescued a drowning man and and made all other news irrelevant a week or so ago has been found! And he's "a humble hero who would rather sail off into the sunset than step into the limelight, his relatives said Saturday." Swoon! Could he get any dreamier? "Kevin Campion, a 30-year-old ship's captain from Seattle, doesn't mind if his lifesaving deed goes unrewarded, they said. 'He's a great guy and it's an amazing thing he did and actually I'm not surprised that he would do it,' said Kenn Christianson, the brother of Campion's stepmother, Sonya Campion. 'He's just not sure he wants the attention to be on him.'" Oh. Then I guess The New York Daily News wouldn't have another photo of him or anything. Wait, they do?

"Dick Martin, a veteran nightclub comic who with his partner, Dan Rowan, turned a midseason replacement slot at NBC in 1968 into a hit that redefined what could be done on television, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., according to The Associated Press. He was 86. Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the hyperactive, joke-packed show that Mr. Martin and Mr. Rowan rode to fame, made conventional television variety programs seem instantly passé and the sitcom brand of humor seem too meek for the times." [NYT] A clip from the classic show after the jump.

Summer at last! So what songs does this glorious time of year bring to mind? You know, music appropriate for beach parties, pool parties, long drives in convertibles, non-ironic rooftop barbecues, or just fooling around with some cutie under the cool comforting whir of your trusty air conditioner? My video pick's after the jump. What's yours?

"Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among bloggers: obsessive Balkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the Radar Online Executive Editor, Alex Balk."

In yet another move that will likely piss-off Old Tyme-y newspaper types, The New York Times is shutting down a whole batch of its suburban outposts. One staffer writes in, "Big stuff. They are closing all of their suburban bureaus, packing up, giving up, going home to protect what is left of their base-seven 84 year-olds on the upper west side. White Plains, New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island-shuttered, reporters brought into Manhattan and reassigned, pretty much except for one dude in New Jersey, kept there so that tri-state doesn't have less correspondents than, say, Montana. If that's not a metaphor for their dire economic circumstances, I'm not sure what is-but it's a curious decision too. Their shrinking readership base in the city is smaller than the ring outside it. Maybe they want it to be bigger again…by shrinking what's outside of it. Ah, now I get it." But another source inside the Gray Lady has a less dire take.

The Times chose wisely this weekend, dedicating its often miserable "A Night Out With" feature to super-dreamy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull star Karen Allen instead of some dicky little 12-year-old writer who some editor found attractive. "Ms. Allen said: 'People want to see a movie that casts a mature woman across from a mature man. They're not matching Harrison with a 30-year-old.'"

Doesn't anyone just sniff Rush anymore? "Health officials are warning New Yorkers to stay away from an illegal aphrodisiac made from toad venom after the product apparently killed a man. The city's poison control center issued the warning Friday after receiving a hospital report that a 35-year-old man who ingested the hard, brown substance died earlier this month. The product is sold under names including Piedra, Love Stone, Jamaican Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock at sex shops and neighborhood stores. It is banned by the Food and Drug Administration."

Oh Senator Hillary Clinton, would you please, please, please, please, please stop talking! When the Sioux Falls Argus Leader asked her why she's still campaigning, she mused, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." Hinting, in other words, that, you know, that Sen. Barack Obama, who's young and beloved and Kennedy-y, might get straight-up murdered in the coming weeks. Today she's apologizing for that, but now everyone's pointing out that she's been peddling that scenario for months!

Always handy with a listicle, Entertainment Weekly is providing us with "GILF-y Pleasures: 33 Hotties Over 50." I'm including the male on the left coz, well, Buffy! The rest of my picks are ladies. And they're after the jump. Oh, and by "my picks" I mean from what the list offers, because they stupidly leave out Karen Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, and a bunch of other smokin' Olds.

It's a long holiday weekend, so perhaps by Tuesday there'll be nothing left to say about former Gawker editor Emily Gould's extensive New York Times Magazine cover story about sleeping with people and blogging about it and having panic attacks on bathroom floors? No? Well, in any case, The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, a Canadian, provides a tasty summary of the essay and the ensuing media cluster-fuck. "This was an extended blog post, an overlong 'Modern Love' essay, 7,937 words that did not venture beyond the author's own experience; for some perspective, the NYT's investigative expose on the Pentagon's purported ties to on-air military analysts had 7,486). And for what?"