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Look at that delightfully racist little fella’ over there. From the 1946 Disney film Song of the South, he’s a literal baby made of tar. I don’t know if I was particularly sheltered as a child, or maybe I just had good parents, but I never once had an inkling that the tar baby that Brer Rabbit made to thwart Brer Fox was the least bit racist. How was I supposed to know? He looked like a baby… a baby made of tar. Wearing a trench coat and a floppy hat. Tar Baby. I’m a little mad at my childhood self for not trying to fashion a baby made of tar myself, to go up to my mother and be like “Look mom, I made a tar baby!” Maybe then I’d learn an important lesson about racial slurs in Disney films.

Those same lessons apparently were not learnt by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado. How do I know that? Well, he called the President of the United States a tar baby. More or less. Here’s what he said exactly (talking about Obama):

“Now I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know … you are stuck and you are part of the problem now and you can’t get away.”

Being associated with Nobel Peace Prize winner and current President of the United States is “like touching a tar baby.” Uh-mazing. Oh sure he apologized (in writing) right afterwards, but still, damage done.  Now, I feel for this guy (no I don’t). I went to the always reputable urbandictionary.com and looked up ‘tar baby’. Here are the top two definitions:

• A dummy made of tar, which cannot be struck without getting oneself hopelessly stuck to it–from the story “Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox” by Joe Harris, as told by his fictional narrator, Uncle Remus. Tar baby has become short hand for a situation better avoided than confronted.

Oh, maybe he only read that one. I assume all Republican senators get their lexicon from Urban Dictionary, let’s read on.

• Tar baby is a synonym for nigger, except that it is only used in bigoted manners, whereas nigger can be a sign of respect, if the speaker is also African American.  It comes from a children’s story in which the dark skin and seeming ignorance (caused by a lack of schooling) of slaves were explained by the idea that black children were baptized in tar, which made them dark and dumb.

Yeah… that’s probably the one that pissed people off. Holy shit! How did this guy get to be in charge of anything? Did he say this sort of nonsense in the privacy of his own home? Of course not. He said it on the radio. What a special guy. American politicians, you never cease to amaze me.

Moving right along to another group of ignorant people who never cease to amaze me: celebrities. Lindsay Lohan! No, wait. My bad.  Samantha Ronson!

Who the fuck is Samantha Ronson? Oh right, she’s the boy-girl who dated Lindsay Lohan some time ago. She’s also (I’m told) a DJ. Isn’t that precious?

Why is she in the news? She was caught for a DUI. Now, a celebrity caught for a DUI isn’t really that newsworthy these days, but this story had a little silver lining that I thought was worth mentioning. She was apparently way over the legal limit, at 10:30 in the morning on a Monday. That’s a dedication to partying. By the way, I strongly encourage you to click that link, it’s a link to the LA Times, which I thought was a newspaper. Scroll down to the bottom and read the photo credit down there. I’ll wait.

“Chucks up the deuce” !? Really? Journalism!

I really hope this Samantha Ronson chick can get into the news some more, I think it’s good publicity. I just found out she’s a DJ and I promise you, I will listen to one of her DJ sets.

I will do that for you, so you won’t have to. That’s how much I care about you honestly. Man, look at that face, it’s been up there the whole time I’ve been writing this thing, staring at me, saying to me “Hey Keith, I do a whole lot of drugs.”

Samantha Ronson images from US Magazine. Tar Baby image from Disney Wiki.