Super Bowl race war?
You knew somebody would. Leave it to Charles Barkley, the former NBA star-turned-television analyst, to say it.
ESPN, he said, is "framing the narrative" of Super Bowl 50 as a "black versus white, good versus evil" scenario based on the respective black and white quarterbacks, Cam Newton and Peyton Manning.
"ESPN has already started [its stuff] about black versus white, good versus evil, and I know a lot of those fools over there got radio talk shows," Barkley said. "It really annoys the hell out of me."
The onetime Republican, onetime Obama supporter said analysts "just can't appreciate the greatness of Peyton [Manning]," the Broncos' starting quarterback, who is white. "And clearly, Cam (of the Carolina Panthers) is on the track to become one of the greatest players ever. You can already see them framing the narrative."
The teams are led by two former Southeastern Conference quarterbacks, Manning, who may retire after the season, from Tennessee, and Newton, who has taken to calling attention to himself in recent playoff games, from Auburn, where Barkley played college basketball.
If he were in the NFL, he would not be a fan of Newton's celebratory antics, Barkley said.
"Let me tell you something," he said, "as much as I love Cam Newton, if I played against him, I would put a hit on him, no question."
Commander in chief and Oscars expert
President Barack Obama joined the chorus of the Academy Awards aggrieved last week, saying that diversity - heaven forbid it should be film or actor quality - should determine the Oscar nominees.
"Well, look," he told KABC in Los Angeles, "I think that California is an example of the incredible diversity of this country. That's a strength. I think that when everybody's story is told, then that makes for better art, it makes for better entertainment, it makes everybody feel part of one American family."
He said the entire country should focus on diversity, that the Academy Awards debate was part of a larger problem across the country.
"As a whole," Obama said, "the industry should do what every other industry should do, which is to look for talent, and provide opportunity to everybody. I think the Oscar debate is really just an expression of this broader issue of are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?"
Sold out
Don't let the viciousness in "Saturday Night Live" actress Kate McKinnon's portrayal of Hillary Clinton fool you. Despite playing the Democrat presidential candidate as vain, arrogant, ruthless and power-hungry as the former secretary of state is often said to be, she's totally in Clinton's corner.
Having told The Hollywood Reporter last year she's "rooting for her, obviously," and finds her to be "so resplendent," she told Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show" last week that the former first lady is "literally a dreamboat" and is "one of my favorite people."
"I mean," McKinnon said, "she's one of my favorite people to begin with and then meeting her [on the Dec. 19 show], at the end of the night, I wanted to be like: 'Do you mind? Can I go to a diner and get some pancakes and just chat?' But she had other things to do."
The "SNL" actress's portrayal of Clinton may be spot on, but it may be a little less funny now that her bias has been revealed. It was funnier, after all, when we couldn't be sure whether Chevy Chase really disliked Gerald Ford, Dan Aykroyd swooned over Jimmy Carter, Dana Carvey couldn't stand the sight of George H.W. Bush and Darrell Hammond fawned over Bill Clinton.
Race and sex
University of New South Wales researchers have come up with yet another way to categorize someone as racist - if the individual hasn't had a sexual partner of a different race from himself.
You can't make this stuff up.
Sex researchers Denton Callander, Christy Newman and Martin Holt, synthesizing data from an online survey of more than 2,000 gay and bisexual men and the completion of a different survey instrument that measures attitudes on race and diversity, felt they could say definitively that "sexual racism is closely associated with generic racist attitudes, which challenges the idea of racial attraction as solely a matter of person preference."
"While society is general pretty comfortable condemning racism," Callander told the Daily Beast, "there has been a surprising reluctance among people - gay or otherwise - to challenge racialized sex and dating practices."