Last night's segment on the Daily Show between Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore was chock full of lots of quotables like:

"White people had a good run, but it's over!"

"All men are created equal - how'd you think that would end?"

"This is what happens when you have a melting pot, the stew gets darker."

I chuckled along until the very end - when Wilmore told Jon to buck up - after all, he gets to say "That's Racist!" now. That joke in particular struck a sour note with me - while I could get the coy reference to other terms, I still can't get over the fact that so many people seem to think pointing out racism is some kind of gotcha strategy, akin to a game or a sport.

The Daily Show [Comedy Central]

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it bugs that a successful, pithy woman with a hilarious New York Times best seller would make such an easy, dumb joke when she could do a lot better. It reminded me of something Margaret Cho once said in a blog post.

She did an interview in which she jokingly called herself chubby, and later, Margaret wrote about why she regretted that:

I want to apologize to myself for saying it, because that is just wrong. I am not chubby – and to call myself that is to endanger the lives of millions of young girls who look to the media to define who they are, who are constantly checking themselves for fear of wrecking themselves, who are afraid to be thought of as 'chubby,' who don’t realize that they are perfect as they are, and it is irresponsible. I fear they will read this article and look at my body and be scared because it is like theirs, and they will then think of themselves as 'chubby'and learn to hate themselves more…. I take it back, as I must take back all the millions of insults that I hurl at myself without knowing it. I would never, ever say any of the horrible things I say to myself about myself to anyone else, not even someone I hated, because there is no one I could possibly hate that much. We must stop fighting the war against ourselves before we can truly start to love ourselves.

Women are constantly publicly denigrating themselves in a way that I think most successful dudes would never do. Chelsea Handler doesn't necessarily owe it to anyone to be a role model, but she owes it to herself not to continue with that negative bullshit.

Funny Girl [W]
Talk Show Host Becomes Best-Selling Author [Washington Post]