Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

In an on-air graphic, above, yesterday, FOX News referred to Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, as “Obama’s Baby Mama!”

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Rebecca Sealfon, 1997 Scripps Spelling Bee champ, casts her vote

I don’t actually share the outrageous ecstasy Barack Obama’s upcoming nomination has unleashed on our land. But when it comes to compressing said elation into a seventy-second video breakbeat, Jay Smooth of illdoctrine.com inspires pure joy. Had Black Eyed Peas front-man Will.I.Am done something as unpretentious and true as this piece, or as Jay’s earlier Pulp Fiction/Clinton superdelegate mashup, I wouldn’t have to keep talking about him, or his blathering, tepid “Yes We Can.” Still yet, a small price to pay in order to see real talent. Rock rock rock on, Jay.

Better buy his pops one ginormous Father’s Day gift: Eliot Spitzer

Since his fast-moving disgrace and subsequent resignation on March 17 over a prostitution scandal, former NY State governor and superdelegate Eliot Spitzer has been maintaining an incredibly low profile.

Indeed, many who watched his resignation, live, on television, may remember wondering what this once seemingly unstoppable leader, not yet fifty years old, would do with the rest of his life. Assuming he would refuse Playgirl‘s offer to pose nude—which apparently he, thankfully, did—what would his next act be? How would he make a living, given his pariah status? Where would he go?

Apparently, Spitzer’s gone the same place all kids go when they mess up: Home.

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This looks very familiar: C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) in The Clone Wars

Please: I want someone to tell me, and I want you to be honest:

Am I a bad person because, after looking at the trailer for Lucasfilm Animation’s upcoming CGI series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I feel almost nothing, except, perhaps, the loss of animation director Genndy Tartakovsky?

Tartakovsky (b. 1970) helmed the similarly-titled, Emmy Award-winning Star Wars: Clone Wars. The microseries aired on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005, much as the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars will run there this fall. (Tartakovsky first became known for the long-running Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory on that animation channel.)

I saw Clone Wars when it was released on DVD in 2005.

I’m still reeling from it.

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Aside from the performances themselves, what I love about Kanye West’s 2007 single, “Classic (Better Than I’ve Ever Been),” where he invites Nas, KRS-One, and Rakim to join him in the cipher, is that, though guests, they all spank him, like a child, on his own record.

As it’s been often said, don’t send a boy in to do a man’s job.

Coming up short, fellas? Well, trust me: Women love nothing more than a man with a hot car, and nothing makes a car hotter than flames. Not painted-on flames, but flames for real, blastin’ out the back.

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I first saw this beyond-sleek sofa, called Acceleration, on Kanye West’s design-aggressive blog, KanyeWestUniversity.

At present, it’s only a digital design study, but let’s hope that Philip Grass can get it off the screen, and into appropriately hyperminimalist, off-white homes, rapidly.

“This baby is black. It’s a dark, ugly thing.”

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars was talkng about a pending bill when, in February, he uttered those words on the statehouse floor.

In the uproar that followed, he called the NAACP-led protest against his remarks a “hate lynch mob,” adding “How do I know what words I’m supposed to use in front of those people?”

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I’ve adored the work of Iraqi-born, London-based architect Zaha Hadid for years, and soon 1.7 million Poles will, also. Notes The New York Times, the Pritzker Prize-winning Hadid—the only woman to have been awarded the field’s “Nobel”—is about to construct a residential structure towering 790 feet above Warsaw’s streets.

Called Lilium Tower, the sleek, glass-covered building, with floor space of 1.1 million square feet has a fleur-de-lis motif and is to house apartments, a condominium hotel and commercial and recreational facilities on a site facing the city’s Palace of Culture. Some planning permits are still needed; completion is expected in 2012.

Remember when the extant question about Hadid was, “Yes, but when will she actually build something?” Now it’s “When will she stop?”

Bravo, Zaha. Keep ’em guessing….

I’ve been a big fan of David Walker’s BadAzz MoFo from its zine days, and was honored to be blogrolled by him recently.

But I don’t know if anything he’s ever done thrills me more than the poster for his blaxploitation short, Black Santa’s Revenge, starring naught other than Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead).

Check the tagline: “He Knows When You’ve Been Naughty.” Come on. As they say in the U.K., brilliant.