Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The latest Pew Research Center survey found a lot of things that should cheer President Obama.

New York Congressman Peter King and Arizona Sen. John McCain have reintroduced their resolution to pardon legendary black boxer Jack Johnson for a bogus crime that happened a century ago. King and McCain first introduced the resolution a few years ago. There was no opposition to the resolution in the House or Senate when they did, and none when they reintroduced it this week.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas peppered an attorney with a question during oral arguments on a South Carolina death penalty case. The questioning of an attorney by a Supreme Court Justice normally would not make news. Thomas’s question did, not because it was penetrating, involved a complex point of law, elicited important data or because he asked it out of just plain curiosity, but because he even asked it at all. It was a rarity. He asked it five years ago, and hasn’t asked another question since then.

Despite the best efforts of some to overlook this still harsh and ugly racial reality in America, many of the approximate 6 million persons — 2 percent — who routinely designate themselves on the census as multiracial, share their own bitter experience with the sting of racial bigotry in the streets and the workplace.

The shock waves from liberal and moderate Democrats, not to mention Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, the two rivals of then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama were palpable in January 2008.

[Editor’s Note: Next Tuesday evening at 7 in Council Chambers at City Hall, Dr. Hutchinson will deliver a lecture on the subject “Words Have Meaning.”]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney sounded more like a man trying to convince himself than anybody else when he told NBC News that President Obama will be a one-term president.

The instant Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were gunned down at a public meet-and-greet in Tucson, leaving six dead—including a federal judge, several retirees, and a 9-year-old Student Council representative—Tea Party grandmaster Sarah Palin and leaders of her movement swung into damage-control mode.

New South Books press people had barely sent word out that the editors would remove any mention of the n-word from their upcoming edition of Mark Twain's immortal classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when the backlash began.

Who would have thought that Kim Kardashian would take off on Kobe Bryant for anything other than their shared sports and celebrity status?