Finally, someone I don't think is racist

Rosie O'Donnell is not racist, despite what Youtube might say. Her umpteenth rehashing of the classic "Yackity yackity shmackety Hostess Twinkie gibbety gibbety mish mash" joke is only being posited as racist because of a) Michael Richards and b) the continued existence of Youtube in a post-Michael Richards world.

Rosie could have substituted 'Chinese' and 'ching chong ching' with 'Spanish and lots of 'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' or German and 'glochen Schprockfluschensproinkel" with no repercussions. In a Youtube free world the joke would have passed unnoticed.

I almost hope that Youtube and its ilk are sued out of existence, because in the event that it does not disappear, Youtube presents two possible courses for the future of our society. Either people are going to get a little more thick-skinned and reasonable in their responses to things that offend them (not gonna happen) or people are going to have to remain extremely guarded all the time for fear that a captured faux-pas will cause them to be banished for ever (almost certain to happen).

Monoracial nation inexplicably racist!

That's right, Korea, a country with one racial group and an identity based almost entirely on eating food nobody else likes and shunning outsiders, is racist and doesn't even know it. I'm talking about an incident (dealt with in English on The Marmot's Hole blog) on the asinine KBS TV show "The Beauties' Chatterbox". The show features beautiful young foreign women (mostly exchange students and dancers from former soviet satellites) who speak fluent Korean discussing Korea and how great, unique and interesting it is (eventually: being an acquired taste, it takes a looong time to grow to love Korea). One of the young ladies, African-American Leslie Bensfield, was singing a Korean song when singer Cheon Myeong-Hun appeared on stage in a rasta wig and began doing Korea's own version of the classic American blackface, chanting "shickamunce!" (transliteration mine and mine alone), roughly translated: "I'm really black!"

None of this should be any surprise in a country where I've had grown men approach me child-like and either grab my belly and go "Fat" or touch my head and say "No hair!" with a strong sense of wide-eyed wonder. The shock is KBS's reaction to large amounts of criticism from viewers, both Korean and foreign: nothing. They have said it is not racist and that Cheon will continue to appear on the terrible show, despite the incident and being even less talented and attractive than the average Korean pop-star and having crooked teeth.