In case you missed it--UPDATED

Last night, at one of the endless, mindless awards shows that allow entertainment types to aggrandize themselves on a network's dime, a showboat of an artist took the stage uninvited and intimidated a much younger woman into yielding the floor to him despite that fact that the moment was, for all intents and purposes, entirely about the woman. This showboat then proceeded to tell the woman--who happens to be of another race than the showboat--that her work was somehow less qualified for recognition than was the work of another woman who happens to be of the same race as the showboat, despite there being absolutely no evidence that such is the case. In fact, the audience didn't seem too surprised when the "winner" was revealed, so I guess you could say that popular opinion was at best split as to who was the most deserving of the title. It should be noted that exactly one of the 5 nominees for the award were of the same race as the . . .ahem. . ."gentleman" who ruined the night. Yet there he was, on national TV, making sure the whole world knew that in his mind, there was only one deserving winner for this award.

And lest we forget, this showboat has made several public pronouncements regarding equality of race in this country. It is not a stretch to say that EVERYTHING this guy does is about race, and it is definitely not a stretch to make that claim when the subject of his tirade last night was a member of a different race.

SO of course, Mr. Race-arbiter-in-chief said something about it today, right? I mean, this case (or to be more accurate, this nutcase) has several more suspicious marks of actual racism than did that famous incident with Skip Gates, right? And yet Obama couldn't WAIT to get on the air and claim that law enforcement acted stupidly to his friend Skip; lord only knows what kind of verbal harranguing is going to come out of this situation.

Actually, President Obama was oddly silent on the whole thing.

And I'd love to believe that he's actually learned that there's a limit to how often people will listen to him react foolishly with regards to race relations. Or maybe that it is not his place, as the President, to talk about silly events in pop culture.

But color me skeptical. These events aren't supposed to happen anymore, not with the great Obama as President. And like it or not, he "owns" race issues. He's gone to that well one too many times in other circumstances that absolutely did not merit his involvement to just turn a blind eye now. At the very least, this has got to be what he calls a "teachable moment". . .right?

No, I think Obama's silence can be chalked up to one thing and one thing only: the showboat is a black man. And as much as Kanye West deserves an upbraiding of historic proportions from every person who has any influence anywhere, especially from any man who purports to be some kind of racial healer, we will not hear anything from Obama.

The cowardly lion had absolutely nothing on this guy.

You know, I've said many a time before that being a lefty means never having to say you're sorry. There's always some out, some scapegoat that can be blamed that keeps a lefty from taking accountability for his or her actions.

Well, I've got another axiom of today's America: being black means never having to worry about being called a racist.

For the rest of America, though: stand by. Your lecture is a-comin'--and with far less of a "trigger" than was provided by West last night!

UPDATE: HotAir is reporting that an ABC reporter tweeted that Obama called West something unkind. . .off the record. I'm treating that with a huge ol' piece of salt; as far as we know, some young whipper-snapper at ABC thought this was an easy way for their guy to score points with a country that is well aware of what West did last night. Off the record means "does not exist", and that's exactly how I'm treating that report: Obama didn't say nuthin'! I'll wait for Gibbs or Obama himself to weigh in on this WITH THE TAPES ROLLING before I believe they actually called West out.