Comedy Central has renewed sketch comedy series “Key & Peele” for a second season of 10 episodes that will premiere in the fall. Announcement comes in advance of the third episode of “Key,” which airs Tuesday. The first season had an eight-episode order. “Key” was created by and stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. When the show premiered Jan. 31, it drew 2.1 million viewers, giving Comedy Central its best series launch since 2009. The show was No. 1 in its timeslot across all of television among men 18-34. “Because ‘Key & Peele’ has been so immediately and universally well-received, I was worried if we didn’t give the show a quick pick up, people might accuse me of being racist,” joked Comedy Central head of original programming and production Kent Alterman.

If you need to be convinced that you should be watching Key & Peele at 10:30 on Tuesdays, which strikes me as the absolutely essential comedic exploration of the age of Obama, read my conversation with Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele here. Or my breakdown of their most important sketches here.

Peter Brimelow

As noted by PFAW, this year, among the participants in the conference is Peter Brimelow and Robert Vandervoort. Brimelow is the founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE, a site known for publishing the works of racist and anti-Semitic authors. Robert Vandervoort is the director of ProEnglish, an English-only group, and is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance.

These aren’t just your average conservative activists. They have actively pushed the idea that our diversity is killing us, that Jews are destroying the American white majority, and that non-white immigrants are the cause for our economic problems.

We’ve already seen a GOP more than willing to use racially-coded language throughout the primary season. But is presumed front runner Romney really going to appear at the same conference as people who spew such hatred towards people of color and ethnic minorities? If he wants to be the president of ALL Americans and not just white Americans, Mitt Romney should refuse to speak today. And if he feels he must go on stage, then he needs to denounce Brimelow and Vanervoort’s odious beliefs from the stage. Anything less is tantamount to agreeing with what they say.

It may just be that my personal taste in baroque redneck feuds is low, but since Justified introduced Limehouse (and, as Matt Zoller Seitz astutely points out, took a huge step towards remedying the odd exclusion of African-American characters from its particular Kentucky cartography), I find myself much more interested in what’s going on in Noble’s Holler than in whatever antics the Crowder gang is up to this particular week: the drama there is drawn from a deep and particular wellspring rather than manufactured for maximum baroqueness and squick. I’d much rather plumb race relations in Harlan than an organ-smuggling ring.

We learn about Noble’s Holler and Raylan in the same breath, every time he speaks of it. “Noble’s Holler. Nice community,” he tells Brooks as they drive out to meet with Limehouse. “Carved out for emancipated slaves after the Civil War. Good white folks of the county trying to dig them out going on 150 years now.” Brooks is amused, but she’s also intrigued, telling him “You’re all up on your race relations.” But she’s only willing to give Raylan so much credit. When he tells her “I pay attention during Black History Month,” she wants to know “So you’re bringing me along on a mission to African America to smooth your path?” But I like that he’s done the same for her: maybe the whiteness of the Harlan that we’ve seen is a testament to the depth and persistence of segregation. There are places each of them can’t walk comfortably, or at all, if they go alone.

And we find out later, that used to be literally true. As Raylan explains to Boyd, Noble’s Holler, and Limehouse himself, served that role in Raylan’s life. When he was a child and his father, both drunk and sober, got violent with his mother, she fled a familiar route, a kind of reverse underground railroad. “Oh, I’d heard the stories,” Raylan muses. “White women seeking shelter there, white men not daring to follow them in. Not Arlo, though. He wasn’t scared of black folks.” It’s a fascinating reversal of the white supremacist stereotypes of black men ravaging white women, and a piece of information I’d imagine has repercussions throughout Harlan, whether they’re acknowledged—or seen—or tacitly ignored. I’d have to imagine that acting as a sanctuary is one reason white men in particular would want to uproot Noble’s Holler: if white women have an interest in acting in at least some solidarity with black communities, that’s a risky proposition for the men at the top.* But all of this fascinating speculation is, and I fear will remain, largely for naught as long as white men are, for once, trying to get in Limehouse’s stronghold in pursuit of Mags’ money.

I quite like the revelation that what’s left of that mythical pile is “$46,313, and receipts for everything your mama spent buying every piece of land for that mine deal.” There’s something nice about announcing in that the bloodbath to follow will be over a deeply diminished share of ill-gotten gains, that Harlan’s crooks are tearing themselves to pieces over small cash. Everything, it seems, is like Mags’ rotten and bug-infested marijuana, not even good enough to send up in a glorious burst of smoke. But that means we’re going to have to care something about these criminals. And I’m not sure I’m much invested in an organ-snatching orderly, or even much in Boyd’s effort to become a small-time white-supremacist-tinged Stringer Bell, especially since he doesn’t seem good enough at it to be worth the effort.

And while Quarles is nutty enough to watch, his race-tinged sermon to Devil that “Chasing money through a black holler? Cozying up with people you’d just as soon see swinging?…Can I get an amen?…I have the resources to turn your shitty little project or whatever you call it into a money-making machine,” feels weirdly false, especially given that Quarles comes from a heavily black industrial city and it’s hard to imagine the syndicate he represents is all-white. When the concept of Noble’s Holler touches on something weird, and specific, and emotionally true, Quarles’ rant feels like a put-on to me. We haven’t seen enough below the surface for me to see him as a truly worthy opponent yet, in organizational or metaphorical terms.

*With this proposition out there, I was a big disappointed that Brooks, as it turns out, seems to be the daughter or granddaughter of one of the women in The Help, and that Raylan’s conversation with her about her heritage extends about as far as noting that Ole Miss girls are pretty.

Franzen’s point is that with a e-books, an author never need “finish” writing a book. The ability to constantly revise, improve or worsen and censor remains. While authors, publishers and distributors today aren’t taking full advantage of this, certainly it cannot be far. Think of the controversies surrounding the teaching of Huck Finn. In an e-book world, Nigger Jim gets renamed to Jim or Black Jim or Slave Jim or something that may offend fewer, but tells us less about the culture and society in which the book was written.

A couple of thoughts. First, I think even though it’s theoretically possible to keep editing a digital manuscript in a way it’s not possible to change a print copy, there are still some structural factors mitigating against it being a major problem. Most writers I know tend to feel that they have to walk away from a project at some point, if only for their own sanity. I know writing a novel is different from blogging, of course, but even then, folks feel like they have to be done sometime. And even if they don’t, I think there’s probably a limit to the extent to which digitial publishers are going to be willing to push fixes, something that requires a lot of file maintenance, checking to make sure changes haven’t introduced new errors, and then either updating or getting readers to update their texts, something that might seem particularly annoying for new tweaks rather than minor functionality.

And second, there’s been real resistance to authors going back and fiddling with what are considered foundational texts, whether George Lucas is making Greedo shoot first or an edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” These alterations tend to be treated as a kind of cowardice, whether it’s Lucas lacking the courage to make Han Solo kind of a jerk or the political correctness that avoids exposing people to uncomfortable ideas and words even if those things might move their thinking forward. I don’t normally trust the market with a lot of things. But I’m actually reasonably confident that outcries against endless tinkering, customer demands for the portability of content from device to device and from format to format, and the desire to retain customers will make it easier to preserve digital content in its original form. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to back up those forces with an independent dedication to digital archiving. But unless things change, I think this might be a case where customers’ demands and the imperative to preserve texts are relatively closely aligned.

At the end of last night’s episode of House of Lies, Jeannie may just have been talking about Marty when she told him “I might possibly be the only person on the planet who has known you longer than five minutes and actually likes you. And all you do is shit on me. So fuck you.” But to a certain extent, she could have been talking about the show’s attitude towards women. Like Marty, House of Lies may not be aware that what it’s doing to its female characters is bad. But it is, to the point that I’m considering walking away from what I once saw as a promising show.

First, let’s talk about Marty’s “Medusa black-hole ex.” From day one, it’s been a huge problem for the show that Monica is supposed to be both a pill-popping, irresponsible sex maniac who also happens to be completely fantastic at her job and together when it comes to her professional life. There’s a bridge to be drawn here about how the skills that you need to be an excellent management consultant could make you a toxic person in personal relationships. But there’s a difference between treating people instrumentally and getting yourself so blotto you can’t be roused, a state that doesn’t tend to discriminate between days when you have to be at work early and days you don’t. And the show has never really explained that fundamental contradiction, or explained who Monica is as a person at all (much less what drew Marty to her in the first place).

She’s nothing but a vile shrew, telling Jeremiah that he hates her not because, as he puts it “you’re toying with my son, you ignore yours, and you are the perfect poster girl for narcissism, but “because you want to fuck me.” She shows up to care for Roscoe not because she actually cares but because her married lover reneged on a promise to take her to Fiji. And are we supposed to believe for a minute that Jeremiah would leave Roscoe with her when push came to shove given what comes next doesn’t seem totally out of left field? “I arranged an internship for his fat as fuck daughter. I even let him…do you know what a golden shower is?” Monica rants, before dragging Roscoe along with her to burgal her lover’s house for what she thinks she’s owed: “We are talking about roughly $16,000, and that is a conservative monetization.” They bond briefly over how great she looks in a couture dress (I do wish the show hadn’t fallen back on the gay/gender-questioning kid=fashion maven trope), and then Monica decides to steal a painting. “It’s kind of creepy,” Roscoe tells her of the Egon Schiele. And of course it’s all about Monica, again: “There’s still some beauty in there, isn’t there?” she needs to know. Ultimately, Roscoe gets himself to school and out of her way, but it’s frightening to think what a less-resourceful kid might have been dragged into.

All of this is not to say that female characters can’t be loathesome. But if we’re supposed to believe that she and Marty are deeply entangled, and by something other than just sex, that she’s very good at her job, there has to be something else going on here, and we need to be made to see and understand it. We got at least some of that last week, with Jeannie’s on-the-road affair, though again, it would have been nice if we knew more about her engagement before we saw her reacting badly to it. And I barely even want to get into Clyde and his corn-eating Mormon, a nakedly gross-out tactic that continues to confine Clyde to a distasteful combination of infantile and frat boy.

The one thing I thought worked well about this episode was the way it handled race and ethnicity. As soon as it became clear, as Marty put it that “Brant Butterfield: racist? He’s not going to want to hear a word out of my mouth except for the best way to shine a shoe or the optimal way to load luggage into a Pullman car,” the show could have done something corny about race and reconciliation. Instead, Marty went into killer mode, taking advantage of the situation to set up a test for Jeannie while getting himself out of responsibility for a situation that was doomed to awkwardness. And he first bonded with the secretly-Jewish CFO, then warning him in Jeannie’s presentation that he’d be only too happy to sell him out, saying “You should check and make sure that number is…kosher.” Sometimes, it’s satisfying to see bigots learn. And sometimes, it’s satisfying to see Marty say “I’m sorry for interrupting, Mr. Butterfield. Sometimes I just don’t know my place,” all while putting Butterfield in his.

Reacting to a Democratic colleagues apparently incendiary request to celebrate a Latino American day, State Rep. Cecil Ash (R) declared that he’d support the idea as long as there’s a holiday for white people too. “I’m supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you’ll have a day for us,” he said. Ash was “trying to lighten things up,” but when CBS 5 asked if he was serious about a Caucasian holiday, he offered an unequivocal “yes”:

ASH: Yes, I think it was appropriate. It was appropriate for the mood that was in the House and I think that if and when the Caucasian population becomes a minority, they may want to celebrate the accomplishments and the contributions of the Caucasian population the same way.

You can watch the report here. As CBS 5 notes, some Arizonans were supportive of the idea. “Good idea,” said one woman. “Like they have Cinco de Mayo for Mexicans. We need something for whites.”

Rick Tyler is Gingrich's former communications director who now runs his SuperPAC.

Last night, Gingrich’s most prominent surrogate, former Communications Director Rick Tyler, went on the offensive during an MSNBC interview with Rachel Maddow and the Rev. Al Sharpton when asked about his candidate’s racial rhetoric. He accused the anchors of “race-baiting,” and claimed Democrats are hurting African-Americans:

TYLER: It’s baloney. MSNBC ought to get off this race-baiting kick…The Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln…this was started as a civil rights party. If you go back to the 1856 Democratic platform it’s a racist platform…The Democratic Party — you can ask Al Sharpton about that, I think he would agree that the Democrats have failed in the public schools with the African-Americans. They abort their babies. They’ve done nothing to lift them out of poverty.

Watch it:

Sharpton retorted that it was Gingrich who was making race an issue in the campaign by singling out minorities for excoriation in his speeches.

Tyler resigned over Gingrich’s infamous Greek cruise, but has reemerged as the head of his Sheldon Aldelson-funded SuperPAC, Winning Our Future.

Has there been a better image of the contempt with which addicts are so often regarded as Glen Fogel’s sick game of Harlan roulette with one of his employees on Justified last night? I think it’s very easy for shows about drugs and crime to focus on criminals, who have more wherewithal to plot and execute, and who are more thrilling, and perhaps more comfortable, to sympathize with than the people who purchase and use their project. There are notable exceptions, of course, like Bubbles on The Wire. But I think there’s something powerful about watching criminals directly exploit the people who produce their profits or in other ways facilitate their crimes. These transactions aren’t just made in money: they’re paid in emotion and blood as well.

“You win, you get a pill. You lose, I’ll put a pill in your casket for you,” Glen says, his contempt only becoming clearer the more he speaks. “With all the oxy you do, you’ll live just a few more years anyway…you thought I was going to let you kill yourself in my office? Maybe it’s just your lucky day. Or maybe not.” Addicts don’t even seem to be people to him, he’s amused by, rather than appalled by or sympathetic to, the level of the dead man’s need. It’s clear why those assumptions about addiction are useful to him, but that contempt can also be a weakness. Fogel clearly relies on Raylan agreeing that an addict’s word isn’t worth much of anything, and he’s surprised when Raylan’s willing to rely on the man who “hung me up in a tree,” though perhaps the fact that “he didn’t hit me with a bat” counts for a little extra.

If that operation is coming to a messy end, Boyd Crowder is hoping for a new beginning to a well-run empire. “My father, he considered himself a Harlan criminal. But he became more than a middle-man,” Boyd monologues. “His association cost him his life. We will not make that mistake. We will work within Harlan. We will control every aspect of crime within its boundaries…We will be meticulous, and we will be clean. No more smash-and-grabs…we’re all sitting together at this table in service of the almighty dollar.” It’s not clear, however, that he has what it takes to be Stringer Bell—or Quarles, for that matter. While the latter man has awfully nice-runnig tracks on his wicked little gun, Boyd’s style is still to bust into establishments with guns and to spell his name out for the title transfer. Boyd’s approach may be right at home in the holler, but Quarles seems more likely to be a transformational figure.

Especially if race comes into play. Travis Bickle may not precisely be a model of racial reconciliation, though it remains to be seen what of his views Quarles absorbed when he was at an age to be watching the children’s programming his father denied him. But at least Quarles doesn’t have tattoos and a racist upbringing, the kinds of things that prompt Limehouse to inquire of Boyd “There are those who wish my people harm, and there are those who wish for the restoration of white supremacy in the land. Do you believe that?” Harlan’s a long way from being any sort of peaceable kingdom. But the players have revealed themselves if the lines have yet to be firmly drawn. Gunfights seem likely. And Raylan might want to swap for some boot that are made for running.

First, there’s Isaiah Whitlock, Jr., who will be forever defined by state Sen. Clay Davis’ favorite obscenity:

He’s already had to imitate Omar in Cedar Rapids (one of the better, and more overlooked, small comedies of the last year):

And in Red Hook Summer, Whitlock gets forced to pretend to be Davis again in the movie’s most forced, artificial moment, one that interrupts a tremendously powerful plot line. It’s unfortunate that people want so much to be associated with The Wire or to make in-jokes about the show that they’re willing to sacrifice their own world-building and dramatic continuity to do it.

It’s less irritating, but still depressing, to see the actors who so thoroughly inhabited roles on The Wire getting stuck in those kinds of roles again. That kind of repetition is the hallmark of LUV, the depressing-on-many-levels movie about Vincent (Common), a man trying to start a small business after his release from prison, who gets pulled back into his old life as a killer for drug dealers, and pulls his nephew in along with him. The movie’s riddled with implausibilities and disturbing ideas, including the idea that an elementary-school kid would easily and automatically be comfortable wielding a gun, negotiating with high-level drug dealers, and running away to North Carolina. But it’s perhaps most disturbing for a movie that wants to transcend our stereotypes about black men using black actors in the same old roles over and over again.

First, there’s Michael K. Williams, who, after Omar’s death, has apparently been reincarnated in the person of a Baltimore homicide detective. Unfortunately, karma hasn’t seen fit to give him Jimmy McNulty’s panache or faculty with language. He spends a lot of time saying things like, “You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You can still do something with your life.” Then, there’s Anwan Glover, who’s been downgraded from the glories of Slim Charles to playing a drug kingpin named Enoch who appears mostly to hang out menacingly in an abandoned warehouse, to be duped into believing that Vincent didn’t actually kill one of his relatives when of course he did, and to buy a large cache of drugs off of Vincent’s nephew, who is acting as the front for the deal. It’s a totally stereotypical, flimsy role, though Glover does a nice job with it.

It’s one thing to be defined in public memory by the best role you’ve ever played. It’s quite another to be forced by your industry to inhabit it over and over again. Killing a tough, transcendent role ought to be proof that you should be allowed to do a wide range of other things, not that the public will only buy black men as aggrieved or menacing.

Even before he got to Sundance, the Hollywood Reporter framed a Q&A with him by saying that Lee discussed “what he sees as a dearth of influence among African-Americans in Hollywood.” That kind of framing makes a fact seem like an opinion. During the Q&A, Lee asks his questioner multiple times to name an African-American in the entertainment industry who has the power to greenlight a movie, and the only person THR can come up with is an animation executive. All the studies of race and gender representation in the industry show that people of color are dramatically underrepresented in directing, writing, and producing positions. The only way that Spike Lee’s observations about race and Hollywood are an opinion rather than a fact is if the industry consensus is that it’s fine for people of color to be underrepresented in entertainment relative to their actual presence in the population. And if that’s the case, I’d really rather someone in Hollywood say that up front than listen to folks pretend that getting racial and gender diversity in positions of power is important to them.

And I think a lot of people in Hollywood want to believe they’re squarely committed to racial justice, or at least proportional racial representation. You see that in Charlize Theron trying to buck up Viola Davis after the latter says that not looking like Halle Berry makes it harder for black women to get good roles in mainstream entertainmentby telling Davis that “You have to stop saying that, because you’re hot as shit,” a statement that asks Davis to ignore the assumptions that have measurably governed her career and suggests that self-esteem can overcome institutionalized racism.

You see that in the affection for The Help, a perfect example of the kind of movie that Red Hook Summer co-writer James McBride is talking about when he says, “Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller– writer, musician, filmmaker. Being black is like serving as Hoke, the driver in ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ except it’s a kind of TV series lasts the rest of your life: You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro, you love that boss, your lives are stitched together, but only when the boss decides your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid.”

But complaining about this, even for 30 seconds, which is about as long as what the press has called Lee’s Sundance “rant” or “tirade” lasted. As McBride put it in that same essay, “When George Lucas complained publicly about the fact that he had to finance his own film because Hollywood executives told him they didn’t know how to market a black film, no one called him a fanatic. But when Spike Lee says it, he’s a racist militant and a malcontent.” The easiest way to marginalize a truth that would require you to make genuine changes if you accepted it is to marginalize the person telling it, to make him out to be crazy, or extreme, or whiny, or demanding rather than justifiably angry. That’s what’s happening to Spike Lee. Journalists should be thoughtful about what kinds of perceptions they’re abetting, and whether they’re framing the reaction to the Red Hook Summer session, or the reaction to The Help, or any other discussion of race in Hollywood in a way that’s the best representation of the truth, or a representation of a mass mentality that’s running scared.

From the subtle to the sickening, this Republican primary season has seen a normalizing of racist and racially-coded language. It was not so long ago that the chairman of the Republican National Committee apologized for his party’s history of “trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” and told the NAACP, “I am here today as the Republican Chairman to tell you we were wrong.” Such leadership cannot be found now.

Newt Gingrich may be the new master of race politics with his efforts to label Barack Obama the “food-stamp president” and his generous offer to lecture African-Americans at the NAACP on why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps. We know that Mr. Gingrich’s claims of being a “historian” for Freddie and Fannie are a strain, but would it be that hard for him to check the history of NAACP’s leadership on developing and demanding groundbreaking job creation policies? (Or to note that more food stamp recipients are white than any other race or ethnicity?) But why would a historian let facts get in the way of historical racial prejudice?

ThinkProgress’ Jeff Spross has compiled a recent history of the GOP’s dehumanizing and divisive language that threatens to plague the primary process for weeks to come. Watch it:

This morning, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the highest-ranking African American in the House, told CNN’s Candy Crowley this morning that he would not call Newt Gingrich a racist, but said the presidential candidate has been using language that appeals to those in the GOP who “will see President Obama as different from all other presidents that we’ve had.” Crowley asked if the term “food stamps president” was a racial comment. Clyburn replied that it’s similar to other racially-coded comments that are not explicitly racist:

CROWLEY: Is that necessarily a racist comment?

CLYBURN: It’s not necessarily so, but a welfare queen being uttered by Ronald Reagan is not necessarily a comment…but people know what that means. [...] All of this carries certain connotations that people know very, very well, and I think [Gingrich] practiced that perfectly.

Watch Clyburn’s answer here:

During a debate earlier this month, Gingrich said he did not see why making food stamps a racial issue was insulting. He has said the African American community should be asking for paychecks, not food stamps, but in reality, most food stamps recipients are white. Nonetheless, he agreed to meet with black leaders yesterday to explain himself.

The Hill reports, “The man said what Gingrich was asking for amounted to a ‘new form of slavery’ and would force young African Americans to drop out of school.” Gingrich engaged with the man, who said he had spoken with Rev. Al Sharpton, asking Gingrich to meet with him, along with NAACP president Ben Jealous and black TV personalities Roland Martin and Juan Williams. “Sure — glad to do it,” Gingrich replied. “I’d be willing to do it. I know Al.”

Gingrich has come under increasing fire for rhetoric on food stamps and child labor than many view as racially-tinged. Yesterday, he said “work” was a “foreign, distant concept” to Williams, whom Gingrich scolded a few days earlier for asking about race.

In New Hampshire earlier this month, an African-American man confronted Gingrich at campaign stop, telling the former Speaker to “stop using blacks as a punching bag.”

Williams later insisted he wasn’t offended by Gingrich’s pointed defense, but did say his food stamps rhetoric is “very racial and…unless I missed it, black people haven’t been out there demanding food stamps, or marching for food stamps.”

Today, during a campaign stop in South Carolina, Gingrich recalled his exchange with Williams and used the same kind of suggestive language that Williams had objected to — this time directed at Williams himself:

GINGRICH: I had a very interesting dialogue Monday night in Myrtle Beach with Juan Williams about the idea of work, which seemed to Juan Williams to be a strange, distant concept.

Watch it:

Many pundits have seen racial undertones in Gingrich’s belittling of Williams during the debate. “That’s the way I like to spend my Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: watching Newt Gingrich sneer at Juan Williams, a black man, for having the temerity to ask him” a tough question, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote.

Gingrich’s equally insulting assessment of the debate exchange likely won’t help.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Speaker Gingrich, you recently said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic, and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?

GINGRICH: No, I don’t see that.

Watch it:

It’s deeply disturbing that a man who claims he should be president of the United States cannot understand why his remarks are offensive. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans are not on food stamps. Indeed, the majority of people who receive food stamps are white. Most recipients are also either children or seniors who are of retirement age. In 2010, working women represented only 28 percent of recipients, and working-age men represented only 17 percent.

Gingrich’s suggestion that food stamps are somehow a preeminent black issue flies in the face of reality. Worse, it lumps all African-Americans together as federal aid recipients when the overwhelming majority of working-age black men and women are self-supporting taxpayers. Thousands of them are professionals such as doctors or lawyers. One of them is the President of the United States.

Sadly, Gingrich’s snide answer earned an enthusiastic response from the largely white, Republican audience at the debate. The only thing more disturbing than the fact that Gingrich cannot understand why his comments are so deeply offensive is the fact that his ignorance is shared by others.

“Nina likes to say we’re an equal opportunity offender…I personally am thrilled with everything we’re doing. I’m happy with the growth. I feel we’re growing. I think there’s room to grow. I’m thrilled with the arena, with CBS, who knows what a big, bold joke means,” he told an audience of critics, many of whom have argued that the show’s signal weakness is its heavy reliance on obvious racial humor. “I don’t find it offensive, any of this. I find it comic to take everybody down…Being a comedy writer gives you permission to be an outsider and poke fun at what people think of other people.”

King defended the jokes about Matthew Moy’s diner manager Han Lee, saying “I like the fact that he’s an immigrant. I like the fact that he’s trying to fit into America. I like the fact that in the last 3 episodes we haven’t made an Asian character, we’ve only made short jokes.”

He also said that he thought the show was an authentic representation of the relationships between people of different races and backgrounds in gentrifying New York neighborhoods.

“I feel that it is broad and brash and very current. It takes place in Williamsburg, NY,” he said. “It is a complete mashup of young, irreverent hipsters, old-school people, different nationalities, different ethnic backgrounds. And what our show represents is that mashup of smart girls and a wide range of characters. Nina [Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment] likes to say we’re an equal opportunity offender. I like to say that the big story about race on our show is so many are represented. The cast is incredibly multi-ethnic, including the regulars and the guest stars. We sort of represent what New York used to be, and still is, a melting pot.”

King did acknowledge that the show would continue to develop supporting characters of color like Garrett Morris’s Earl, who he said got a more substantial storyline in an upcoming episode. And he suggested that while his obligation was to expand the two main characters (who he said had their origins in stereotypes as well) first, he “didn’t think the [supporting] characters were one note. I thought they were the first note.”

But it was an undeniably tense session, with King at one point calling out The Wrap critic Tim Molloy and, in a lame attempt at proving the humor he was defending can work, suggesting that Molloy’s Irish heritage is the source of sexual problems. I’m told that critics asked these kinds of questions at summer press tour, so it’s difficult to believe that CBS in general, which has another broad ethnic show debuting in Rob, or King in particular would have been surprised by them. Perhaps he genuinely believes that these sort of jokes are cutting edge in the same way he suggested that the show’s sex jokes reflect the fact that the show is “8:30, on Monday on CBS in 2012. It’s a very different world than 8:30 on Monday on CBS in 1994.” If this is as far as we’ve come, we’ve got a long haul ahead of us.

At a town hall event meant to appeal to Latino voters at a Mexican restaurant in Manchester, an African-American man confronted Gingrich about recent comments he made that have drawn the ire of the NACCP and other civil rights leader. Gingrich controversially said last week, “I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

At the event today, Yvan Lamothe, a 59-year-old former New Hampshire state employee and small business owner, drew strong applause from the crowd when he told Gingrich that he has never taken welfare or food stamps and was offended by Gingrich’s suggestion that most African Americans do. Gingrich responded with something like the classic “some of my best friends are black” defense, noting that he has worked with people like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in the past:

LAMOTHE: My question to you is, do think blacks represent an American problem. And if you don’t think that, when you start using blacks in general as a stepping stone or a punching bag–

GINGRICH: I didn’t say that. I just want to say that frankly this makes me very irritated. The Democratic National Committee took totally out of context half of the sentence, OK? I mean clearly somebody who’s served with Colin Powell, who has served with Condoleezza Rice, I have a fairly good sense of the fact that African Americans have many contributions to America.

Gingrich went on to say that he simply wants to help more people of all ethnicities find jobs and get them off food stamps.

ThinkProgress spoke with Lamothe after the event, who was not satisfied with Gingrich’s response. “He didn’t say some black people, he just said black people. I was incensed by that,” he said. “He didn’t really really address it, he said he didn’t say it, but he’s clearly on tape saying it,” Lamothe added. “He should stop using blacks as a punching bag.” Lamothe concluded: “It was erroneous, it was wrong, and it was not fair.”

Woman (right) confronts Santorum

While speaking about welfare reform last week, Santorum was quoted as saying, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” The candidate now denies that he said “black,” claiming instead that he said “blah.”

At the campaign stop Saturday, the woman — who slipped away from the event before ThinkProgress was able to get her name — asked, “Why do you have a problem against black people?”

WOMAN: Mr. Santorum, why do you have a problem against black people? We are the only ones who need aid? The statistics show that it’s not the popularity [sic] that’s the most needy.

SANTORUM: I didn’t say that. I understand that.

WOMAN: OK, then why’d you say that?

SANTORUM: OK, we gotta go. I didn’t say that.

See a photo of the exchange with an audio recording of it: