People are outraged—outraged!—that a senior GOP official from Orange County, CA sent an email about Barack Obama that questioned his place of birth. But we've all become so numb to the "birther" conspiracies that the outrage wasn't at all about the absurdity of a party official confronting the president of the United States about some conspiracy theory. The outrage was about an attached photo, depicting Obama as an ape.

Anyone who has been on the real Internet knows that the Obama-as-ape Photoshop actually predates the mainstream talk about his birth certificate. How prevalent is it? Very. Here's a collection of artwork depicting the nation's first-ever African American [...]

The year was 2007. Broken-hearted after the New Orleans Saints lost to Chicago in the NFC Championship game, I flew out to Los Angeles to hang out with my best friend from college, Doug. Doug was doing grad work in marine biology at USC. A smart guy, even if he was from Jersey. But even more impressive than his brains and his fancy science trips to Antarctica and his ability to laugh off my global-warming denialism without slapping me, were his drinking and football-watching skills. Also, for a sciency, white-trash sort from New Jersey, he ran with a Hollywood crowd.