Good for you, fellow urbanite: “Despite the fact that the average city dweller may not have seen a starry night’s sky for weeks, it turns out that he still manages to keep his carbon footprint smaller than that of the average person in the country.” It is too bad that the average person does not give a shit about his carbon footprint, but, hey, if this makes you feel superior about yourself, enjoy!

11. Cashew
10. Peanut
9. Chestnut
8. Brazil
7. Filbert
6. Hazelnut
5. Walnut
4. Pistachio
3. Almond
2. Pecan
1. Macadamia

Photo by Eric Kilby.

Remember when the Republicans were all “OH NO THE DEFICIT!” and “Raising taxes will cripple the recovery!”? Yeah, I don’t mean this time, I mean almost twenty years ago. They were wrong then, but since their punishment was twelve uninterrupted years in control of Congress, you can’t exactly blame them for running the same scam again.

by Abe Sauer

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 president as a primate, which builds on a long history of various racist Obama caricatures.

This green t-shirt is sold as the “Obama Chimp T-Shirt” with keywords “Barack Obama, 2008, 08, jefferson’s theme t-shirt, yes we did t-shirt, t-shirt, barack obama stickers, funny democrat hats, college humor republican t-shirts.”

And yes, there is a “Obama Chimp Baby Onesie” version.

The primate entry in a larger gallery of Obama art.

“Chimpout” is a notorious white supremacist site with a robust collection of images like the two above, which happen to be more reserved compared to others. Of course, the “Obamas as primates apes” theme and the fundamental (and admitted) racism of the site is a coincidence.

Update: Chimpout wanted to let people know more about their site. It is…

not a white supremacist website. We accept membership from Asians, Hispanics, Anglo, Indians, Arabs, Jews etc… We have a diverse membership and even our administration multi-racial. The purpose of chimpout.com is to expose the huge disproportionate amount of black crime including rape and murder in relation to the percentage of population.

We do not allow violent rhetoric, Nazi propaganda or other white nationalist garbage on our site.

We exist only to report the huge numbers of black crimes that get swept under the carpet by the mainstream media.

We do of course have our jokes and photo-shops but they are just for amusement. We really think much too highly of apes than to seriously compare them to blacks.

So there you go.

This Planet of the Apes spoof courtesy of Stormfront, the “white pride world wide” forum which counts a good many tea party advocates among its members.

Some of the Obama-as-ape shirts get pulled from online custom apparel sites like Zazzle, but not this one.

And it was less than a year ago that Glenn Beck said, “What planet have I landed on? Did I slip through a wormhole in the middle of the night and this looks like America? It’s like the damn Planet of the Apes!”

When confronted, the Orange County GOP official insisted the image was not at all racist. There exists a rich vein on the Internet of conservative blog posts that don’t seem to understand at all why comparing Barack Obama to a primate is racist, while comparing George Bush to one is not racist. This is a conversation that is still going on.

See, when Bush was president, apparently some upset person or people created a wealth of George W. Bush monkey Photoshops. The argument from many on the right here is that because of this, a hundred years of racist sentiment comparing Africans and African Americans to primates apes is negated.

And then… no, wait, that’s the whole argument.

The Louvre of Obama Photoshop, The People’s Cube, “proved” this reverse racism not long ago when it created identical president shirts likening Bush and Obama to a monkey. One was banned and one was not.

That the Obama one was deemed racist by CafePress and Zazzle, and the Bush one was not, proves racism regarding Obama doesn’t exist and everyone who says so is a hypocrite.

A perfect example of the argument in action is the post accompanying the above “Primate in Chief” image. It’s the kind of reasoning commonly employed in the online political debate, maybe best represented by Andrew Breitbart’s declaration that no racism existed during the health care debate protests because there is no video of anyone using the “n” word, even after he offered a $100,000 bounty. (It’s the kind of “reasoning” that nobody would accept as disproof of Jesus, but, digression.)

The Orange County GOP official’s answer about why she sent the image proves just how mainstream this sentiment about the hypocrisy over “monkey” racism is: “In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race. We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. “

Yes, “a double standard” about all the ignored racism against all the white politicians over all the years.

Of course, the more “sensible” conservative media is spinning this as (another) case of one bad apple serving to “reignite baseless charges that any criticism directed at the president by the right is a function of racism” and give the otherwise not-at-all racist Tea Party a bad name.

The only surprise in this news about the ape photo finding its way to Obama’s inbox is that it has not already happened 10,000 times. Then again, it probably has.

For the record, homophobic emails by GOP leaders are still totally acceptable.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

I unabashedly love photographer Cass Bird and I did not expect her to become the next big hot commercial thing, and yet here she is! Shuffle over, chilly ol’ Rineke Dijkstra! Recently Bird…

• Shot the most recent T cover, of Cate Blanchett;

• Shot Salma Hayek for T before that;

• Directed this “Truth or Dare” video for Sophomore NYC;

• Did the Wrangler campaign with people on fire;

• Directed a Raveonettes video;

• and I don’t even know why there’s this photo of LeBron with her in a fireman’s carry.

Also she apparently has a hot new girlfriend? OH AND: Patrick Schwarzenegger for Details!

“I end up playing video games with a bunch of 23-year-olds until 3 a.m., and he ends up reading the Nietzsche I give him.”
 — Blogger Glenn Greenwald reveals the secrets to making a 19-year age difference work in a relationship. (It’s sweet!) Although I’m not sure the “he prevents me from getting old, cranky, set in my ways, stagnant, and unspontaneous” plan is entirely working, but really all of us on the Internet should probably thank his boyfriend.

“If he’s a ratbag, he’s one of our ratbags. He’s done the crimes and he’s paid for the crimes. This is quite an inhumane punishment, far beyond the treatment he deserves.”
 — Stephen Kenny, attorney for Clifford Tucker, objects to Australia’s decision to deport Tucker to Britain “over a series of crimes, including attempted murder.” (Tucker, 47, moved with his family to Prison Island when he was 6, but never claimed citizenship.) The irony of Australia sending its own miscreants to Knifecrime Island aside, consider this statement from Tucker in mitigation of his offenses: “I’m not a career criminal, I haven’t committed any crimes since 1999 other than a minor assault.” The guy sounds pretty Australian to me.

WTXF NEWS DIRECTOR: We’ve got a two minute hole to fill. I guess we run what’s basically a commercial for a $6000 toilet while you extol its virtues in voiceover, but I worry about the actual newsiness of it. As presently constituted it lacks urgency.

MIKE JERRICK: How about I open the segment by coming out of a bathroom stall?

WTXF NEWS DIRECTOR: Brilliant!

MIKE JERRICK: Maybe we could peg it to tax day. You know, expensive new toilet, why not use your refund money to buy it?

WTXF NEWS DIRECTOR: Jerrick, you’re a fancy-toilet pimping Edward R. Murrow. If only they gave out Pulitzers for television.

[Curtain]

It’s just your typical “otter gets its head stuck in potato chip bag, man rescues otter and stuffs him in a sack and puts him in a van to bring him back to the river, otter chews through sack and attacks man and escapes through broken window in van, man recaptures otter with traffic cone, man returns otter to river, otter is so exhausted that man needs to rescue otter from drowning in river, otter finally recovers” story, but there are some nice photos, and expert advice from an animal ecologist (essentially, “avoid otters”), so you might find it entertaining. Or not. These things don’t appeal to everyone.

That headline says it all, really. The teams whose core players are nearing 30, or have passed it, certainly looked aged last weekend. The Lakers lost, as did the Spurs, while the Celtics, Mavericks and Heat escaped by the skin of their teeth in about as exciting a first round of playoffs as I can remember.

Rarely is the end for basketball players both extreme and definitive; instead, often a gradual deterioration takes place. Players will start getting beaten off the dribble or having their shots blocked — signs that don’t immediately show up in the traditional stats line. But a decline in skills becomes more noticeable when the playoffs arrive and there’s no more scrub teams left to feast upon. Locked in a struggle with younger, fresher, hungrier opponents, older players will look — well, old. Every year there is one such match-up. Last weekend, by my reckoning, there were five. Either that, or it was just a really super-crappy weekend for favorites.

Both may be true. Had the Bulls been playing anyone other than the Indiana Pacers, the 2011 NBA Playoffs’ weakest team, they would’ve lost Game 1. I’ve never seen a player like Derrick Rose. He sleepwalked through much of the second half and yet still scored 39, with 19 points from the line. They were down by ten with three minutes-plus left, and while still maintaining that bored expression, he knifed through the Pacers defense again and again. In Game 2, there was more of the same, although Rose had an off-shooting night. For him.

If Carmelo Anthony hadn’t gone ice-cold at the wrong time and his team all rec-league in the last 45 seconds of the game — a recurring theme for the Knicks’ playoff teams — the Celtics would’ve dug themselves into a hole on Sunday night. Their defense was dogged, but their offense was mediocre. What can you say about Jermaine O’Neal? Nothing, except that he had 12 points and 5 blocks, and probably saved the Celtics season. Out west, the Mavericks, who came a hair from fulfilling the destiny that I laid out for them last week, were one truly otherworldly shooting performance from Jason Kidd (the likes of which I have never seen before from him) away from losing to Portland. And making Mark Cuban cry. It would’ve been so perfect.

The Spurs lost to the Grizzlies after a last-second shot from an unlikely source: Shane Battier. It was a great shot, but had Richard Jefferson hit a wide-open trey at the buzzer to send the game to OT we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation. So I’m not really worried about the team with the Western Conference’s best record. The Spurs were missing their second-best player in Manu Ginobili, who will return for Game Two on Wednesday. And I don’t know if the Grizz can count on that kind of performance from Zach Randolph for the next six games.

The Hawks did to the Magic what I thought they would (just like I told you — once out of eight games) and beat Orlando, in spite of 2,000 points and 1,500 rebounds from Dwight Howard (okay, 46 and 19). I see Orlando winning the next one at home and then losing in Atlanta. And although I think the Nuggets played ably in Oklahoma City, the game still felt like the Thunder are the better team, preserving their energy. The Thunder have two of the better players in the NBA and I still don’t see the Nuggets having any answer for them, no matter how close Game One was.

Shockingly, the two teams that should be the most concerned are the sluggish Lakers, who Hornets point guard Chris Paul tormented so thoroughly, and the thin Heat, against whom a clear roadmap to victory has emerged — have more than the two good players and run them until they need to rest their starters. Both will still win their first-round matchups (the Heat convincingly clobbered the Sixers last night) but I could envision both of them losing in the second round. If either of them lose, it’s a disaster for the league. If both go down, the NBA headquarters will fly their flag at half-mast, for the next decade.

I’m being completely serious.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Keith Allison.