Today’s Moron: Blackface Mayor

Mr. Mayor accepts his honours.

Today’s Moron is Mel Kuhn, mayor of Arkansas City, Kansas, who dressed up as a fat black woman for a talent contest during a charity fundraiser for foster kids.

It’s way worse than it sounds. After explaining that it wasn’t blackface, but “tanface,” Kuhn (what a name!) tried to justify his actions. “I dressed up to win and because it was so hilarious,” he told newspapers.

Let’s examine Kuhn’s crap in point form:

• Kuhn called himself (herself?) “Smellishis Poon.”
• He was joined by backup dancers he called “The Red-Hot Poontangs.”
• He told Fox News it was okay because they were lip-synching to “black music” like Aretha Franklin. Is this okay with you, Aretha?
• He fucking won. It’s Kansas.
• Oh, wait, the stupidest part: He got the idea from watching the movie Norbit.

After denying that he had done anything wrong, Kuhn finally met with the NAACP and issued an apology. Then he did what all good politicians do: he blamed the media.

“We are poor people, but we don’t have poor ways,” he told foxnews.com. “To paint me as a racist is just not right.” Then he trotted out another classic cracker chestnut, saying he told “a black girl” he was sorry, and she had no problem with it. That’s up there with Sarah Palin talking about being okay with her “close friend” choosing to be gay.

Voters of Arkansas City, I suspect you might be okay with Mayor Kuhn dressing up the way he did. I suspect you stand by your mayor, and stand with him as he weathers this ordeal. I think you might be okay with him acting like a racist in order to raise money for kids who need it, no matter where it comes from.

But when election day rolls around, please remember that Mel Kuhn liked the movie Norbit. Think about that. If you vote him in again, you deserve him.

Indiana Jones and the Endorsement of Cereal

Harrison Ford says George Lucas is thinking up a plot for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Wait, what?

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a mistake. It was a mistake to make it and a mistake to see it. I had high hopes, and I’m sure you did too, but somewhere between the nuclear-proof refrigerator and Shia Laboeuf Tarzaning through the trees, my mind started to wander, and an hour after seeing it I could barely remember it.

This was made even clearer this past weekend when the kids and I watched the original trilogy, which holds up so wonderfully. Crystal Skull doesn’t even come close. Somehow, though, it made a temple full of cash, so yeah, a sequel is likely on its way. And it will be stupid.

It shouldn’t be. I’m not one of those people who harps on Harrison Ford’s age. Yeah, he’s a senior citizen. But he’s also Harrison Ford – he’s Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, the President and that cool guy from American Graffiti. So he can keep being any of those guys for as long as he wants, in my book.

The problem with Crystal Skull was not Harrison Ford. It was the fact that it was dumb. It had so much potential, and I was into it from the start; the casual mention of U.S. intelligence work fit right in with the Jones mythos, and I liked that. But then it started to smell. It started to really smell.

But hey, action figures were in stores, Ford’s face was on signs and posters and toys and games, and you could even get a little plastic Shia. Fast-food outlets were promoting the thing to kids whose parents were kids the last time Ford put on the fedora. You could buy a toy whip at Wal-Mart, which to me just seems so wrong.

“It was everywhere I turned,” Ford told the LA Times yesterday. “I was on a Corn Flakes box or something else. That’s what it takes now to do a good job of marketing a movie like this.”

Yeah, that’s what it takes. Anything to distract people from the actual suckness of it. Indiana Jones, sadly, has become an idea that works without quality films behind it.

It’s really time for Hollywood to quit mining old ideas and come up with something new, says the guy who has the Star Trek movie release date marked on his calendar.