With Senator Barack Obama’s mixed heritage we will definitely see a lot of the, how should I say this, more colorful areas of the mass media explore some colorful areas of the human experience.

The first two are CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck who said “He’s very white in many ways,” adding, “Gee, can I even say that? Can I even say that without somebody else starting a campaign saying, ‘What does he mean, “He’s very white?” ‘ He is. He’s very white.”

Frankly that statement isn’t so much offensive as just plain dumb in my opinion. Let me be the first to ask “what in the world do you mean?”

Meanwhile conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh also jumped on the bandwagon and said that Obama should “renounce” his blackness.

Once again, offensive, maybe, stupid, yeah! Usually with these things they say “you took it out of context, listen to the whole bit”. Well I did listen and I have to say I still don’t know what in the world he was getting at.

Now Limbaugh was commenting on a 60 Minutes piece in which Steve Kroft asked the Senator how he came to chose to be black. I watched the 60 Minutes interview when it broadcast and frankly I thought it was a stupid question then and it seems like an even dumber question now. The National Post has a nice wrapup of the issue and how it has come up in other media outlets.

I don’t remember anyone asking Bill Clinton if he were “Irish Enough” to court voters. Hell I don’t even know what George Bush is. Irish? English? Dutch? No idea. I am not going out on a “everyone is racist” bent here, just a stereotypical one. Obviously these three white guys, Kroft, Limbaugh & Beck have a notion in their mind of what it is to be black. They also have a concept in their heads that Barack Obama is either living up to that stereotype or not living up to that stereotype. They all also somehow believe that because he is of mixed origin he can turn it on and off like a drinking fountain.

Personally I would rather know how Senator Barack Obama plans on making good on his Health Care promises in a time of massive deficits and War. I would also like to hear how he will pull the troops out in the next few months and deal with the massive aftershocks in the region that will cause. I could care less what percentage of his “blackness” he is using on a given day.

With that said, I could also care less about the woman issues concerning Hillary Clinton. I am also just waiting for a question to Giuliani about how he could “possibly deal with mobsters” being Italian and all. Stereotypes are definitely alive and well in the U.S., it is an interesting aspect of our lives. At the same time the best way to rise above it is to frame news coverage in a way that treats people like human beings and not racial or gender objects.