Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

Do you think Hillary Clinton did her best to bring her supporters over to Barack Obama's side last night? Do you think it was her responsibility or duty to do so?

J Alvin Wilbanks, a Gwinnett County, Georgia school superintendent, is at odds with the local chapter of the NAACP for a comment he made two weeks ago that many found offensive. Despite the civil rights organization's strong admonishment, Wilbanks refused to amend or apologize for his comments in a meeting Monday.

The statement in question after the jump.

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Believe it or not, this is a fan video.

Rappers want to be athletes and athletes want to be rappers. Singers want to be actors and actors want to be singers. Entertainers long to be taken as seriously as politicians and, as far back as the days when JFK was hanging out with Frank Sinatra and sneaking around with Marilyn Monroe, politicians long to be as cool as entertainers. The world of celebrity (or maybe just the world, in general) is all about the grass being greener on the other side.

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Hey! Wouldja look at that! It's a "Katrina Relief" donation option below the tip line on a dining bill.

This is a cool thing they're doing at otherwise so-so NYC restaurant Tabla. Making the charity even nicer is that it's not a three-year anniversary, limited-time-only addition; reportedly, Tabla's been doing this since December of '05.

[Source]

Rihanna and Chris Brown, the Beyonce and Jay-Z for those born after 1990, are all grown up. At least, they are making grown up moves by deciding to cohabitate and are supposedly looking at condos in LA. One requirement: lots of sound-proofing, because they play their music loud. Does that mean that they play their music loud or they just play any music loud? That detail would probably make all the difference in the world to their future neighbors. By the third round of "Umbrella" or "Forever," I'd be drafting a strongly-worded letter to the condo board while trying to resist the curious urge to chew some Doublemint gum. [DListed]

Know what, unnamed 12-year-old who pitched a rock through Soulja Boy's bus window back in March? Things are cool between you and me, because I hate Soulja Boy, too. His music's awful and he's awful, and I wouldn't mind if that ho supermanner went mute tomorrow.

And I felt this way even before the little jerk started creating his new YouTube series, Rich Nigga Shit. Kinda like R Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, but without the music or troubled brilliance, Rich Nigga Shit is basically just minutes and minutes of Soulja Boy braying like a jackass to the delight of his tittering, weak crew.

Click through for episodes one and two of RNS—currently the entire oeuvre. The second is especially of note, as it features Soulja Boy using his particular brand of detestable bravado to completely ruin what could have been a good deed.

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• Toni Braxton, who has a fairly serious heart condition, doesn't want be treated like an invalid on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. Eighty-two-year-old Cloris Leachman, on the other hand… [SP]

• Jacksonville Jaguar Dennis Northcutt is (allegedly) a rather awful person. [TMZ]

• A Cuban Barack Obama impersonator isn't letting a little old language barrier stop him. Si, si puede. [BV]

• Harvard University cops are known to profile black people. Who would have thought!?! [Gawker]

• Lil Wayne missed an Arizona court date because of an oral emergency. Perhaps now he's learned the valuable lesson that too much syrup rots your teeth. Now, if he could just learn that it's inappropriate to ride around in a tour bus laden with large quantities of illegal drugs, we'd be good to go. [SR]

If child pornography allegations didn't stick, this probably won't, but here goes: R. Kelly is wanted for questioning in a South African money scandal. He allegedly made $130,000 for a concert that he never gave.

Busiswe Zakwe was arrested and charged with swindling thousands of dollars from investors by promising ticket sale profits if they brought an R. Kelly tour to the country in 2005. Kelly never stepped foot in South Africa, but the woman claims she deposited the investors' money into his account. Local police have reportedly confirmed that the account Zakwe claims is Kelly's is authentic, but the money is nowhere to be found. Police want to question Kelly about the missing funds.

[EUR]

News analyst, author, and longtime journalist Juan Williams, went on Fox News yesterday and decided that it was appropriate and accurate to refer to Michelle Obama as militant.

WILLIAMS: Well, she’s got to be herself, but I do not think she can go for it all out in terms of this kind of militant anger that she sometimes uses, you know. She can be, it seems, rather cynical or dismissive of people. In fact, I think that’s one of the things she’s going to say tonight is, when she first met Barack Obama, she didn’t think much of this kid who was from Hawaii, although they both were Harvard Law graduates. And so she’s going to say, “You know what? I got to know him, and then I was impressed, and that is how you can get to know him, and you’ll see that there’s real substance to him.” That’s going to — but to come back to her own issues. I don’t think she wants to get anywhere near the race issue, anywhere near the militance issue.

Juan Williams has surely known a handful of militant folks in his day, and I'm also sure not a single one of them acted like Michelle Obama. Maybe he's one of those people who didn't understand that New Yorker cover was supposed to be satire. [JJP]

[Source]

Hillary Clinton brought the house down at the convention yesterday, giving a speech that has, predictably, been lauded and panned. More lauding than panning, I think, but I tend not to turn to Fox News after major Democratic speeches. If it matters, I thought it was great. She had me smiling ("Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits"), nodding vigorously ("were you in it for me or were you in it for [insert marginalized group]?"), and she even gave me that familiar "Yes, We Can" tingle when she channeled Harriet Tubman at the end there. Some of the criticism I saw in the analysis after the speech had to do with how vigorously she pushed the Obama-For-President agenda, but I'm not sure how much more she could have done that without sounding disingenuous. Keith Olbermann reported that on her way to the podium before the speech and on her way out after, Obama staffers gave her a standing ovation. Also, when she asked who her supporters were in it for, that was clearly meant to directly shame the P.U.M.A.s and their ilk.

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