• In a bid to try to lighten his sentence, Michael Vick enters custody early to begin his jail term. [MTV]

• Oh no, Jennifer Freeman. No. []

• T.I.’s making like a Harlem drug kingpin and giving out massive amounts of turkey’s this Thanksgiving season. [EUR]

• Nicole Richie’s having a boy. Next. [SP]

• Black filmmakers are aiming to show the wide range of the black American experience. Finally. [CT]

America, it is a-changing. According to a new , Garcia and Rodriguez are now among the top 10 most popular surnames in the country. And Martinez almost took 10th place from Wilson. I’m sure it makes all of those anti-immigration folks feel all warm and snuggly.

But while some parts of America are changing, some things are the same as they ever were. Consider this: 90 percent of people with the last name Washington are black. Seventy-five percent of our nation’s Jeffersons are, too.

The founding fathers left their stamp on this country in more ways than one.

There’s just something about a famous-but-controversial singer’s publicist of 14 years not only quitting, but sending out a press release to cryptically explain why she’s severed ties, that just screams scandal. R. Kelly’s publicist has said sayonara to the star, who has always seemed completely untroubled by his troubles. She, on the other hand, seems pissed and betrayed. She probably caught him messing with another teenager. Even publicists have some standards. On the other hand, maybe she just got burnt out. Can you imagine how hard it is to be R. Kelly’s publicist?

Check out what she had to say after the jump.

CONTINUED »

Ah, hate. In one sense, it’s talked about way, way too much. In another, it’s not talked about enough.

In the wake of last week’s march to protest the Justice Dept.’s handling hate crimes, the FBI has released a report that indicates hate crimes were up almost 10 percent.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from the 7,163 incidents reported in 2005…

Only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the hate crime reporting program in 2006 and neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish, in which the town is located, were among the agencies reporting.

This stats don’t include Jena, and they also don’t include any of the acts of hate that have occurred in 2007, which might win the prize for being the most hateful year we’ve experienced in the 21st century. Although, I’ll have to check the stats on how Arabs fared around 2002-ish to be sure. []

As someone who has never been to Detroit except for layovers at the city’s surprisingly nice airport, I can say that people who don’t know much about Detroit know three things — Motown, cars, and violence. And guess what? The city just topped the list of the most dangerous cities in the United States, beating last year’s “winner,” St. Louis.

But some experts are crying foul on the much-publicized yearly list from Congressional Quarterly.

CONTINUED »

This might be a year old, but I’m just seeing it for the first time. So I assume many of you will be seeing it for the first time, as well. And it doesn’t really matter that this clip is old. The point is that I if I were blind, Ben Underwood would be my hero. He already kind of is.

Mike Tyson was just sentenced to 24 hours in jail, plus 3 years of probation, for driving under the influence and drug possession. The people who are in jail around the time Tyson checks in better pray that his sentence is of the Lindsay Lohan/Nicole Richie variety and he never sees a jail cell. Sharing an enclosed space with Mike Tyson for 24 hours has to amount to cruel and unusual punishment. [TMZ]

Kanye West got back in the saddle this weekend, flying to Paris for a scheduled performance. But then he kind of fell off the saddle when he had a crying breakdown after trying to dedicate a song to his mother. And then, in true “Stronger” form, he got back on, and, according to an audience member, made concert magic.

“He said the word, ‘Mother’ and just couldn’t go any further,” Le Parisien journalist Meddy Magloire said. “A back-up singer, the DJ and a guitar player came over to console him. It looked like he might collapse. He just couldn’t continue. He just stood there in a spotlight, crying while the band continued playing.”

After a few moments of stunned silence, Magloire says, the audience of 5,000 reacted by offering calls of encouragement, which grew into applause. The band restarted the song, but West left the stage, returning after 10-15 minutes to conclude the concert with a rousing performance of “Stronger.”

“He was very nervous, seemed to have gathered himself up, and had a lot of energy,” Magloire says. “He kept shouting out to the audience, ‘I need you… I need you right now.’ and the public was screaming back. It was magic.”

I wasn’t expecting him to get back into performing so quickly, but it’s obviously pretty cathartic for him.

Cracked compiled a list of the nine most racist Disney characters. High up, as you can imagine, was the little slave-girl centaur in Fantasia who so dutifully polished the blond centaur’s feet. And don’t get me started on Uncle Remus and Song of the South. But it should come as no surprise that many of the comments on the post are worse than even the most egregious of Disney’s stereotypical characters. At least we can blame the Disney animators’ ignorance on the era.

It was the event that should have derailed Al Sharpton’s career, but turned out to be sort of a stumble on his path to becoming the American Media’s Next Top Black Leader. In November of 1987, a 15-year-old girl from Upstate New York accused six law enforcement officers of raping her, smearing her with feces, and writing racial epithets on her body. As you can imagine, Rev. Al was all over it, until investigators ruled it was a hoax and Brawley had made the whole thing up. There was a huge fallout — a prosecutor implicated in the case won about a half a million dollars from Brawley, her advisors, and even Sharpton himself in a defamation case. But my guess is that most people, even the ones who hate Al Sharpton with a fiery passion, haven’t thought about it too much in recent years. Although, I think the Duke rape case might have inspired some Brawley flashbacks.

And now, on the 20th anniversary of the event, the Brawley’s parents have reemerged and are maintaining their child was assaulted and deserves justice. Sharpton had no comment, and I don’t expect him to. He’s already quite selective about jumping to the defense of actual victims, these days. [CNN]