Eddie Griffin’s standup routine last Friday at the Black Enterprise Golf and Tennis Challenge got a standing ovation from that crowd, but not because it was funny. Because it was over. Failing to adequately guage the mood of the straight-laced BE crowd, Griffin’s frequent use of the n-word got his microphone cut about 10 minutes into his set.

Griffin’s microphone was cut in the middle of his act, and Black Enterprise founder/publisher Earl Graves stormed onto the stage to address the crowd.

“We … will not allow our culture to go backwards,” he reportedly said. “We will pay Mr. Griffin all that we owe him but we will not allow him to finish the show if that’s the way he’s going to talk.”

Oh, if only I had been there to witness the intense awkwardness of the moment, and to laugh when this happened:

Meanwhile, Griffin attempted to have the last word. In his inimitable style he walked onto the stage smoking a cigarette and yelled “F— y’all!” before walking off.

Wayne Brady, are you free for next year’s golf and tennis challenge? There’s an opening.

[EUR]

Even though this might not be the most civic-minded approach to the coming election, at least Oprah is honest.

“The reason I don’t do politicians on the show is because you get that political speak thing,” she says. “You ask the question. You have a limited amount of time and politicians are usually so rehearsed that you don’t get a real answer. And so, I’m sitting there grinning, smiling, when I know I havn’t gotten the answer. And to get the answer to one question with some clarity takes so much time that I, in the past, have just not done it.”

This year, she says, Obama will be the lone presidential candidate to grace her studio. “If everybody knows I’m for Barack it would be really disingenuous of me to be sitting up there interviewing other people as though… pretending to be objective. So I won’t be doing anybody because of that, on my show.”

I hear her, but it’s not like her couch is so sacred. I mean, Tom Cruise put his feet all on it, what would it hurt to have a Hillary and John sit on it for a minute.

[WP]

Televangelist/domestic abuse victim Juanita Bynum was supposed to talk about her public beating by her husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks, but really she basically says she will never stop loving him. Aren’t relationships grand?

See Kim Porter?

If you scroll through the rest of the pictures from Tenjune’s 1st anniversary party in NYC last night, you’ll also see a certain someone named Sean Combs.

Coincidence? I think not.

CONTINUED »

You like me! You really like me! Well, the Black Weblog Award judges do, anyway. And, thankfully, that was all it took for me to win a Black Weblog Award for Best New Blog.

I would say more, but I’m busy poppin’ bottles in my mind right now. Pardon me if the rest of the day’s posts come off a little loopy.

Check out the rest of the winners .

Sherri Shepherd — comedian, View guest host, and person-who-thinks-she-deserves-as-much-money-as-Whoopi — will now permanently join Barbara Walters and Co. in their 11th season.

“It’s her!” a source tells PEOPLE, adding that Shepherd will appear on Monday’s show for the highly anticipated announcement from co-host Barbara Walters.

Showbiz insiders have long suspected that Shepherd would link with new co-host Whoopi Goldberg alongside Walters, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck for the 11th season of the weekday show.

It’s pretty uninspired to have an all-black and white panel, but it’s better than an all-white panel, I suppose. Following Whoopi’s lead, Shepherd’s first order of business will probably be to tell everyone to try to understand the culture of the DC snipers before you judge their crimes.

[People]

As most of you guessed, the above drawing is of Busta Rhymes, who showed up in court yesterday to begin hearings for two assault cases. Lucky for him, the Assistant DA in charge of the case had jury duty and the case got pushed back to November, which would be promising if he didn’t still have to deal with a handful of others. I wish I could tell whether that’s a smile or a grimace in the drawing.

[]

I can’t imagine that, in the case of a white judge removing black prisoners from their cells and paddling them in a storage closet near his office, the NAACP would be far more interested in the prisoners’ side, even if they suspected that the prisoners had been coerced into testifying against the judge.

But the scenario I just described wasn’t exactly how the case went. It’s was a black Mobile County, Ala. judge who was paddling the inmates, at least a few of whom I would suspect are black. And the local NAACP is railing against the District Attorney for, what they call, criminal coercion of the inmates. Lawyers correct me here, but isn’t it perfectly lawful to offer a reduced sentence in exchange for information on a crime? I’m not saying the DA was on the up-and-up — if he wasn’t, he deserves to be punished in some way — but the NAACP isn’t saying that this weirdo didn’t spank a bunch of prisoners, either.

CONTINUED »

• OMG, this would never have happened to Madonna and David Banda. [IOL]

• The game doesn’t stop for the Game. He’s abroad right now, but a trial was just set in the states for his three felony charges. [MTV]

• This whole “Regulators” and “Vikings” thing at the LA Sheriff’s Dept. is just very, very strange. [LAT]

• Stay away from those African drums. [IOL]

• The vast majority of students who didn’t find a place this year in Dublin’s public schools are black. And there are enough of them to start a whole all-black school. [IHT]

Uh, is this even the same person that got pulled over last week riding in a Lamborghini her much-younger, porn-star-wannabe boyfriend brought her? I mean, the only real warning of the plastic surgery case she would become is the green contacts, which were probably the gateway drug to the blond hair, the nose job, those weird cheeks, and, well, you’ve seen her. You know. Back then she was actually cute, in a hyper-sexual, rough-around-the edges sort of way. I wonder if she misses it.