The Daily Mail reports on the "race row" (Oh, Brits: Everything's a 'row' with them) sparked when black stars Faizon Love and Kali Hawk were cut from the UK version of the poster for the new Vince Vaugn vehicle Couples Retreat. This left a phalanx of palefaces begging passersby to spend some of their hard earned pounds on a film that scores 12% on Rotten Tomatoes.

A quick reminder of the rules before we get started: Each of you has two buttons in front of you—one marked "Racist," one marked "Not Racist". Once we begin, you may hit either of these buttons at any time; just be ready to state why you think the poster for this movie is or is not racist! Alright, contestants, let's take a look at this helpful diagram created by the Huffington Post that points out very clearly why the UK poster on the left may or may not be racist. Are you ready? Let's play! Is! It! Racist!

Racist!
This was a shameless, racist move by Universal to play to the historical aversion of foreign markets to black actors. As this Newsweek story on Will Smith points out:

Black actors have had a tough time appealing to foreign audiences, because the films they're often cast in are specific to African-American culture or history-they are films about African-Americans, as opposed to films that happen to have African-Americans in them.

Removing black people from a poster just because it's a sound business decision is offensive—not just to the actors, but to foreign audiences you're assuming are so backwards and scared of the Blacks that just seeing a movie starring African-Americans will fill their dreams for weeks with the terrifying image of a thousand dark hands grasping at them from some ancient, howling forest.

Not Racist!
Lighten up: The whole point of advertising is to make people want to come to your movie via making it seem good. Who has ever heard of Faizon Love (maybe best-known for his turn as "Big Large" in 2007's Who's Your Caddy) or Kali Hawk ("Popcorn Girl (uncredited)" in Celebrity)? As the Daily Mail article says: "A spokesman for makers Universal Pictures confirmed the poster had been changed to ‘simplify' it for the UK and international market outside America." When compared to Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Kristin Bell, Jon Favreau, etc., it's surprising is that these two no-names even made it on the U.S. poster.

Not (Any More) Racist!
Uh, never mind the British poster: Did you see the U.S. version? Not exactly a paragon of post-racial harmony: Love and Hawk are literally sitting in the back of the bus asking, "Um, hi, guys... can we come up to the front now? Did the Civil Rights Movement happen yet?"

Who Gives a Shit, the Movie is Terrible!
Love and Hawk should say a silent prayer of thanks for being left out of the poster, racist-ly or not. Maybe this way everyone will eventually forget they were in "Couples Retreat," and their nascent careers won't be killed by starring in a film Time magazine calls "just sad."

In an Entertainment Weekly profile by Tim Stack, Hilton says of his altercation with will.i.am,

I realize I said the most hurtful word. I don't believe being gay is bad. I'm not homophobic. I couldn't be any gayer and I couldn't be any prouder. I've got rainbow flags shooting out of my eyes.

Stack calls him "surprisingly chastened," but he doesn't really sound all that sorry in The Advocate, where he says, "I thought about calling him the n word, but I thought the f word was even worse." He goes on to say, "I reacted in the worst way possible," but the fact remains that Hilton basically wants, as Richard Lawson says, "to have us congratulate him for not saying the racist thing he was thinking." Or that he thinks gays are more marginalized than blacks? Or that homophobic slurs are worse than racial slurs? Or that the word faggot from the mouth of a gay man is worse than the n-word from the mouth of a non-black person? The mind reels.

It seems pretty likely that Hilton doesn't "believe being gay is bad." And he seems to understand that he shouldn't have said what he said. But what is the moral status of a homophobic slur spoken by a gay person to a straight person, presumed hurtful because said straight person is presumed to be homophobic? And is this homophobia ouroboros similar to the one created by Sacha Baron Cohen, a straight person playing a gay person who is (maybe) supposed to make fun of homophobic stereotypes?

Slate's Dennis Lim basically comes down on the pro-Brüno side. He writes that Hollywood has been offering up "square-jawed," humorless portrayals of gays for so long that it's refreshing and even subversive for Baron Cohen to portray a funny, no-holds-barred "sissy" — and an oversexed one at that. He writes,

Is any viewer really going to think that this hyperbolically crass and ridiculous narcissist-who wears mesh tops and eye-searing lederhosen, refers to his adopted African baby as a "dick magnet," and drops faux-Teutonic vulgarities about his waxed arschenhaller-represents "the mainstream of the gay community," as one troubled Hollywood "gay insider" put it? And are the gays who anxiously anticipate the mocking, hostile reactions of the unenlightened really that blind to Brüno's obvious counteroffensive strategy, which is to make that mocking, hostile idiocy the subject of his film? The beauty-and perhaps even the moral logic-of Baron Cohen's method is that those who're not in on his joke are invariably the butts of the joke.

And he calls the climax of the movie, in which Brüno makes out with his opponent during a wrestling match, "a brilliant tactic against homophobia: the gay-panic offense." The idea that an over-the-top joke based on stereotypes — whether racist or homophobic — is actually a joke on people who believe the stereotypes is hardly new. It's the basis of Sarah Silverman's whole career. And while Baron Cohen offers a twist on this by actually eliciting homophobic reactions and inviting viewers to make fun of those, it's hard to accept that a straight comic is totally on the gay community's side in making fun of obnoxious straight people. It's especially hard when a lot of his act revolves around talking funny and walking funny and wearing silly clothes. The idea that viewers aren't going to be laughing at these aspects of the film — or that they will be laughing at simply an exaggerated character rather than an exaggerated gay character — is a bit naive.

A homophobic slur spoken by a gay person — especially with the intent to hurt — is still a slur, and gay stereotypes are still gay stereotypes, even if they're meant to be meta. Ultimately, though, none of these things likely matter much to Perez Hilton or Sasha Baron Cohen. Hilton tells Tim Stack, "I don't care if you like me, I just care if you read my website." And Baron Cohen probably doesn't care if people like him, as long as they see his movie. Ultimately, Brüno isn't about challenging stereotypes are breaking down barriers — it's about getting laughs and selling tickets. And Perez Hilton is all about publicity — the love that loves to speak its name.

On The Offensive [Slate]
Perez Hilton Won't Shut Up [Entertainment Weekly]

Related: Perez Hilton Would Rather Be A Racist Than Bad for The Gays [Gawker]

The fact that D.L. Hughley got a CNN talk show was just mystifying from day one. And he didn't surprise the world with his hidden news acumen. The fact that David Alan Grier got to host what was billed as the black Daily Show was...at least enough to make everyone feel a vague sense of hope, for a few minutes, until the show aired. Turns out it was unoriginal and unfunny. Oh well! David Alan Grier was pretty funny on In Living Color but not so much since, so maybe they should have picked someone actually funny to host this show, Chocolate News, and perhaps CNN could have searched far and wide and eventually located a black person with slightly more journalistic chops than standup comedian D.L. Hughley. They are rumored to exist in the far-flung corners of our land!

Giving shows to people who aren't good is the real conspiracy.

• Katt Williams on Racism and the Roast [Dead Frog]