In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.'

I've no desire to start a movement, to be the first name on an open petition, or to be the poster child for disgruntled writers.

For the vast majority of those who are obese - those with a Body Mass Index over 30 - their size is their choice. They choose to take in more calories than they burn. They choose to take in high fat calories over low-fat ones. They choose to fad diet, if they choose to diet at all.

With comics, you don't have to worry so much about budgetary constraints. In film and television, however fanciful you want to be, someone can come up to you and go, 'Okay, this is going to cost X amount of dollars, and we only have so many days to film this.' With graphic novels, you can have that alien invasion you've always wanted to see.

Governmental intervention and personal responsibility are not mutually exclusive issues, but they do frame a 'do it ourselves' vs. 'what are you doing for us' debate. For the black community, that's a debate that's been raging at least as far back as the W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington philosophical grudge matches.

Awards shows have devolved into self-parodies - liberals in limos, corny insider jokes delivered by the hosts among bad teleprompter reading from the some of the best thespians on the planet.

Much as banks don't care where your money's coming from, the Electoral College is all 'don't ask, don't care' when it comes to votes.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

There remains a degree of anti-black intellectualism in entertainment. Middle and upper-middle class blacks have often been portrayed as buffoons in popular culture; witness the characters of Carlton Banks on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' and Braxton P. Hartnabrig on 'The Jamie Foxx Show.'

The thing about working in Hollywood is that, at some point, you really get tired of hearing how godless you are, and how if you and the rest of the heathens in Tinsel town would put more God-centric shows on TV, people wouldn't be abandoning prime time in favor of their Bible study classes.

So, is Hollywood anti-religion? Not in my opinion. But unlike, say, politicians and preachers who talk faith before going off to speak in tongues to their mistresses, Hollywood just doesn't wear its faith on its sleeve.

I haven't tweeted once in my life, but I'm sick of hearing about it already. What once may have been the cool way of letting a hundred people know that you're about to go mow your lawn now has the feel of a used-to-be-fresh means of communicating. So yesterday, like two-way pagers. And AOL.

Reactionary conservatives are smiling through the racial apocalypse. To them, race baiting is a joke, as 'humorist' Rush Limbaugh will tell you when he's calling Mexicans 'stupid.' Or it's a matter of semantics when they claim that Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racialist' which, far as I can tell, is the smooth jazz version of being a racist.

I don't think I'm alarmist. I'm more disappointed by the euphemisms in some instances than outright bigotry. Now, to me, you walk around with a Klan hat on or you've got a swastika on you arm, you just look like a dope, you know what I mean?

Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.

As an ex-stand up, I can tell you that a comedy club isn't a place you go looking to get the abuse you just can't seem to find in daily life. The stage is a performer's domain. You protect that domain. You are not on stage to take what's given just 'cause you're getting paid. If you are attacked, you retaliate.

Fanboys are a creator's blessing and curse. If a fanboy likes you, they love you. Obsessively. If you cross them with some plot point or story direction they reject, expect to be wholly and continually eviscerated across the Internet.

When I go to business meetings, I'm still told way too often by some receptionist, 'The mail room is downstairs,' to believe that racial perceptions don't still exist. But I figure there are always going to be knuckleheads no matter how many of their herd get stuck in the tar pits of progress.

For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.

Bad news: Complainers are rewarded for complaining. Indicative of the victim culture in which we live, people have not only come to expect something for nothing, but are then rewarded for how loudly they can ventilate their sense of having been victims of fraud.

Until politicos take a true stand in defense of marriage by proposing an anti-adultery amendment to the Constitution, stop demonizing gays and lesbians when the one debasing your marriage is the individual in the mirror.

Bigots are actually funny to me in the way that people who still wear parachute pants give me a chuckle.

Our touchstones of slavery are 'Song of the South,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Birth of a Nation.' It's hard to separate the cinematic quality from the underlying themes. I appreciate the films, but the message was repugnant.

It does no good to believe in what does not exist to the point one cannot focus on what is real. That would be the greatest tragedy of any 'conspiracy.'

I'm sorry, but chick fights are sexy. If you don't think so, you're either an uptight woman or a lying man.

To this day, the only argument against Obama that critics can seem to come up with involves admitting he's better than them - though they certainly season it with some racism. You know, he's that lucky black man who actually appeals to the populace. He's that elitist who got himself off food stamps and into Harvard.

From the moment we were first dumped in Jamestown and had our teeth checked before getting sold off and later considered three-fifths of a human being, an abundance of 'likability' hasn't been something blacks have had to stockpile. Instead, it's been a centuries-long battle for respectability.

It's funny: over time, if you're fortunate, you build a nice career, and you have these interesting moments, and I would not, looking back, trade any of them - 'Red Tails,' '12 Years a Slave' and 'Undercover Brother.'

Facts tend to take the punch out of a good hate rant and are therefore left best unsaid.

I don't want an underachiever working on my car's transmission. Why would I want someone regular sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, give me somebody who has demonstrated a capacity to excel.

I like animals. I like people who like animals. I hate people who love animals to the point they lose their sense of reason. I'm talking the 'my computer wallpaper is my dog,' 'I hang a Christmas stocking for my cat' crowd.

Why is it that the very people who have fought so hard and so long for the simple entitlement to love whom they choose to love are the very ones denied that right by those who routinely take their vows for granted?

It's not that white guys shouldn't be allowed to engage in discussions on race in America. But there's nothing more exhausting than white male liberals' dogmatisms on race that were clearly formed during a conversation they had with that one black guy they met back in college.

If faux liberal white guys want to support and defend Obama, by all means please do so. But I would suggest they try to limit that support to matters of policy and not perspectives on race.

Old white guys can be a funny bunch, can't they? The same anti-same-sex marriage, anti-affirmative action cadre can flower into the biggest supporters of 'equality' the minute they get a whiff of minority empowerment.

If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every 'Passion of the Christ,' there's a 'Fireproof' that comes and goes with no notice.

The great thing about working with NPR - and, really, there's like a million of 'em - is all the cool stuff I get to do for the public. Meet the president. Hang out at the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Drink a $10,000 martini.

For every horrific event, something beautiful happens.

Just mention the idea of warrantless wiretaps and expect to get hit up with a congressional investigation. But give somebody an avatar and a URL, and he can't tweet, post or hyperlink enough personal information about himself to as many people as possible.

As long as we remain committed to holding high our individuals of supreme finish, others will be inspired to loose themselves of the gravity of the waywards and downtroddens.

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.

At the risk of sounding like that old guy in 'Gran Torino' telling those 'young punks' to 'get off my lawn,' it's gotten to the point that whenever I hear somebody talking about Twitter or twittering or tweeting, it just makes my little tummy want to hurl.

With fear of stating the obvious: Freedom belongs to 'We the People,' not 'They the Politicians.'

I'm John the Fourth, so I think there's a lot of things in life that have been truly handed to me by the hard work and the pain of others.

Let's be very clear: Living 'unforgiven' is not the sole domain of blacks. It can be found in any successful person.

I understand politicos gotta make bank. But cloistering with the Hollywood elite is not how you prove you're a man of the people.

There are some individuals who look at graphic novels as 'canon,' and they cannot change in any way, shape or form, and that's what makes them in some ways good fans.

I've never been much of a European traveler. London once on a book tour, and Italy because that's where Ferraris are from. That's about it.

Slavery is something that affects all of us. It's all of our history.

The hypocrisy and false piety of the deniers aside, the relationships of gays have no effect on heteros. Especially all the heteros who've done such a marvelous job of debasing marriage on their own all these many years.