Today’s video of the day comes from the annual Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. For some reason, people thought it would be entertaining for Karl Rove to do a rap. Although this skit was an unqualified success in the media, I’m not sure how I feel about it…

• Now that Kobe’s gone nuts for the past week, does anyone still think that Lebron James is the best player in the league?
• The more I watch Joakim Noah play, the more convinced I am that he’s the next Christian Laettner. Like Duke’s finest, Noah is a proven winner with enough talent to take him to the next level. Unfortunately, something about him suggests that he’ll be nothing more than  a role player for a good team. That said, Florida looks nearly unstoppable against everyone. Unless their shooters have an unusually bad night, expect them to tear through their next opponent.
• Since receiving his contract extension, Isaiah Thomas’s Knicks are 1-7. Need I say more?
• If the NBA MVP voting took place today, I’d have to vote for Nash or Nowitzki. Although Kobe is a beast, his Lakers simply haven’t won enough to warrant him serious consideration.
• Isn’t college bball totally wack after Duke is eliminated?
• Everyone in Philly is worried (surprise!) about Ryan Howard’s spring training slump. Unless the reigning MVP forgot how to play baseball over the past 5 months, expect him to lead the league in RBIs and HRs in 2007.
• Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player in history. Nuff said…

Beyond the immediate needs in Darfur, the international community should help Sudan work through the conflicts of race, religion, and culture that have proliferated within the country’s borders for a half century.

How the International Community Can Help Sudan
By Francis Deng 

There is a tendency in the outside world to see the tragedy in the Darfur region of the Sudan in isolation from the regional conflicts that have been proliferating in the country for a half century. These conflicts reflect an acute crisis of national identity that is both a cause of genocidal wars and a factor in the state’s indifference to the resulting humanitarian consequences. This explains the Sudanese government’s resistance to international provision of protection and assistance to the affected populations.

The conflicts in the Sudan indicate a nation in painful search of itself, striving to be free from historical discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, and culture. It is, therefore, necessary to combine a suitable humanitarian response with solutions that go to the roots of the national identity crisis and address its stratifying implications.

The history of conflict

Initially, conflict dichotomized the country into the Arab-Muslim North, comprising two-thirds of the country in land and population, and the African South, comprising the remaining third, where people largely adhere to traditional African beliefs but have been increasingly converting to Christianity since colonial times. However, this dichotomy is an oversimplification, for the majority in the North are non-Arab, although Muslims. Even the so-called Arabs are in fact a hybrid African-Arab race, who, through assimilationist opportunities were encouraged to pass as Arabs.

The normative framework of assimilation in the North dictated that if one became a Muslim, was Arabic speaking, culturally Arabized, and could claim a genealogical link to an Arab ancestry, one was elevated to a status of respectability and dignity. In sharp contrast, if one were black, one was labeled as a “heathen,” and cast into the denigrated category of slaves or enslavables. Islam and Arabism, therefore, allowed people to pass as Arabs, with marginal regard to the color of the skin. However, skin color remained important, for one must not be too dark, as black was considered the color of slaves, nor too light, as that indicated connection with the European infidels, or the Hallab, a gypsy-type racial category. Even the color of the white Arabs was considered undesirable. One had to be the right color of brown to join the honored class. The standard color of the Sudanese “Arabs” is therefore akhdar, which translates to “green,” actually the brown color that is representative of the northern hybrid race. As the South was the hunting ground for slaves, this assimilation process was confined to the North and southern identity remained one of resistance.

The North-South dichotomy was reinforced by all the regimes that ruled the country. The Turko-Egyptian Administration (1821-1885) was the first to create a semblance of a state, although it could not fully control the South. The Mahdist revolution that overthrew the Turko-Egyptian rule in 1885 established a theocratic Muslim state, but still could not subdue the South. The Anglo-Egyptian conquest in 1898 established the Condominium Administration in which the British, the dominant partner, administered the country as two separate entities, encouraged Arabism and Islam in the North, and isolated the South, leaving it to develop along traditional African lines. While the North developed economically, politically, and socially, the South was neglected, except for rudimentary educational and health services provided by Christian missionaries. As the Sudan approached independence, because of pressure from the North and Egypt, the British suddenly reversed the policy of separate development in favor of a unitary state, with centralized administration and no safeguards for the vulnerable people of the South.

It must be emphasized that what generates conflict is not the mere differences of identities, but the implications of those differences in the sharing of power, wealth, social services, employment and development opportunities. In virtually all of these areas, the South was totally neglected. Although the South is the richest in natural resources, abundant arable land, water supply, livestock, timber, and minerals, because these resources were not developed and the South remained in a state of inertia, the British felt that it was not viable as an independent country, and would remain dependent on the North. Implicit in that dependency was to be northern domination in which the “Arabs” replaced the British in a system of internal colonialism, which the South resisted violently.
For the rest of the story, click here. 

Author Joan Sewell says so in her new autobiography where she embraces her low libido. The media have hailed her book as “brilliant” but scientific literature disagrees with her theory.

Do Women Enjoy Chocolate More Than Sex?
By Danielle Egan

Joan Sewell would rather eat chocolate than have sex according to her new book I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido. The book, hailed as revolutionary and groundbreaking, brave and even brilliant, is an autobiographical cruise through Sewell’s attempts to fix her sexual ennui and come to a compromise with Kip, her much hornier hubby who wants sex at least three times a month.

Sewell tries therapy, sexy lingerie and chocolate-based lubes. She tunes into Oprah and reads glossy magazine tutorials and books that support the notion that men and women are from different planets. All to no avail. Eventually Joan and Kip reach a resolution of sorts: sex is a “slog” for her, so Kip will have to make do with the occasional strip show or hand job. She says her much lower libido is “within the normal curve for a woman” due largely to biological gender differences. Yet Sewell ignores a fascinating, growing pile of modern scientific studies disputing the often-repeated stats about a gender libido gap, and the traditional theory that biology drives sexuality, which some researchers claim pathologizes women’s sexuality.

The media binge over this slim work of 1950s-style confection is similarly biased towards the superficial sugar-spice model. The Atlantic Monthly dedicated a lot of ink to the topic in its February issue, including an interview with Sewell sporting the headline: “the politically incorrect reality that most married women just aren’t that into sex.” The National Post also interviewed Sewell, who continued to flog the notion that when women are compared to women, “our libidos are not that low, they are pretty much in a normal range. But are they much lower than men’s? Yes.”

Writer Dan Savage jumped into the fray with a recent syndicated column, repeating Sewell’s claim that women have “naturally lower sex drives” thanks to hormonal and biological differences. “There’s no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don’t exist — never did,” writes Savage who cheekily relinquishes heterosexual men from the tyranny of housework, childcare and talking to their partners because “she still won’t want to fuck you.” The column generated so many letters from women who like sex that he continued the discussion the following week and started a “lusty ladies” link.

Sex on the brain

The debate about how to define healthy or “normal” libido has been heating up over the past decade as doctors, neuroscientists, sociologists, pollsters and pharmaceutical companies gather data, study brains and genitals during orgasm and poll citizens about their lives between the sheets. One often-repeated statistic, based on a 1999 U.S. study, found that approximately 40 per cent of women experience sexual problems. Yet, as some researchers have pointed out, the lead author of the study was a consultant for Pfizer, the makers of Viagra. A more recent Yale study found that almost half of the 56 women studied who had experienced “female sexual dysfunction,” (FSD) “had decreased sensation in the clitoris.” The researchers underlined “the possibility of a neurological cause for the dysfunction.”

For the rest of the story, click here.

“As soon as we landed, we went straight to the Eiffel Tower, drank champagne at the top and just kissed and kissed. Then we went up to my suite and had tantric sex for at least 30 hours, ordering up whipped cream and strawberries while we were at it.” – Diddy