What will Jon Stewart do about his need to (and the need for the Daily Show to have him) impersonate the president if Barack Obama takes the White Houset?

We all enjoy Stewart's imitations of Hillary Clinton (ala the man-in-drag hilarity that has tickled the national funny bone from Some Like it Hot to Tootsie to the Wayans brothers) and we all groan in commiseration at his feeble yet frequent forays into Bush land.

But a white man imitating a black man? That veers awfully close to minstrelry. Last night he took a stab at it, striking an Obama-esque pose and suggesting that the Democratic nominee was vying for coin-dom. But that was a rather fawning skirting of the central conundrum.

Also, a new comic protege debuted on his show last night, the night that Stewart announced Obama's ascension, and that new comic was brought on to discuss the election. The new comic is black. But race was not mentioned and it was really weird. Weird because it was an obvious connection to make, even if -- especially if -- in a comical way. But the entire matter was avoided by everybody. Not a fortuitous moment regarding the show's handling of the black thing.

No matter what anyone says about the Obama nomination, race really does matter. If Stewart can find a graceful way through it, it will be a big step forward for all of us.

Philadelphia has figured out how to transform abandoned urban space into a productive urban garden, according to this story in the New York Times.  LA's similar effort was shut down two years ago. But perhaps thie success of the Philly operation will inspire like-minded Angelenos to make another go of it.  

On today's Huffiington Post, this insightful analysis of the West Virginia primary by RJ Eskow observes that "7% of the voters in West Virginia voted for John Edwards, who isn't even in the race. That fact is nothing short of stunning. Faced with a black man and a white woman, these voters chose a white man who isn't running. And these are Democrats."

I would have been surprised, and perhaps a little skeptical, of this assessment of the racism and sexism that are alive and well in America had I not not recently encountered them myself.

Here on LAist

If you click through to the LA Times opinion piece I wrote about the Silver Lake reservoir, you'll see that it's been correction appended. I wrote in the piece that the reservoir was drained of its entire 600,000 gallon supply, not enough to satisfy one day's water need for the city of Los Angeles. The actual supply contained in the reservoir is 600 million gallons. In fact, when I was writing the piece and doing the calculations, I was thinking in millions but somehow wrote thousands. What this means is that the point remains valid: the 600 million-gallon supply contained in the Silver Lake reservoir is not enough to satisfy a single day's water need for the city of LA.  The city consumes an average of about 602 million gallons of water a day.