Ben Stiller as Tugg Speedman and Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder.

Merie Weismiller Wallace/DreamWorks

On the heels of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announcing the nominees for its 81st shindig, there were the usual nontroversies over who was named and who was ignored. Among all that, Hollywood trade paper Variety noted Robert Downey Jr.'s nod for Best Supporting Actor in Tropic Thunder "marks the first time since Laurence Olivier's 1965 Othello that an actor has been nommed for playing a role in blackface."

Not quite true. Forrest Whitaker darkened his skin to play Idi Amin for his Oscar-winning performance in The Last King of Scotland.

Slightly different circumstances, yes. But...

What Variety alludes to in its piece is that the Downey Jr. role is offensive. Mincing no words, Scott Feinberg over at the L.A. Times just comes out and says as much. Apparently bucking for a nomination for Best Performance by a White Guy Who Takes it Upon Himself to be Offended For Black People, Feinberg writes:

I guess I just can't imagine any circumstance under which a blackface performance would be acceptable, any more than I can imagine any circumstance under which the use of the N-word would be acceptable.

Really? Can't imagine any circumstance to use the word Nigger? You mean, like in a Ralph Ellison novel?

Trustees of the Liberal Plantation aside, Downey Jr.'s performance is sharp, smart satire. Clever, but aimed squarely for the gut, in the way The New Yorker's Barack/Michelle-as-radicals cover was aimed at some other Brahmin organ that giggles with delight when it's self-manipulated. My takeaway from the Kirk Lazarus/Lincoln Osiris character is a comedic finger given a hard wag at Hollywood; an industry that has no problem writing big checks for Barack Obama, but then can do no better than spend tens of millions of dollars offending minorities.

I can't speak as to whether or not the Simple Jack story line or the Les Grossman character were offensive to their intended targets. But I can say that while I'll be putting what little energy I can muster for the Oscars into good wishes for Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson, I'll have no problem if "Kirk Lazarus" gets the award he deserves.

Can you have a narrative more American than Obama's?

Dennis Brack/Getty Images

Considering all the price gouging going on with hotel rooms in D.C., Barack Obama's inauguration is apparently history in the making. But as we observe this epic, monumental, never-been-done-before achievement, what exactly are we celebrating?

If Toni Morrison is to be believed, William Jefferson Clinton, "white skin notwithstanding," was our first black president. As Morrison's got both a Nobel and a Pulitzer, I for one am not going to argue with her. And Obama, being biracial, is only black in the strictest sense.

It's not even correct to say that Obama is the first minority to hold the highest office in the land. Every white guy ever elected is co-owner of that distinction. As far back as the first census in 1790 white men were just 41 percent of the population and have been trending downward ever since (32 percent in 2007).

So, if it's not really about race or minority status, maybe the big deal we feel churning in our collective guts is something as bold as this: that Barack Obama is our first truly American president.

Can you have a heritage more American than Obama's? The literal marriage of the immigrant and native. Born in our most diverse state. One without an ethnic majority, but where people of mixed race make up some 20 percent of the total population. There is nothing about Obama's background that isn't truth to the tired saw of the American melting pot.

And can you have a narrative more American than Obama's? In the most Horatio Algeresque fashion, he lifted himself up from the from a swamp of food stamps and went on to study at the best universities.

Despite his Ivy League pedigree, Obama skips his shot at easy millions, becomes one of those much maligned "do nothing" community organizers, bucks the system, fights the old school and ends up president. Frank Capra in his heyday couldn't commit to film a more finely tuned ode to Yankee gumption.

And would it have been possible to have had an election more American than Obama's? One that put the exclamation point on our long, slow crawl to civil rights. Not arrived at — as in decades and centuries past — through the righteousness of passive resistance, the threat of violence or the lever of those darn "activist" judges.

It was just people by their own free will choosing to shut out the white noise of racial bias and flip the switch for the person they thought was the best for the job. Surely that's as American as mom's apple pie or dad's buddies buying you a baseball team.

Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism — the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy.

Obama has.

Obama is the more perfect union. He is a house united. Obama is the New Generation and the hot light of a dawn that goes way beyond clever talk of morning in America.

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

It's not easy being prince. The unfortunate racial "isms" that other people get to make in private have a way of being put on blast when you're heir to the throne. The word on Fleet Street is that Prince Charles used a racial slur against a member of his polo club.

Polo club. Right.

This coming after his son, Prince Harry, having been outed for using the slur "Paki" to describe one of his military mates.

Kolin Dhillon, an immigrant to Britain from Punjab and a member of the exclusive Cirencester Park Polo Club, was apparently referred to as "Sooty" by both Charles and other members of the club.

However, knowing which side his crumpet is buttered on, Dhillon says he sees no racism in the crack. "I enjoy being called Sooty by my friends who I am sure universally use the name as a term of affection with no offence meant or felt," he says.

Really, who doesn't like having the color of his skin mocked by elite polo-playing colonialists? When my plantation owner calls me "monkey face" I just roll on the floor with laughter.

You know, here's the thing. Even if Mr. Dhillon doesn't take offense at the remark — and I take him at his word — the prince ought to know better than to reduce a person to the color of his skin (as opposed to, say, the content of his character). Especially when that individual is one of a few within an exclusive group. When we read about young Prince Harry using slurs and wonder where he gets it from ...

Well, even royal apples don't fall far from their tree.

Writer Donald Westlake, seen n 2002, died New Year's Eve.

Scott Gries/Getty Images

Happy New Year to you all.

I'd planned on my first entry of the new year being something light and easy. More Crappy iPhone Pix of Cool Stuff. But I would be very, very remiss in not noting the passing of writer Donald Westlake.

The very first interview I did for NPR, in fact before I was even working for NPR in any official capacity, was with Westlake. One of the nuggets he imparted on me was that he always "regretted" calling his seminal anti-hero Parker. It precluded him from including in any of the Parker novels the simple sentence "Parker parked the car."

Of course, nothing kept Westlake — or Richard Stark, his most famous of several nom de plumes — from being one of America's best authors of hard-boiled fiction. What made Westlake's writing so compelling was his devotion to the consistency of human nature. That is, he was more concerned with his characters ultimately being true to themselves than being likeable. ("Likeability" is one of the most overused reductions of editors and executives in entertainment.)

What made Westlake great was his ability to mine the emotions of his characters as they performed hard acts.

One of my favorite Westlake books is The Ax. It's the story of Burke Devore, a middle-aged, middle-class husband and father who gets "the ax" from his job, and the lengths he will go to to get a new one. Few writers could make the reprehensible actions of a protagonist so emotionally resonant. But Devore's story is an allegory for the fears of every family man. As such, whether we like his actions or not, we understand them and are with Devore every step of the way. And Westlake took Devore all the way.

But Westlake knew that he could deliver on a story without having to sell out his character in the end. That gave his writing a palpable confidence — a literary muscularity that to me is missing from much of modern American literature.

All the more so with the passing of Mr. Westlake.