President Obama speaks using a teleprompter at the White House on Feb. 4. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The meme going around like a bad cough is that President Obama relies "too much" on teleprompters. A line so oft repeated it's officially reached the point of late-night pop culture status.

Different from easily proved instances of excessive use like "too much" Old Spice, the "too much" teleprompter tag is an empty accusation. There's no universally accepted measure for the appropriate amount of political telepromptering, which makes it difficult to do the practical math.

Difficult but not impossible.

The most accurate way to measure the president's teleprompteriness is by comparison of his first 66 days in office with those of his immediate predecessor. Reviewing archived video on C-SPAN and exempting such must-have prompter moments as their inaugural and State of the Union addresses, the empirical evidence is that compared with President Bush, Obama is indeed teleprompter dependent.

Jan. 23, 2001: Bush unveils his education plan. No teleprompter.

Feb. 26, 2001: Bush addresses the nation's governors. No teleprompter.

March 19, 2001: Bush addresses the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. No teleprompter.

A sampling, but you get the picture.

However...

Not being teleprompter-dependent isn't the same as being prompter-independent. As to be expected, in those addresses and others Bush read from prepared text. No big deal and not much different than reading prepared text from a teleprompter.

For those who have never actually used one, a teleprompter isn't some kind of science-is-magic communication genie. Merely having words projected before you does not give one the ability to speak those words with additional weight or emotion.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Jindal.

So, maybe the better comparison isn't how much time a president spends reading from a prompter — any prompter — but how much time he spends speaking to a national audience extemporaneously. Thus far, Obama has held as many solo press conferences as Bush over a similar time period — two.

Bush's having been on Feb. 22, 200, and March 29, 2001. However, both of Obama's press conferences have been during prime time, with more viewers watching him work without a net. Bush didn't hold his first prime timer until Oct. 11, 2001.

Obama has also held town hall meetings in Elkhart, Ind., Fort Myers, Fla., and two in California in addition to appearing prompter-free (for better or worse) on The Tonight Show as well as holding a virtual town hall meeting on the Internet.

All that is to say, compared with Bush, Obama is actually more likely to do "too little" telepromptering during "too many" Q&A sessions before "too many" people.

And while phrases may deceive, numbers don't lie.

You probably can't tell, considering all the focus on President Obama's Tonight Show appearance, and also with the likes of Eric Holder, Michael Steele and Richard Parsons making headlines.

But their positions of prominence tend to mask a harsh reality of this severe economic downturn: Black men have been the most beaten down by our worsening recession.

The February numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are bleak. More than 13 percent of all black Americans are unemployed. Contrast that with 10.9 percent of Hispanics and 7.3 percent of white Americans.

Going inside the numbers, a survey by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston finds that employment among black men alone has dropped by almost 8 percent since November of 2007. In fact, over the last decade the employment rate for black men ages 20-24 has collapsed from 68 percent to only 51 percent.

Just barely half of all young black men are working. Just. Barely. Half.

For black American women the picture is a bit brighter. An article in the Christian Science Monitor notes that an average of 120 black American women are employed for every 100 black American men.

"The current size of the overall gap in employment between black women and black men is historically unprecedented, and black Americans are the only group for whom the gender employment gap is in favor of women," the story says.

One reason for this disparity is that the college attendance rate for black women is about double that of black men. Consequently, black women have seen no net job losses when compared to black men.

Plain English: Not as much education, not as many opportunities. This at a time when way too many young black men have already given up on attempting to be the head of a household.

It's a downward spiral that's pretty much covered up every time somebody ends a discussion about lingering racial inequalities with, "But Obama is president!"

Yeah, he is. And as far as I'm concerned he can't be on the Tonight Show or any other legitimate program presenting himself as an icon of accomplishment often enough.

But let's not allow the hype over the president to obfuscate the unique challenges that many young black males still face.

This weekend's 67 percent drop in box office receipts sealed Watchmen's fate as a disappointment of a film. But the conversations at Tinseltown lunches were already turning toward a reassessment of movies geared toward "fanboys" — the most ardent variety of supporter who can allegedly make or break a genre film.

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.

I don't have to tell you that the Hollywood landscape has increasingly been dominated by properties derived from comic books (or graphic novels as the "boys" would say) and cult retreads (Speed Racer).

Somewhat naturally, the best minds of the major studios figured that the surest way to build buzz for these movies was to cater to those who trek — pun intended — to comic cons like worshipers to Mecca. Marketing, P&A, promos, trailers; in the buildup to these films there was a certain Talmudic devotion to the niche material with the hopes of obtaining the blessings of the fanboys.
In kind, the fanboys would then blog and MySpace and Facebook this fringe entertainment into a mass-market product. And I don't say that with derision. A lot of that fringe entertainment is carefully aligned on my bookshelves.

However...

The results have been mixed to bad. Watchmen, The Spirit, Grindhouse, V for Vendetta...

Snakes on a Plane.

None did the business of on-par-or-lesser-quality, more well-known brands such as the film versions of Fantastic Four.

And even lesser known graphic novels that skipped the fanboys and went straight for the mass audiences — Wanted, Road to Perdition, A History of Violence — have done well for themselves at the multiplexes.

All of which does not bode well for the fanboy's continued influence on Hollywood.

Don't get me wrong, genre entertainment is not going away. Just genre entertainment that only appeals to a certain genre of viewer.

I did not know this, or I certainly would have made a bigger deal out of it, but this past Sunday was International Women's Day.

I was confused because around my house, every day is woman's-day-I-love-you-honey-very-much.

In honor of the big day, the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano — apparently a bastion of feminism — ran a piece about the rise of female empowerment in the 20th century. Its conclusion as to the single greatest emancipator of women is summed up in the article's concise title: "The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Women — Put in the Detergent, Close the Lid and Relax."

The author — Giulia Galeotti, who is reportedly a woman — contends that while "some say the Pill, some say abortion rights and some the right to work outside the home" have been the catalyst for female ascendancy, "some, however, dare to go further: the washing machine."

Dare, Giulia. You go on and dare, with your bad righteous-fire daring self, girl.

Lookee, for real: The average front-loading LG may have brought women convenience — right up until you spend hours trying to resolve the unresolvable front-loader mildew buildup issues with customer service. But to say the washer has liberated the lay-dees is kinda like saying the cotton gin liberated slaves. It is inaccurate, and it's hurtful. And as a man I take my obligation to defend a woman's feminism for her very seriously.

I don't expect the Vatican or the Vatican's Daily Planet-type agitprop wing to get behind reproductive rights. However, to claim that a home appliance has done more for women than, say, "the vote" and "equal pay for equal work" is all equally ridiculous.

So ridiculous, it's hard to tell if the article is actually tongue-in-cheek or perhaps just a touch satirical. But from what little I know of Vatican operations, I'm guessing not. And normally, to a degree, I'd appreciate a conversation starter like this, but in honor of International Women's Day? Really?

I can't imagine it happening, but if L'Osservatore Romano really wanted to do something to honor women they'd quickly print a retraction. And printed with the retraction would be some coupon for cents off at 1-hour Martinizing.

This has been all very traumatic. I don't think I can enjoy International Women's Day again. Next year I guess I'll be heading back to Vegas for the International "We Ain't Saying" Day.

Slightly different objectives.

The fact that the majority of American Muslims are educated and employed is significant.

If you said Kabbalah, you spend too much time reading People magazine. If you said Muslim, you've probably read The Gallup Center for Muslim Studies "first comprehensive study of the Muslim American community and its habits, perspectives and beliefs."

Comprehensive is pretty much the word. Not distinguishing between native and foreign-born Muslims, the center conducted more than 300,000 national household interviews over the past year to try to coalesce the most accurate picture yet of what it means to be Muslim in America. Among the findings, as alluded to, Muslims are the most diverse religion in America in terms of ethnicity. According to the study:

Muslim Americans represent the only faith community without a majority race. They are black, white, Asian and Hispanic. African-Americans, not Arabs, make up the largest ethnic group (35 percent).

Synchronicity in play: At its annual Saviours' Day event outside Chicago this past weekend, the theme for the Nation of Islam — previously a black nationalism Muslim movement — was preaching the gospel of diversity, inclusion and outreach to more immigrants, Asians and Native Americans.

In addition to being diverse, Muslims also tend to be younger, and enjoy a higher employment rate than the general population:

More than a third (36 percent) of Muslim Americans are between the ages of 18 and 29, significantly more than the general public (18 percent). They are more likely than any other group to report being at work or school, with 70 percent reporting having a job, compared with the general public at 64 percent.

The fact that the majority of American Muslims are educated and employed is significant. Going on eight years after 9/11, there's still fear in some quarters that American Muslim sleeper cells exist. While the possibility can't be wholly discounted, the education and income levels of American Muslims tend to reduce that possibility.

In his online series on "why American Muslims don't blow things up," Slate's Timothy Noah delves into the Melting-Pot Theory, which pretty much asserts that smarts and good pay (along with the fact Muslims only make up about 1 percent of the population) tend to cool anti-American fervor.