Gossip folks: I'm not a straight black man, but I play one on my blog

• Studio Briefing: "If, as Oscar host Chris Rock had maintained, no straight black man watches the Oscars, the weekend box office provided a clue to what he did instead - watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman." What, you think men watched this movie?

• What straight black man is paying any attention to the Michael Jackson trial? Apart, of course, from O.J.

• What straight non-white man likes Jude Law? If you don't get turned on by him, and you can't take satisfaction in the fact that a guy the same color as you is inexplicably considered the sexiest man alive, then what's left? Not his acting, certainly. (Except in A.I.)

Addendum: Yes, of course race is still an issue. As one minor pundit put it, in Hollywood "one's value is based, at least partly, on one's race - not solely on one's ability to act" - but what that schmuck doesn't realize is that most value is obtained by being white. Case in point: can you imagine a white actor, after having the year that Jamie Foxx had, getting third billing in his next movie, behind Josh Lucas and Jessica freakin' Biel?

And it's not much better for women. Will Smith made this inflammatory, astonishingly underreported remark in a recent interview:

There's sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, that people around the world don't want to see it.

Ironically, American attitudes meant they couldn't cast a white woman. Good for Eva Mendes, bad for Asian actresses, who thus rate fourth choice at best.