Maggie Shnayerson

So the thoroughbreds in the Belmont Stakes took off a half hour ago in New York; jockey Calvin Borel was on Derby winner Mine That Bird, the even favorite.

Borel, if you’ll recall, is the two-time Derby winner who rode filly Rachel Alexander earlier this month to her Preakness win.

He also happens to have an eighth-grade education from Atchafalaya Basin in the heart of Cajun Louisiana, the bosom of American match-racing and the country’s biggest swamp.

So before Mine That Bird came in third tonight, ABC’s idiot ESPN commentator made sure to characterize Borel as “a kind of Forrest Gump” of racing and “comfort food” for us all.

I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even count as coded language. Why didn’t the asshole just call him retarded white trash and be done with it?

I shall take solace in the fact that Borel regularly earns a million dollars in 2.5 minutes while the newscaster moron has to work all year for half that, if he’s lucky.

“During a Nov. 18 seventh-grade history lesson on slavery, the teacher, Eileen Bernstein, who is white, selected two black students—one of whom was 13-year-old Gabrielle —taped their hands and feet, and had them crawl into the space under a desk to simulate what it must have been like for slaves transported in ships’ holds during the voyage to America.

In retrospect, the teacher ‘realizes that that was not a good choice and we’ve rectified the situation in terms of not using that simulation again,’ [principal Avis Shelby] added.” [The Journal-News]

Thank God the school has taken measures to ensure that teachers don’t USE THAT SIMULATION AGAIN. For chrissakes.