Oh, Christian Bale. Who speaks for you?

The actor’s on-set tantrum got quite a bit of attention this week on local and entertainment news programs, and was severely mocked on most or all of the late night talk shows. It became part of a new mash-up with a years-ago snit by then-“Inside Edition” anchor Bill O’Reilly. Video after the jump.

I’m certain I will not be the only blogger/columnist/media blowhard to note the irony of A-Rod’s steroid confession coming on the same day “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot Chesley Sullenberger and his crew got the key to New York City. But it’s worth noting what different definitions of “hero” and “role model” you find when you look at the two situations.

By admitting he took steroids when he was a Texas Ranger, as Sports Illustrated reported over the weekend, Yankee Alex Rodriquez (sure are lots of Yankees with steroid issues.. what’s up with that, all you proud “pride” partisans who believe your team is as close to Godliness as a franchise could be? Might be time to retire that notion along with the old Stadium and all those famous uniform numbers soon to be posted on a shiny new outfield wall) made it something of a clean sweep: by my reckoning, it now means the greatest baseball sluggers of the post-strike era -- Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi (arguably) and maybe Rafael Palmeiro -- have ALL been connected with banned performance enhancing drugs. The Baseball Hall of Fame is going to have a build an entire new wing just to hold all the asterisks.

First of all, let’s get past the question of whether the chimpanzee cartoon in the New York Post is racist or not.

It is. It is classically racist; acutely, explicitly, unmistakably racist. It’s Racism 101. Newsday talked to some people who study these things:

"Sybil Mimy Johnson, who teaches African studies courses at Hofstra University, said the cartoon recalls a history of unflattering comparisons of African-Americans to primates.

'If you go back to Jim Crow and you go back to the whole depiction of cartoons then, it was demeaning for African-Americans, calling them animals,' she said. 'This is extremely insensitive and it reaches back to those old wounds.'

'How could The Post let this cartoon pass as satire?' said Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. "To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel.'"

A lot of people checked out my blog post from last night about the New York Post and the now-infamous chimp cartoon. Scores of you also wrote comments, some agreeing with my assessment that the cartoon is clearly racist in nature and intent, and others saying it’s just as clearly NOT racist. Curiously, not one person commented on the central premise of my post: that we could well be seeing more instances of overt (as opposed to coded) racism as the reality of having our first president of African descent sinks in among people angrily opposed to Barack Obama, both the person and his policies.

Tonight, I’m going to go all academic on you. Here’s a different viewpoint from someone who has studied the exact topic the Post controversy has, shall we say, illuminated: the sensitivities to the centuries-old racist caricature of black people as apes or monkeys. I came across an article written by a social psychologist named Phillip Atiba Goff, an associate professor at UCLA. Dr. Goff’s research, according to his on-line academic profile, “.. focuses on the intersection of identity and social justice” and how it relates to policing and the criminal justice system.

Don’t you love the way big companies get to make “settlements” when they’re caught doing something crooked, without having to admit any wrongdoing? Must be nice. Today Ticketmaster made such a settlement with the attorney general of New Jersey over the company’s bald-faced effort to redirect people trying to buy Bruce Springsteen tickets to Ticketmaster’s secondary site which charges much higher prices, even though regular priced seats were still available. I’m sorry, that was a confusing explanation, wasn’t it? Let me try again: Ticketmaster was acting as an internet scalper. 22-hundred Springsteen fans complained to the attorney general’s office..

Well, thank goodness THAT’S over. Or almost over. The recession/depression, I mean. When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee today that the bad times will end this year and recovery will begin in 2010, I could have sworn I heard “Happy Days Are Here Again” playing in the background.

I exaggerate. But there has been a lot written in the last week or so about the “self-fulfilling prophecy” aspect of the free market economy: too much talk by our leaders and economists about how bad it is, and sure enough it gets worse; make more upbeat assessments, consumers start to come out of their bomb shelters, and things start to pick up. Perhaps Mr. Bernanke made a policy decision to try and scrape off at least one layer of gloom after these last few dismal weeks, to see what the effect would be. The stock market certainly shot way up, which is nice.. for a day.

The reviews are in on President Obama’s speech before Congress Tuesday night. Lots and lots and lots of reviews; good ones, from the people you’d expect would be giving Obama good reviews, and some bad ones from people you’d expect….. well, you know what I’m saying. But I’ll tell you one group of people I’m guessing was VERY impressed with the address, and feel that having President Obama in office is going to make their jobs much easier: speech teachers.

Everybody, kinda including me, is pretty gloomed out after this week, with all the dire economic news that keeps piling up. Coming to work, I thought maybe I’d write some ponderous, weighty analysis of our collective psyche as we all face the looming hard times. But then I thought…. Naaaaah.. I’d rather write something shallow and inconsequential. (I know what some of you are thinking: “Jim, that’s what you do every night.” Well, stop thinking that!)