• Kramer vs. Kramer: The Laugh Factory's most famous racist, Michael Richards, publicly kowtowed on Jesse Jackson's radio show "Keep Hope Alive" (while sitting just a smack's length away from comic Paul Mooney, just in case), saying that the words "came through me ... like a freight train." At least he put the blame on himself rather than falling back on alcohol, abuse as a child, or Tituba's voodoo spells.

• Pulling out—the safest method: The Republican party's Bush critic, Sen. Chuck Hagel, has recommended that the United States remove itself from Iraq's booby-trapped streets. The difference between Hagel's lonely shouting and this latest round of heckling: Someone might actually be listening.

• Queens' Rodney King: NYPD's finest shot 50 bullets at a black bridegroom, killing him and injuring his two friends. The New York Times investigates "contagious shooting," where "[a]n officer fires, so his colleagues do, too."

• Draw down: A disgruntled cartoonist walked into the Miami Herald offices brandishing a toy gun and was promptly arrested. The punchline: Last year, embattled "former city commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr. fatally shot himself in the Herald lobby," which isn't funny at all.

• A Lott-a stupid things to say: Michael Richards fan Trent Lott coupled the Iraq war and the war on terror, saying, "If we didn't have 'em [the terr'sts] tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, they'd be, you know, somewhere else, in England, or even right here." Let's be honest, Trent: the terrorists aren't exactly "tied down;" not even the Abu Ghraib-ians are, anymore. Makes one wish that we had President Strom Thurmond, right?

• New ur-bland-ism: Newsweek covers the mushroom-like growth of "lifestyle centers," fake downtowns for suburban areas where cafés, performance spaces, coffee houses, offices, and chain stores come together amid a squeaky clean streetscape—like hell with a Starbucks.