About a week ago Fox News started a “Common Controversy” about whether the Chicago-based poet and rapper should have been invited to a White House poetry reading by the First Lady.

Dispelling Donald Trump’s birther charges that Barack Obama is foreign-born, the president released his long-form birth certificate Wednesday. Politifact, the fact-checking site for politics, says its article about the issue (with a link to the certification of live birth) is the most popular item that it has ever published. The certificate and its release prove two things most people should already know: Obama is an American. And, as PBS host Tavis Smiley put it to MSNBC, the 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be “the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive, and the most racist in the history of this Republic.”

The phone rings. I can't believe what I'm hearing. My father tells me about a book, a play and a man with whom he knew I would resonate--Incognito: An American Odyssey of Race and Self Discovery and Michael Sidney Fosberg. As usual, Dad was right. By the time I'd clicked on Fosberg's website I knew I had to learn more. So, I ordered the book and a copy of the performance directly from the author. Then, I set myself to reading and watching.

The first quarter of 2011 has ushered in the year of the “mad man.” From Charlie Sheen to Chris Brown to George Lopez to Jared Loughner and David Prosser we’ve seen it all: everything from attempted murder to assault and battery, to polygamy, to verbal and emotional abuse against women. Sadly, this idea of mad masculinity is being turned into a commodity that can be consumed repeatedly across a range of media outlets.