clipped from: jezebel.com 
Last night, Larry King devoted most of his show to Michelle Obama. Not her accomplishments, her appearance. (Related: She wears shoes!) We asked Racialicious' Latoya Peterson to weigh in on this strange, seemingly widespread obsession.
A prominent White male scholar who has done much to challenge scientific racism apparently felt few qualms at using a slide of Sarah Bartmann as part of his PowerPoint presentation. Leaving her image on screen for several minutes with a panel of speakers that included Black women seated on stage in front of the slide, this scholar told jokes about the seeming sexual interests of White voyeurs of the nineteenth century. He seemed incapable of grasping how his own twentieth-century use of this image as well as his invitation that audience members become voyeurs along with him, reinscribed Sarah Bartmann as an "object...a mallebale 'thing'" upon which he projected his own agenda. (p. 142)