Floyd Kalber

Journalists, never known to shy from giving each other awards, will always make room for one more. How about this for a possibility?

... And our final nominee for gratuitous reference to race in cable-show polemic, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, shown here on May 26 --

MADDOW: Today in Alaska, crude oil production was all but stopped on the North Slope. Oil companies operating there were told to cut their production by more than 80 percent after thousands of barrels of crude oil spilled from the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The 800-mile Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, at least for right now, is shut down. That spill in Alaska is happening, of course, in the shadow of a much larger spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Maddow pauses for effect)

And, uh, actually, you know what, if it's OK with you guys in the control room, I think we should just probably just have me stop doing this now and let the gravitas white guy anchor do this part. Let's do that.

Yes -- "the gravitas white guy anchor." Worth nominating, don't you think?