Someone must have really wanted James Brown's belt that said "Sex Machine" on it. It sold for $4,750 at an auction in New York yesterday. His shoeshine box sold for $2,000, and a matching red leather sofa, love seat and armchair sold for $40,000. Musician Paul Shaffer bid $32,500 for Brown's medical bracelet, which identified Brown as diabetic and allergic to penicillin. Shaffer also bid $10,000 for Brown's Hammond organ. 

Jesse Jackson's use of the "n" word stirred up some controversy on "The View" yesterday. Whoopi Goldberg said the word flat out during their discussion of Jackson's comments and that quickly developed into the double standard conversation of why it's OK for blacks to say it but not whites. Whoopi Goldberg said blacks and whites live in different worlds.  Elizabeth Hasselbeck started to cry and asked "how are we supposed to then move forward if we keep using terms that bring back that pain?" Barbara Walters stepped in and used the opportunity to promote Barack Obama, saying Obama and others are trying to help the country move forward.

New York's governor and the NAACP are condemning the New Yorker magazine's satirical cover of the Obamas.  The cover depicts Barack Obama and his wife as flag-burning radicals. New York Governor David Paterson, the state's first black governor, says the cover is "one of the most malignant, vicious covers of a magazine" he's ever seen. He says "It depicted them as angry, hateful, violent and unpatriotic." Paterson spoke at the civil rights organization's national convention in Cincinnati. The NAACP has released a resolution that calls the cover "tasteless, Islam-a-phobic, mean spirited and racially offensive." It calls on other Americans who are offended by the cover to contact the magazine about their concerns. The New Yorker says it used satire "to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover."