I wouldn’t have caught wind of this story, were it not for our good friend and Hot Air guest blogger Jeff Dunetz. I’m guessing that not many of you saw it either, since you would have had to have been watching Al Sharpton’s show on MSNBC. (Can we get a show of hands of all of you who watch Sharpton? Er… nobody? Okay. Let’s push on.)

The Reverend Al recently assembled a group of experts on race relations in politics which included Touré. They were gathered to discuss a recent comedy piece on late night television where the GOP was found to use stock photos in some of their advertisements. This was immediately translated by the panel to mean that there were so few non-white voters in the Republican Party that they couldn’t find any. Touré was quick to explain this away with his usual flair.

They have to use these fake people to illustrate black people who might be down with their cause. I mean, they do have a couple. Why don’t they use, like, Allen West in an ad or something. I don’t know.

But he didn’t stop there. Jeff picks up the real meat of the discussion.

Appearing on Al-Sharpton’s MSNBC program Friday night, guest Touré Neblett, co-host of “the Cycle” suggested that Rev Martin Luther King Jr, Lt. Col. Allen West, LL Cool J, Toure’s colleague at MSNBC Michael Steele, and Senator Tim Scott and many others like them are all just tokens.

As Neblett put it, “When you go to the RNC, there’s always going to be some chocolate chips in the sea of vanilla ice cream.”

Neblett’s comment is part of the progressive tradition of segmenting Americans specific groups, such as racial, religions and gender groups.

First of all, I have a confession to make. I had no idea that Touré’s last name was Neblett. For the longest time I thought it was one of those single word Hollywood names… like Madonna. But be that as it may, this is still rather remarkable. It must be a real thrill for Touré to be able to use the phrase “chocolate chips” when speaking about a group of African Americans. And the other minority representatives on the panel just laughed along with him, so apparently this is now acceptable terminology. (Well… at least in some cases.)

I’ll leave the rest of the description to Jeff, as well as an explanation of why stock photos are used in marketing campaigns in every endeavor, including politics. You can also find the rest of the video of this display here.

This original version of this article stated that the ads in question were from the RNC. It has been edited to clarify that they were Republican ads, but not run by the RNC.