Carrot TopIn news that will come as a relief to the people of New Jersey, pop culture has found a new tribe to pick on. The latest unlucky victims are redheads, who have had a spectacularly rough couple of months.

This week, Anglo-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. caused a stir with a nine-minute video (since banned from YouTube) for her song 'Born Free,' which shows ginger-topped unfortunates being rounded up by American police. Any sense that this might be a light-hearted satire of actual ethnic persecution is swiftly dashed by a graphic scene in which a young boy is shot through the skull. That is quickly followed by a guy getting blown up by a landmine, and then a guy is beaten to death.

This attack on redheadedness comes only a few days after a bizarre Australian public service advertisement went viral on the Internet. Called 'Don't Be A D***head' (as an Aussie myself, I can tell you that we are not an artful people), the commercial shows a cherry-colored couple in bed while the voice-over warns, "Every time you use your mobile phone while driving, Gingers get fresh."

The strange message is that distracted driving will cause redheads to breed -- and clearly, we don't want that.