"We've got Johnny Depp with a taxidermied crow on top of his head and painted to the nth degree... and he looks like a gothic freak."

"There's no way you can look at this and not say it's odd, unusual, strange, arresting, startling... It's a major setback for the Native American image in the world because that's how millions of people will think American Indians are now."

ADDED: The link above goes to an NPR item — "Does Disney's Tonto Reinforce Stereotypes Or Overcome Them?" — and after posting, I decided to check out the reviews for "The Lone Ranger." They're terrible.

How/why/wherefore did it turn out this way? The evidence suggests a combination of hubris, errant revisionism, a misguided and perverse degree of violence, and a script that never worked in the first place.

ALSO: From the sidebar at NPR's "Tonto" article, from just a few days ago, "Can 'Devious Maids' Really Break Stereotypes About Latinas?" ("Thankfully, the maids themselves aren't stereotypes. But there are no Latina bosses here.") From yesterday: "How A Minority Biking Group Raises The Profile Of Cycling." ("It was very powerful to have a group, like 60 or 70 riders who were all black rolling through a predominately black community on a bike.") And, also from yesterday: "The Secret History Of The Word 'Cracker.'" ("For many Southern whites, though, cracker has remained uncomplicated, a source of cultural pride.")

NPR means well, I'm pretty sure, as it talks and talks about race from an upper-middle-class white perspective. That's how it looks to me, anyway.