Reuters is now pushing, and Drudge is agreeably linking to, a story discussing Robert Downey Jr.’s “risky” blackface role in the new Ben Stiller movie. Since his role in the movie is a buffoonish actor who adopts the blackface—i.e., he’s not playing the role in blackface, as if he were black—the riskiness factor is exactly nil. It’s just the DreamWorks publicity machine working hard against some mixed early reviews, like this one from Variety:

A smart-alecky sendup of Hollywood in general and action films in particular, “Tropic Thunder” undeniably provokes quite a few laughs, but of the most hollow kind. Ben Stiller’s star-laden farce makes every effort to be outrageous as it pokes knowing fun at a troupe of spoiled, self-centered actors who get more than they bargained for making a “Rambo”-like rescue drama in Southeast Asia. Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.