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It looks like All My Babies' Mamas isn't going to happen.

The Oxygen reality special was supposed to follow Shawty Lo, a rapper from Atlanta, and the complications that attend his relationships with the mothers (10) of his children (11). It was scheduled to premiere this spring, but almost as soon as it was announced in December, there was outcry from people who felt that the show propped up demeaning stereotypes about black people. Oxygen announced Tuesday that the show will be scuttled before it even airs. (Shawty Lo is reportedly fighting back with a petition of his own urging the network to reverse course again and let Babies' Mamas see the light of day.)

Babies' Mamas exists — or would have existed — in a television landscape that is increasingly devoid of shows with black casts, and the term "baby mama" itself makes a lot of people concerned about the number of black children are born to unmarried parents see red. It's a perfect storm of anxieties about cultural representation and pathologies. There aren't a lot of images of black people on TV, the argument goes. The ones that appear could at least be affirming, or barring that, not stereotypical.

A petition by Color of Change, an influential advocacy organization, accused Oxygen of trying to profit from "inaccurate, dehumanizing, and harmful perceptions of Black families."

The form-letter petition goes on:

Research shows that inflammatory images like these can result in real world consequences for our families, including less attention from doctors, harsher sentencing by judges, lower likelihood of being hired or admitted to school, lower odds of getting loans, and a higher likelihood of getting shot by police.

At a White House event with children who wrote him letters after the Dec. 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today said the nation cannot wait any longer to do what can be done to reduce gun violence.

He unveiled a series of executive actions and calls for legislation that is sure to spark sharp debate in Washington. The steps he's taking, as expected, include calling on Congress to pass legislation banning "military-style assault weapons" and expanding background checks for gun buyers. He also announced 23 executive actions — such as "legal barriers in health laws that prevent some states from making information available about those prohibited from having guns" — that don't require Congressional action.

The president's various measures, the White House estimates, would cost about $500 million to implement. The Washington Post calls them "the most expansive gun-control policies in generations." They would be "the most sweeping changes to gun laws in nearly two decades," says the Wall Street Journal.

"Gun rights advocates," as NPR's Scott Horsley says, "have already promised stiff resistance." Even before the White House event, the National Rifle Association was calling the president an "elitist hypocrite."

While Obama promised to "put everything I've got into this," he also said that "pundits and politicians" will fight his proposals and claim he's waging an "all-out assault on liberty."

"The only way we can [get] change is if the American people demand it," he said. Americans, added Obama, need to "stand up and say 'enough.' "

The president also said that he has no wish to infringe on Americans' Second Amendment rights, but is taking "common sense measures that have the support of the majority of American people."

Vice President Biden, who joined the president at the midday event, lead the task force that developed the plan. The effort was launched in the days after the mass shooting at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We live blogged as the announcement was made and afterward.

Update at 12:45 p.m. ET. Key Points Of The Plan:

— Obama is calling on Congress to pass legislation to "reinstate and strengthen the ban on assault weapons" that was in place from 1994 to 2004.

— He wants a law passed to prohibit the sale of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

— The administration says "Congress should finish the job of protecting law enforcement and the public by banning the possession of armor-piercing ammunition by, and its transfer to, anyone other than the military and law enforcement."

— The federal government is taking executive action "to provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers."

— "The Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security will release — by May 2013 — a set of model, high-quality emergency management plans for schools, houses of worship, and institutions of higher education, along with best practices for developing these plans and training students and staff to follow them."

— An increase in efforts to "reach 750,000 young people through programs to identify mental illness early and refer them to treatment. ... The administration is calling for a new initiative, Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education), to provide this training and set up systems to provide these referrals."

— Obama is directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal scientific agencies "to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence." Congress has in recent years barred those agencies from using federal funds to "advocate or promote gun control." The White House argues that "research on gun violence is not advocacy; it is critical public health research."

White House 'fact sheet' on President Obama's executive actions related to gun violence by mmemmott

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar intends to step down at the end of March, his office confirms to NPR's Jeff Brady.

Word of Salazar's plan broke over night. According to The Denver Post, the former senator from Colorado intends to "return to Colorado to spend time with his family."

As the Post writes:

"Salazar has said in his four years he is most proud of improving the relationship the federal government has with American Indians, cleaning up the oil and gas program after former departments were plagued with scandal and nepotism, and broadening a clean energy agenda.

"The secretary established seven new national parks and 10 new wildlife refuges. He also launched 18 utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands. ...

"He has also dealt with several natural and environmental disasters, including the explosion of a BP-operated deep water oil well, Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. ...

"In his push to grow regulations for domestic energy production on federal lands — particularly post Deepwater Horizon — he often tangled with House Republicans, many of whom have called him one of the worst Interior secretaries in the history of the United States."

If you didn't know any better, you might think that even if new gun control proposals from President Obama become stalled in Washington's gridlock, the states will rush in to fill the void.

After all, under its Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York has responded to December's Newtown tragedy by passing legislation banning assault weapons and making it harder for seriously mentally ill individuals to legally obtain firearms.

Meanwhile, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a fellow Democrat, has announced that he is championing new restrictions to require anyone seeking a gun permit to take a mandatory training course and submit fingerprints to state authorities.

And yet one more Democrat, Gov. John Hickenlooper in Colorado, a state in a traditionally pro-gun region of the country, is calling for universal background checks for would-be gun purchasers. He would require anyone buying a firearm, even at a gun show or in a private sale, to pass a criminal background check.

There's an old newsroom adage that three is a trend. And the activity in these three states could certainly lead an observer to assume that there's a widespread movement in the states to act on gun control with a swiftness not found at the federal level.

But sometimes three doesn't really signal a larger trend. This is one of those times.

While the three aforementioned states and several others are considering new restrictions on guns following the pre-Christmas massacre of grade-schoolers and educators in Connecticut, there isn't much evidence of things on the state level shifting toward greater gun control.

The states considering further restrictions are all blue states.

In fact, in several red states, the shift is in the exact opposite direction. In Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming, for instance, legislation has been introduced recently that would loosen gun restrictions or underscore gun owner rights.

While the gun control issue isn't a totally partisan one, the push for new limits is more likely to occur in states with Democratic governors and legislatures than in states in which the GOP controls the governor's mansion and legislature.

Keeping in mind that 30 states have Republican governors and 26 state legislatures are GOP-controlled, compared with the 19 that are controlled by Democrats (four are split; Nebraska's is nonpartisan), it's obvious that the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates have a substantial firewall in the states.

The firewall means that legislation in the states is likely to be only so effective, since — as has been seen in history — guns can easily make their way into states with strict restrictions from states with looser laws.

In 1993, Virginia instituted a gun sale restriction that limited buyers to one handgun a month, after research found that a disturbing number of guns sold in the state were being used in crimes elsewhere on the East Coast.

That restriction was repealed last year by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Robert McDonnell on the grounds that it interfered with the Second Amendment rights of citizens. The repeal, however, has once again raised fears that a flood of Virginia guns will find their way into the hands of criminals.

Something else to keep in mind is that not every Democratic governor is a sure champion for tough new gun control laws.

Take Gov. Jerry Brown of California who, in the past has described himself as a gun owner and hunter. Though Brown has signed gun control legislation during his governorship — for instance, a ban on openly carrying unloaded handguns in public — he has been relatively muted on the issue post-Newtown. He's made no promises on whether he would sign future gun-control bills.

So while it should be fairly obvious that new restrictions on guns face significant obstacles in the nation's capital, it's just as true that such efforts face significant headwinds in most states, as well.