• The Hangover: White House Edition

    From our own David Swerdlick, originally published in the NY Daily News: After two weeks of controversy over the arrest of Harvard‘s Henry Louis Gates by the Cambridge Police Department‘s Sgt. James Crowley, I could really go for a cold brew. Couldn’t you? But that Bud Light at the White House last night wasn’t for…

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  • Mansion of DC Arts Patron Burns

    From The Washington Post: Fire gutted the Chain Bridge Road mansion and extensive art collection of longtime D.C. arts patron Peggy Cooper Cafritz late Wednesday, and officials said low water pressure slowed firefighters’ efforts to contain the blaze. It took almost two hours to find a sustained stream of water strong enough to fight the…

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  • She's Focused, Man…

    From the NY Times: On weekends, the subway and bus trip can take two and a half hours — each way, that is. Alexis Page, 13, is pursuing her sport, her art, from uptown Manhattan to the outer fringes of Brooklyn. Millions of hopeful American youths ride to practice in team vans or their parents’…

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  • VIDEO: Joe Jackson Confirms MJ's Love Child in Interview

    In an interview airing tonight on TV One, Joe Jackson sits down with Smokey Fontaine and, in the preview below, confirms that Omer Bhatti is Michael Jackson’s son. Joe Jackson, you are…something else.

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  • What about Shem?

    From Elon James White at This Week in Blackness: “Shem Walker? Who the heck is Shem Walker?” That was the response a friend had when I brought up the name of the recently murdered Brooklynite. I will admit that I would have LOVED to stand on my higher-than-thou step stool and wag my finger at…

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  • Corrective Rape: An Ugly Contradiction

    From BBC: The trial of three of the men accused of the rape and murder of one of South Africa’s leading sportswomen, the openly gay football star Eudy Simelane, starts in South Africa on Wednesday. Thirty-one lesbian women have been reported raped and murdered in homophobic attacks in South Africa since 1998. But according to…

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  • Remember When We Didn't Like Wall Street?

    From Der Spiegel: Anshu Jain, 46, listened stoically and silently to the remarks of shareholders at the annual meeting of Deutsche Bank at the end of May. Many were troubled by the fact that the bank had reported its biggest ever loss in 2008, €3.9 billion ($5.6 billion), for which Jain, as its top investment…

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  • Sgt. Crowley: No Racial Comments. A Fellow Cop…Not So Much

    From the Boston Herald: A Boston police officer allegedly sent a mass e-mail using a disgraceful racial slur in referring to Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., prompting the commissioner to move immediately to fire the cop, the Herald has learned. Officer Justin Barrett, 36, a two-year veteran assigned to District B-3, was placed…

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  • Twitter Hi-Jinks: How Black Are You?

    Sometimes, we’ve gotta keep it light. A sample from the #HowBlackAreYou trending topic: soulrebelJ: I still call my little brother booky. @jenjanea: I love a fish fry, always lived in Black neighborhoods, don’t trust the po-po & am prob more educated than u @elonjames: I have a Pavlovian lyrical response to the phrase “Who the…

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  • AKAs: Get Your Girl Post Haste

    From NBC Washington: Members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority are attempting to fire their national president, Barbara McKinzie, after McKinzie allegedly used sorority money to commission a $900,000 “living legacy wax figure” of herself. Sometimes, this stuff just writes itself. Eight Alpha Kappa Alpha members filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Superior Court on June…

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