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Bill Clinton Up Close: Former Prez Dishes on Obama, Afghanistan and Climate Change
Former President Bill Clinton spoke to a group of reporters at his Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York this week. With the backdrop of the United Nations General Assembly and the G20 summit around the corner, Clinton was voluble, direct and full of expertise on issues ranging from health care reform (“We should fight…
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The Yes Men Take on Climate Change
The infamous prankster activists known as the “Yes Men” have struck again—hijacking Monday’s NEW YORK POST to promote the cause of climate action and energy security. Their successful reprinting of the widely read daily tabloid mirrors a November 2008 stunt wherein they circulated a credible-looking NEW YORK TIMES reading “Iraq War Ends.” Monday’s headlines shout…
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Taking Back the House—The On-Screen and Real-Life Politics of Bill Cosby
Nostalgic recollections of The Cosby Show place Cliff Huxtable—Cosby’s duck-walking, sandwich-loving, mugging alter ego—as the smiling patriarch of a well-adjusted nuclear family with two professional incomes in a Brooklyn brownstone barricaded away from the first stirrings of the crack era. It was gently political: “There were no “whitey” call-outs à la George Jefferson, no power-to-the-people…
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'It’s Not on Obama. It’s Really Still on Us.'
For eight television seasons (NBC, 1984-92), the Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show, written by and starring comedian Bill Cosby, beamed an unflinching, yet humorous black family portrait into living rooms across America. Cosby, as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, presided over this historic foray into black upper-middle class life. The sitcom was a window into a certain,…
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Photo of the Week: Obama-Wan-Kenobi
President Barack Obama wields a fake “Star Wars”-style lightsaber with young children visiting the White House for an event held by the Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport. The event drew hundreds of young athletes, as well as the delegation to the International Olympic Committee, working with first lady Michelle Obama to promote Chicago’s…
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An Exclusive Talk with Bill Cosby
For eight television seasons (NBC, 1984-92), the Emmy Award-winning The Cosby Show, written by and starring comedian Bill Cosby, beamed an unflinching, yet humorous black family portrait into living rooms across America. Cosby, as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, presided over this historic foray into black upper-middle class life. The sitcom was a window into a certain,…
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Lack of Black Techies, Web Redlining and That Darned Digital Divide
At last week’s Gov 2.0 gathering—dedicated to exploring the ways that the Internet can improve public policy—Silicon Valley and Washington came together to discuss biometric security, open-source policymaking, geo-targeting and other breakthrough technologies. Roaming the halls? Internet luminaries like Google vice president Vint Cerf, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Vivek Kundra, chief information officer of…
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Obama to Meet with Colin Powell—Next at the Pentagon?
The president has returned to Washington from two days of rigorous domestic policy talk. One year after the US financial markets went into freefall, Obama’s lecture to bankers on Wall Street and his pep rally for auto manufacturers in Michigan were important to restoring confidence in the American economy. Tomorrow, however, Obama turns to foreign…
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Michelle Obama Takes Chicago 2016 Bid Overseas
President Barack Obama has long been known as an enthusiastic supporter of the Second City’s bid to host the 2016 Olympic games. Now we know how enthusiastic—the White House is sending its biggest guns to bat for Chicago: Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett. The first lady and her old friend will travel together to the…
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Obama Remembers 9/11
On the eighth aniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, President Barack Obama and the entire presidential staff, from maintenance men and cooks to Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, gathered on the South Lawn of the White House to remember. The rain in Washington let up just before 8:46 a.m.—the time the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
