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Who Won Chris Brown's Latest Twitter Fight?
(The Root) — Not too long ago, one of my best friends sent me this frantic text: “OMG I’m at the office and just saw that security guard who looks EXACTLY like Darren. I’m totally freaking out. I’m getting a taser!!” You would think this Darren guy had done her some terrible wrong. That he…
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How to Actually Be a Beautiful Woman
We know beauty comes from within, but how do we actually carry that out into the world? Helena Andrews explores the question at XOJane. Often, we allegedly enlightened grown women assume that each one of us has tattooed Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Women” across our sagging boobies in invisible ink. Of course we know beauty comes from within. Duh!…
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Can Maia Campbell Fix Her Life?
(The Root) — “This episode is personal for me,” explains Yoruba priestess, author and TV host Iyanla Vanzant as she cruises through Los Angeles to meet actress Maia Campbell, the subject of this past Saturday night’s Iyanla: Fix My Life series on OWN. In fact, it’s personal for any of us who remember Campbell, 36,…
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You're in 'Like,' Not Love: 10 Ways to Tell
“Olivia Pope yourself first! Gut-check your mushy insides to see if you’re truly, madly, deeply done in,” The Root’s contributing editor Helena Andrews advises in a piece for XOJane. … And because there’s plenty out there dedicated to what Love allegedly looks like, I’m going to tell you how to spot its apathetic play cousin:…
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Hope, Change and Malia Obama
(The Root) — When she stepped onto that stage in Chicago on election night, my breath caught. She was tall to the point of stretching, effortlessly poised and graceful beyond reproach. The metaphor is often overused, but she was gazelle-like. I’m speaking, of course, about 14-year-old first daughter Malia Obama, the teenager who has inherited…
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Trapped in the Closet
(The Root) — It’s a story we’ve all heard before. Person with a membership to the privileged class goes incognito for a time as someone without an all-access pass to life. Lessons are learned. People are changed. But does social slumming change the rules or just mark them in bold? John Howard Griffin did it…
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'The Houstons': Too Soon and Too Staged
(The Root) — Reality television is exploitative by definition. It’s a fishbowl with sharks — entertainment at its most primitive. You root for the good guys, boo for the baddies and gasp when a table gets flipped or a drink gets thrown. Simple. But in Lifetime’s new reality series The Houstons: On Our Own, the…
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Black Cinema at Its Most Subtle and Simple
(The Root) — With the highest per-screen average of any movie playing this past weekend, Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere might be the forerunner of a new genre in black film: one that favors slow-boiling drama over deep-fried histrionics. Opening in only five markets, Middle of Nowhere pulled in “a healthy” $13,000 per-location average, according…
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Romney's PBS Cuts: Beyond Big Bird
(The Root) — One of the most memorable lines from last week’s presidential debate wasn’t about universal health care or even big government — it was about Big Bird. When Republican candidate Mitt Romney summarily attacked PBS, the political punch lines, of course, practically wrote themselves — from plays on Wall Street and Sesame Street…
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'Scandal': Olivia Pope's Got a Secret
(The Root) — It has to be hard being Olivia Pope. She stalks the world like a hungry cat — switching her hips as she breaks down an executive strategy in seconds or staring off into the distance at her prey, or maybe reflecting on her mysterious past. She seems built for that sort of…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
