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Secretary of 'Soul'?
Quincy Jones, bandleader, composer, producer and Grammy-laden powerhouse of the entertainment world, was on CNN on Inauguration Day, getting personal and global at the same time. The much-traveled Jones had been back to his old stomping ground, Garfield High School in Seattle. There, he chatted up a group of students and discovered, to his dismay, that they…
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TV One-Dimensional
On a recent broadcast of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” the host launched into his opening monologue with customary snark. But instead of riffing on a celebrity, he detoured and took on Johnathan Rodgers, the CEO and president of the black cable network TV One. Rodgers had recently announced that his channel planned to…
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Busted Brand
Fundamental to the marketing of any brand is the establishment of trust: A brand builds trust when promises are met and destroys that trust when promises are broken. It’s a fact of life in retail and true in the world of retail politics. Barack Obama has been busy trying to improve the Democratic Party brand.…
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Just His Imagination
They buried Norman Whitfield on Saturday. He died in Los Angeles of complications from diabetes on Sept. 16. He was 68 years old. The name of the dear departed and the fact of his passing generated scant attention in today’s breathless mediascape. But in a year already crowded with mourning, this was another huge loss…
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Oh, Lord, Kumbaya
At this moment in history when we may need it most, “Kumbaya,” a folk song that started its life as a quiet prayer and became a spiritual rallying cry for millions during some of this nation’s grimmest days, has morphed into something that couldn’t have been imagined during your Boy or Girl Scout days: a…
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Hendrix Lives
Defined by the chaos of a presidential campaign under literal siege, an unpopular foreign war and the compound tragedies of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the year 1968 was a pivot point in the national life—the year America almost stopped being America. Part of that upheaval was cultural. The…
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The All-American Family Crisis
If there was ever any doubt about Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to connect with the American people, as his strategically brilliant campaign has shown he’s capable of doing, that doubt should soon be put to rest, in the wake of a personal tragedy now facing the Democratic nominee—the same tragedy faced by millions of Americans…
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The Gifted Ones
In November 1969, the great Nina Simone released what would be her entrée to mainstream popular culture, one of her biggest selling records ever, and an anthem of a movement that, robbed of its messenger 19 months earlier in Memphis, still carried forth his message: To be young, gifted and blackIs where it’s at. The…
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The End of Black History Month
When author and history professor Carter G. Woodson created what would become Black History Month in February 1926, America’s black citizens were on the outside looking in, spectators to the great American drama, subjected to a repression of aspiration and identity so severe that it amounted to domestic apartheid. Lynchings were so common that the…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
