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Is Condi Rice Mansplaining the #MeToo Movement by Saying Women Shouldn’t Turn Into ‘Snowflakes’?
In words one might not expect from the woman who used to be provost at a major university, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seemingly mansplained the #MeToo movement. “Let’s not turn women into snowflakes. Let’s not infantilize women,” Rice said during a CNN interview with David Axelrod on Saturday night. Instead of rightly…
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H&M South Africa Closes All Stores After Activists Trash Stores Over ‘Monkey’ Ad
Updated Sunday, Jan. 14, 2017, 9:15 a.m. EST: H&M has decided to temporarily close all of its stores in South Africa amid protests that have seen several of its stores ransacked by protesters upset at a recent racist ad. CNN reports that H&M has 17 locations in South Africa. “We continue to monitor the situation…
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What’s Genius? The Making of Yeethoven II, the Kanye West, Beethoven Orchestral Mashup
“I personally don’t like that word and just avoid it in general,” says Johan, the co-creator and arranger of Yeethoven II, premiering at New York City’s Lincoln Center on Jan. 18. He’s talking about the word “genius” and whether it applies to Kanye West, a term the rapper-producer has bandied about—about himself—for years. “I think…
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You Get a Book! Billionaire Behind ‘Need to Impeach’ Campaign Buys Michael Wolff’s Trump Tome for Every Member of Congress
Billionaire hedge fund manager and Democratic donor Tom Steyer says he purchased a copy of author Michael Wolff’s new book on Donald Trump’s White House—a book the president has tried to prevent from coming out—for each and every member of Congress. Steyer says that he plans to hand-deliver Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White…
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US Tried to Get Cute on Iran but Was Promptly Rebuffed by Russia, Which Asked About Black Lives Matter
The old adage “When you point the finger, you have three pointing back at you” rang true in the United Nations on Friday as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and former Republican governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley inexplicably called an emergency session to lecture the Iranians about their crackdown on protests in that…
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Anti-Muslim Gun Nut Says She’s Running for Arkansas Governor. Great
Another proud bigot is going to run for national office. Whooppeee. This time it’s 54-year-old Jan Morgan, an Arkansas gun range owner, who announced that she would be running for governor of the state in a video posted to YouTube. Morgan came to dubious fame in 2014 when she said that her Gun Cave Indoor…
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Habari Gani?! Ujamaa! Chance the Rapper Embodied Cooperative Economics in 2017
This year, for each day of Kwanzaa, The Root is highlighting one person from the community who exemplifies the principle of the day. On the fourth day of Kwanzaa, Dec. 29, the principle is Ujamaa, or “cooperative economics.” To practice Ujamaa is to build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to…
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Malia Obama Maligned and Defended for Being a Regular Person
The older daughter of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama is back in the news just for being a regular college student, doing the things that college students (or perhaps 19-year-olds in general) do: kissing, smoking and just pushing boundaries as they morph into adults. Too bad that because Malia Obama’s father…
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Texas Mass Shooter Devin Kelley Escaped From a Mental Hospital in 2012
The gunman who killed 26 people on Saturday in Sutherland Springs, Texas, escaped from a psychiatric hospital in 2012. Such evidence may indeed feed the beast in the “gun control vs. mental-health care” debate that inevitably arrises after a mass shooting. The New York Times reports that while Devin P. Kelley was in the Air…
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Government Yanks $98,000 for UC Berkeley Black Panther Project After Complaints From Police Union
After pushback from conservative news outlets as well as the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Park Service has taken back $98,000 in funding for a seemingly green-lit project by a University of California, Berkeley, professor documenting the Black Panther Party. As reported by The Root, the NPS said that the project, “Black Panther Party…
