Culture

Rufus Friday Disagrees With Editorial Board The publisher and president of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader became one of few prominent African Americans to publicly support Mitt Romney for president Sunday when the paper’s editorial board disclosed that Rufus M. Friday disagreed with its endorsement of President Obama. “. . . He chose not to use…

Storm Raises 
Suppressed Issue of Climate Change “It was not a good year for people, 
weather and climate. The winter was strangely warm in many places and 
the summer ridiculously hot,” Adam Frank wrote 
Sunday for NPR. “As a large fraction of the country suffered through extreme or 
even extraordinary drought many folks naturally wondered,…

AP Poll: 51% Express Explicit Anti-Black Attitudes “The 2012 election is shaping up to be more polarized along racial lines than any presidential contest since 1988, with President Obama experiencing a steep drop in support among white voters from four years ago,” Jon Cohen and Rosalind S. Helderman reported Thursday for the Washington Post. “At…

Debates Skipped Faith, Justice, Southern Hemisphere “Criminal justice reform may top the list of third-rail political issues to be strictly avoided on the campaign trail. And, perhaps as expected, it didn’t rear its head at any of the presidential debates,” Farai Chideya wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review. “Politicians from both major parties tend to…

President Obama was judged the winner of Monday night’s final debate of the campaign season, with challenger Mitt Romney leaving pundits debating why he now agreed with the president on so many foreign policy issues. “If this debate had gone on for 30 more minutes, Romney was going to endorse Obama,” Van Jones, the former…

Four Alumni Reflect on Demise of Print Edition In a 2009 edition of “Mormon Matters,” which describes itself as a “weekly podcast exploring Mormon culture and current events,” Jeff Breinholt recalled: “The July 15, 1968 edition of Newsweek featured the cover story ‘The Angry Black Athlete,‘ which stated: ” ‘It is a mess that extends…

Debate’s Inclusion of Broader Issues Was Intentional After two debates in which domestic concerns of particular interest to people of color were barely mentioned, moderator Candy Crowley of CNN said Tuesday night that she made a deliberate effort to raise such issues as gun control, immigration and long-term unemployment in that evening’s town hall presidential…

Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, said over the weekend that the network she left behind “reinforces negative stereotypes of young people, African Americans in particular,” Brittney M. Walker wrote Monday for EURWeb.com. Johnson was the speaker at the “Conversations and Encounters” program at the Carmel Art and Film Festival in Monterey County, Calif.,…