Search results for: “node/olopade”
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Michelle Obama's Sistah-Girlfriend Press Corps
Howard Kurtz’s recent claim that black female reporters are having difficulty covering the first lady because she is also a black female is a worthwhile topic of discussion, but his focus on “objectivity” misses the point. THE BUZZ has a pretty good summary of Kurtz’s analysis, and at TAPPED, Adam Serwer makes a characteristically smart…
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The Sarah Palin Saga: Desperate Housewives meets Northern Exposure?
Todd Purdum has written a blistering report in next month’s VANITY FAIR about Sarah Palin that draws on sniping from former John McCain aides, shrugging statements of disownment from acquaintances in Wasilla, and sorrowful head-shaking from the Republican intelligentsia. The wide-ranging “profile” of the woman who almost stood second in line to the presidency pre-empts…
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Still Do or Die in Bed-Stuy
With his gold-plated knuckle rings—“love” on the right hand, “hate” on the left—the large, loud, boombox-blasting Radio Raheem was a perfect big-screen personification of Spike Lee’s Bedford-Stuyvesant. Two decades later, so much still rings true about Spike’s adoring portrait of the neighborhood in his 1989 film Do the Right Thing. When I tell folks I…
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L'Enfant Terrible of Black Cinema
WATCH VIDEO of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’ recent interview with Spike Lee. I FIRST INTERVIEWED Spike Lee in the spring of 1991 in his office at 40 Acres and a Mule Productions, located in the heart of the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. I was in the process of moving from Duke to Harvard to…
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Spike's Woman Problem
Cinematically speaking, it’s one of those “oh, that scene” moments: suffocating heat, an ice cube tray, Rosie Perez’s naked, heaving breasts. An exceedingly tight close-up of Rosie Perez’s naked, heaving breasts. And you’ve got Spike Lee—clearly enjoying his auteur/actor privileges—rubbing an ice cube over said breasts, paying crooning homage to “the right nipple” and “the…
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The First Couple’s First Flick
The story of Michelle and Barack Obama has been drawn as one about black achievement, the triumph of tradition, racial healing and just plain romance. But their story has also, from day one, been a political one. It’s been that way since their first official date 20 years ago, when the couple went to see…
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POTUS to Hit (Maybe Racist, Maybe Backward) World Cup
President Obama has accepted an invitation to the opening ceremony of the first World Cup to be held on the African Continent, according to the head of FIFA, the world soccer federation. From ESPN: President Obama, whose late father was Kenyan, has indicated he will attend the event on June 11 next year when the…
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Why Mookie Did the Wrong Thing
When Do the Right Thing was released 20 years ago, a generation of black writers and intellectuals became instantly radicalized by Spike Lee and Public Enemy’s vision of black America. Their fist-pumping black nationalist slingshots, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, were the perfect antidote for the isolation and alienation many black youth felt…
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The Music in Spike’s Message
“1989, a number, another summer, sound of the funky drummer” —Public Enemy, “Fight the Power” One of the most unforgettable images from the summer of 1989 was the video for “Fight the Power,” the theme song for Spike Lee’s classic film Do the Right Thing, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month. Spike Lee…
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Buggin' Out on DTRT's Haters
In this vintage footage from 1990, film critic Armond White sounds off on the mainstream coverage of Do the Right Thing, dissecting how American racial angst affected the film’s critical reception. Arguably the country’s most famous black film critic, Armond White has served as staff film critic at the New York Press since 1994. He…