culture

The MTV Video Music Awards were supposed to be about Michael Jackson—a do-over of sorts from the rushed, slapped-together tribute to the King of Pop displayed at this year’s BET Awards back in June. But in one quick moment, Kanye West did something so out of pocket, even BET would have been ashamed. Anyone who…

Take cover, Wall Street. President Obama’s socialist Nazi wagon train is headed to your neck of the woods and the Hoss in Chief has reform on his mind! From the Washington Post: President Obama will head to Wall Street on Monday to try to breathe new life into efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system,…

LaDonna Redmond’s new grocery store, Graffiti and Grub, overlooks Interstate 90 just inside the Chicago city limits. A short distance away, the El tracks cut overhead—and as she greets me and unlocks the door, a train clatters by. The store is right on the boundary between Englewood and Washington Park, two largely African-American neighborhoods on…

A rock-and-rolling, Los Angeles-based black teenager with a penchant for Buddhism and disdain for his mother’s Baptist church heads to Europe to find what he calls “The Real,” an elusive notion of the authentic experience. Such is the premise of Passing Strange, the Tony Award-winning 2008 Broadway musical that is now the subject of a…

You won’t find much mention of Henry A. Landsberger amid the burgeoning discussions of sports this weekend, but his impact underpins almost every discussion.  Landsberger isn’t a former professional athlete or sports commentator.  Instead, he’s the social scientist who coined the term Hawthorne Effect, or put simply how the act of observation changes the observed.…

While there are always two sides to a story, this looks pretty not great in any way. From CNN: Two employees at the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the liberal community organizing group ACORN were caught on tape allegedly offering advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute on setting up a prostitution ring…

When Michael Jordan is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame Friday evening, it will cap the most storied career in sports history. Nearly everyone who is a sports fan and many who aren’t have a “Michael moment” etched in their head. As a fan whose allegiance to the Chicago Bulls goes back to 1970—when…

Sex may seem an easy thing to determine, but the case of Caster Semenya proves it is anything but. Semenya, a world record holder the 800 meter run has been under scrutiny for weeks regarding whether or not she can compete in womens’ event as there have been questions regarding testosterone levels in her body.…