culture

From Al Jazeera: The US secretary of state has said that young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo must press the government to take action against corruption and sexual violence in the war-torn east of the country. “You are the ones who have to speak out,” Hillary Clinton told university students in Kinshasa, the…

As you know, The Buzz enjoys a bit of snark at the SOS’s expense, but in this video below, this response to a knuckleheaded question has just the right amount of indignation without, in our opinion, overreacting. She set an ignorant inquisitor straight. Some people are label this video as one in which Secretary Clinton’s…

From the Washington Post: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 88, a member of a political dynasty who devoted her life to improving the welfare of the mentally disabled by founding the Special Olympics, died Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., after a series of strokes. Shriver, a sister of President John F. Kennedy and…

Black Don’t Crack. But apparently black skin is not completely impervious to the sun. Or so I learned the hard way. I went to see the dermatologist to have a “mole” on my face checked. No big deal; I’d had it a long time. But over the past six months it had changed a bit,…

In major markets throughout the NBA, teams and the media that follow them are talking about next summer like it’s the second coming, and not entirely without reason. Next summer the following superstars can be unrestricted free agents: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, and Amare Stoudemire. In addition, several all-stars including Ray…

From CNN: The dispute between Michael Jackson’s mother and the men Jackson chose to run his estate after his death threatens to delay or derail plans for a documentary of the pop singer’s last days. Katherine Jackson’s lawyers objected in court Monday to the deals made by the Michael Jackson estate’s special administrators with concert…

In “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man,” Henry Louis Gates writes, that many black Americans think that “the soft drink Tropical Fantasy is manufactured by the Ku Klux Klan and contains a special ingredient designed to sterilize black men.” He then demolishes this and other conspiracy theories while recalling America’s troubled racial history,…

From Adam Serwer for American Prospect: By now, everyone’s heard that the Justice Department is apparently considering the Abu Ghraib strategy for dealing with torture as a legal matter—prosecuting only those low-level operators who went beyond the Office of Legal Counsel guidelines detailing how much torture was legal. The LA Times article quotes Human Rights…

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio — The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state’s most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities. The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking…

From the Washington Post: As the first influenza pandemic in 41 years has spread during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter over the past few months, the United States and other northern countries have been racing to prepare for a second wave of swine flu virus. At the same time, international health authorities have become increasingly alarmed…