culture
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VIDEO: Steele Invites Diversity; Says "I'll Bring the Fried Chicken and Potato Salad"
Found this clip on TPM. To be fair to the chairman, his cuisine response was prompted by a young blogger shouting, off-camera, “I’ll bring the collard greens” after asking what his plan is to include diverse populations. Just saying.
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Workers Call Off Strike, World Cup Might Happen After All
From Al Jazeera: “South African construction workers have agreed to end a weeklong strike that has disrupted work on stadiums for the 2010 World Cup. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the main union involved in the dispute, announced the end of the mass action on Wednesday, saying that details of a wage agreement would…
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168 Feared Dead in Iran Plane Crash
From CNN: “A plane crashed Wednesday in northwestern Iran, state television reported. All 168 aboard were believed to be dead. The passenger plane is thought to have crashed near the Iranian city of Qazvin, Iranian Press TV reported. The Russian-made Tupolev plane went down near Jannat-abad village near Qazvin at 11:33 a.m. on Wednesday, the…
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Toward an ‘Authentic’ Black Barbie
As a child, Barbie was the fantasy version of how I envisioned my grown-up, glamorous life: closets full of gorgeous dresses and sparkling jewels, my choice of high-powered careers, and without question, fabulous hair. My dolls shared the names of soap opera characters, such as “Dominique” for Diahann Carroll’s iconic Dynasty diva. I used real…
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Round 2…Fight! A Wrap-Up of Sotomayor's Second Day
From the homie Adam Serwer on The American Prospect: A PARTY OF RICK LAZIOS. Several GOP Senators, including Hatch, Kyl, and Sessions, attempted to faze Sotomayor through some pretty insistent questioning about her views on race. Sotomayor, for her part, was unmoved: her calm, staccato delivery never wavered. Her composure made Lindsey Graham’s reading of…
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Charles Taylor Says: I Have No Idea How All Those Dead People Happened!
From CNN: ” Former Liberian President Charles Taylor took the stand Tuesday as the first defense witness at his trial on war crimes charges at The Hague in the Netherlands. Taylor, 61, is accused of fueling a bloody civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone that led to widespread murder, rape, and mutilation. The conflict ended…
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Why Justin Timberlake Will Never Be MJ
With the initial tidal wave of Michael Jackson memorializing—glittery, star-studded and centered around a golden coffin—now behind us, it’s only natural to begin considering who will replace Michael as the King of Pop. The world needs heroes, after all. Cue the media speculation. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Monica Guzman asks whether Shaheen Jafargholi, a tween contestant…
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The New King of Pop is a Queen
The two weeks since Michael Jackson’s death have been awash in tributes and testimonies to the man and his music. Yet the tide of nostalgia and revisionism that has gripped the entire planet obscures a nagging truth: The very idea of superstardom may have died with Michael. After all, so many of the eulogies have…
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The Trouble With Greatness
Now that Michael Jackson is gone, but not yet buried—notwithstanding last week’s poignant send-off—what are we to make of his legacy? Will he be remembered as the man who created “Thriller”—revolutionizing pop music and transforming the music video into a work of art? Or will we remember him as Wacko Jacko, he of the creepy…