culture
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BREAKING: Justices Rule in Favor of White Firefighters
From the New York Times: “WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge. New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans…
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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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Video: The BET Awards Recap
Jay-Z Eddie Levert Janet Jackson and the “I’ll Be There” Finale Was there more worth seeing? Not really.
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Long Before 'Thriller,' Jackson Shattered Racial Barriers
In 1972, when the movie “Ben” premiered and sent that falsetto voice of little Michael Jackson soaring across movie screens, the joy inside black America was palpable. It wasn’t just that the song raced to No. 1 on the charts, it was that it flowed from the magic of film. And black America, long kept…
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The Album That Saved Pop Music
Is it possible that Michael Jackson’s Thriller is underrated? No, don’t consult your dictionary, I mean underrated in the way you think I mean underrated. Yes, it’s an album that sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, the best-selling recording ever. And for that very, very good reason, it’s well known as a business and…
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Detroit City Council Woman Pleads Guilty on Bribery Charges
From the Detroit Free Press: “Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, “The defendant now stands convicted.” The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable for up to five years in…
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MTV's Jackie Robinson
An excerpt from Touré’s piece on the Daily Beast: “I can’t help but think about Thriller’s massive socio-cultural impact. Rev. Al Sharpton referred to Michael as a pre-Obama Obama-esque figure in that he’s a black man who knows how to make millions of blacks and whites fall in love with him. He’s an integrationist, a…
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Chasing Michael Jackson
I may be a little fella But my heart’s As big as Texas —Michael Jackson If you are a journalist, and you are a journalist of a certain age, covering Michael Jackson meant reconciling your personal childhood feelings about the Gloved One at the same time you were covering what amounted to a freak show.…
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He Made Us Dance
Michael made us dance.That is an often-ignored fact as we try to grapple with the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson. For 80 percent of his life, he wasn’t merely famous. He was a megastar. Indeed, he rose to almost inconceivable heights of stardom, into such rarefied space that it could only be inhabited by the…
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Michael Jackson Memories
Share your Michael Jackson memories and photos. E-mail [email protected] REMEMBER THE CROTCH GRAB? It was 1978, I was 10 years old and I wanted to marry Michael. I remember one time, my mother making my little sister and I leave the room when Michael was dancing. She thought his signature move (the crotch grab) and…