culture

It’s April again, and Tiger Woods is in the hunt for his fifth Masters title at Augusta this weekend, 12 years after he became the first person of color to win at a previously whites-only golf course. Tiger’s chase comes at the end of a week in which we marked the 35th anniversary of Hank…

ABC: Fires in Southwest ‘Like a War Zone’; People in Gaza: “Define ‘War Zone’ Exactly.” USAT: BHO: “Hey America, Remember that $83B I Didn’t Want Bush to Use for Iraq? I’ma Need that Right Quick…” LAT: License to Il: Kim Jong Spends $0 Campaigning, Keeps Job Anyway NYT: Standoff with Pirates Shows US Has Limits;…

PHILADELPHIA Both ladies move about rather gingerly. It’s all the years behind them. It’s the long struggle on behalf of their Marian. Blanche Burton-Lyles and Phyllis Sims are fiddling with the coffee maker in Marian Anderson’s kitchen. “Marian had this whole kitchen put in — even the bars around the windows — and it’s still…

NYT: It’s Foreign Night at Club US! Obama Pushes for Drink Specials, Immigration Before 11 BBC: ‘Good’ Baby Fat Keeps Adults Slim; America Chock Full of Naughty Babies AP: In a Move Not to Be Confused with a Vendetta, French Agency Accuses Armstrong of Doping NYDN: Obama Gets His Lost Tribe On, Will Celebrate First…

The three boxing matches between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were the most galvanizing sporting events of the 1970s. They took on a cultural significance that readily transcended the world of sports. Each man became an icon with contrasting images. Ali—brash, articulate and handsome, easily won the war for the hearts and minds over the…

AP: 4 Shot, 1 Dead at Korean Retreat Center in California BBC: With Death Count at 250, Aftershocks Hamper Italian Rescue BET: The Few, The Shameful: Four Marines Face Murder in Race Murder Reuters: Somali Pirates Continue to Get Their Flying Dutchman On AJE: World ‘Ignored Rwanda’; Buzz: “True. But We Talked About It A…

Traditional sports movies, particularly those about baseball, are usually suffused with nostalgia and sentimentality. A few, such as Field of Dreams, do it well enough to endear themselves. Most, like the utterly ridiculous For Love of the Game, are pure treacle.   But the new baseball film, Sugar (Azucar in Spanish), released to coincide with the…

When I was growing up in Chicago, my father took me to a lot of baseball games. Some were just your typical father-son outings, others were special. We might have been on our way to Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park, but in my dad’s eyes we were off to see greatness in action: Willie Mays…

The choice of design for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture may well be the highest-profile architectural decision that will be made in Washington for years to come. The five-acre plot, near the Washington Monument, is on the Mall, a civic landscape that should be considered absolutely closed to future…

When the matchup for the finals in the NCAA men’s basketball championship was set between the University of North Carolina Tar Heels and the Michigan State Spartans on Saturday night, one analyst after another began counseling fans to ignore the Tar Heel-Spartan game on Dec. 3 at Ford Field. In that game, UNC ran out…