culture

Obama Round-Up Cory Booker: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cory-booker/barack-obama-is-elected-p_b_142499.html “Obama’s Elected — Now What?” Frank Rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin “GOP Evokes Apartheid”      Hutchinson: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-assassination-jitte_b_144063.html “Assassination Jitters” Ruben Navarrette: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin “Did Affirmative Action Affect Election?” Robinson: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/obamas_win_changing_social_att.html “Bad Day for Comedians” Hitchens: http://www.slate.com/id/2204240/ “Barack to Reality” Terrence Heath: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terrance-heath/first-you-get-mad_b_143975.html “On Prop 8: Get Mad” David Remnick: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/17/081117fa_fact_remnick “The Joshua Generation” John…

“I came busting out of my momma’s … on January 28, 1977, during one of New York’s worst snowstorms.” So began The Coldest Winter Ever (1999), one of the most compelling novels of a generation, a cult classic that catapulted Sister Souljah from dissed-by-Bill-Clinton “raptivist” to best-selling author, trapping millions of readers in a trance-like…

Early into British filmmaker Danny Boyle’s most excellent, Slumdog Millionaire, we see Jamal, our plucky hero—all of 8 years old—dive feet first into the depths of a steaming Mumbai outhouse, only to emerge, crowing and covered in excrement, triumphantly clutching the object of his worship: a photo of Amitabh Bachchan, India’s biggest movie star. A…

Nov. 17, 2008—A grimy, crime-ridden, early 1970s-era Philadelphia, governed by the bullish Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner turned mayor was the gritty backdrop for what later became a genre of music known as “Philadelphia soul.” When Philadelphia International Records (PIR) emerged in 1971, it was a pivotal moment in America, as the aftermath of…

Nov. 14, 2008—The rapidly changing fates of the NFL have diminished the sizzle of the great rivalries. But this weekend—when the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers resume hostilities in Wisconsin and the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins maul each another in D.C.—there will be more at stake than mere bragging rights. The Packers and…

Everyone’s wondering how the new presidential children, Sasha and Malia, will survive the cloistered, scrutinized life of the White House. In fact, in a Daily Beast interview today, FDR’s grandson Curtis Roosevelt—who spent a dozen of his childhood years living there—said, “I hope the Obama children are sufficiently prepared to have some grounding and some…

It’s encouraging that the multiracial rock band TV on the Radio has stormed the New York rock scene without anybody making much of the group’s demographic novelty. Their latest recording, Dear Science, (Interscope) is so engrossing and powerful that the band members could be from Mars, Venus and Saturn and that little detail might escape…

Going on stage to sing is like stepping into a perfect world. The past means nothing. Worries about the future do not exist. All that matters is the music. I live for this…. My voice is heard by the people when I speak about the evils that are strangling South Africa. Every day there is…

In an ideal world, you’d turn the camera on Bernie Mac and just let him do his thing, unhampered by the vagaries of script and plot, of character development and narrative cohesion. The Mac Man was at his best when he could riff, all bug-eyes and righteous apoplexy, whipping himself into a crescendo of carefully…

It’s not a surprise, but this point needs to be stressed: The NFL is not big on continuity. Just look at the NFC. After 10 weeks of the season, last year the top teams were clear; Dallas, Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Seattle were the class of the conference. Each was a team with enough…