culture

It all started with a 30-day trial package of premium cable.I had just moved into my apartment and was enjoying the temporary pleasures of HBO On Demand. In the midst of Million Dollar Baby, I realized there were only two weeks left in my free trial period, just two weeks before a decision was required…

It was the refrain echoed again and again throughout Hillary Clinton’s campaign: It was time, her supporters claimed, for a woman to be president. It made me angry, and it made me tired, the way that white women assumed that my support of Barack Obama was a race thing; a “stand by your man” thing,…

Black professional fighters traditionally have had a way of inspiring a generation of young black men, for better or worse: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson.Kimbo Slice is the new inspiration. What? You’ve not heard of Kimbo Slice? Well, maybe you don’t recognize him because I haven’t called him by his full name:…

Until recently, political life in Switzerland was known for cozy relationships between parties and the anti-heroic stance of politicians. For the last 10 years, this rather pacific style of politics has been shattered by the rising influence of the SVP/UDC (Schweizerische Volkspartei/Union démocratique du centre), the Swiss People’s Party, and its billionaire leader,Christoph Blocher. Their demagoguery…

When the book came out in early March, few seemed to notice anything wrong. The first dozen reader reviews on its Amazon page were uniformly glowing, with many mentioning how they’d long admired the author’s blog. It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments is Amanda Marcotte’s first book, but the author is a…

Before we delve into the very closely matched NBA finals, which start Thursday, let me offer a parallel to the LeBron James situation. The superb year and frustrating end that he and his Cleveland Cavaliers experienced are very similar to the middle phase of the career of one the NBA’s all-time greats, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In…

That’s right, I said it! The “R” word. And no matter how politicians try to spin it, the fact is, we’re in one. Nationwide people are scrambling to stay employed, afloat and are tossing non-essentials off their fiscal boat. And it’s not just a financial toll; there’s the psychological impact of an economic downturn. Nothing…

Barack Obama is deeply indebted to Rev. Jeremiah Wright for two crucial elements of presidential campaign: The first is Obama’s Christian faith and the second is his work with black Americans on the South Side of Chicago. On March, Obama claimed that the video clips of Rev. Wright playing nonstop on television news “expressed a…

The 42-year-old, modern classical composer Joseph C. Phillips Jr. is a self-described “late-bloomer.” Now one of the brightest new lights on the modern classical scene, he studied music at the University of Maryland and began his career as an award-winning high school director near Seattle. He honed his gifts as a composer while he was…

Estelle, Shine I guess no one saw this coming since Paul Revere didn’t saddle up in a Dodge Charger flying down I-495 yelling that the British are coming. But they’re here, and it is a shame that American soul music sounds much better through European lungs. With Amy Winehouse “Elvis-ing” her way into the American…