culture

While perusing Facebook a few days ago, I came across this ad for President Barack Hussein Obama’s last State of the Union address this coming Tuesday: This is it—President Obama's final #SOTU. Say you'll be watching: https://t.co/W8niWpEVnX pic.twitter.com/NmLWydsePO — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 4, 2016 Typically, I couldn’t care less about these speeches; it’s an…

Before 2008, Christine Beatty, as the chief of staff to Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, was a celebrated strategist with a promising future in politics. That changed the morning the Detroit Free Press published the private, intimate text messages that Beatty and Kilpatrick exchanged on their government-issued phones during their six-year extramarital affair. The fallout was…

As of this writing, I have two children and a third baking in the proverbial oven. My children are the most beautiful, brilliant, exciting and excitable people on the planet. I love to hug and kiss them, and they seem to love it as well. My son? Making him laugh is often a reason I’m…

I’ve enjoyed stand-up comedy since well before I was old enough to be listening to anyone who wasn’t Sinbad. But only recently did a routine actually give me goose bumps for the first time. It was from the coda of Anthony Jeselnik’s Thoughts and Prayers, currently on Netflix: This is who I make fun of…

I feel like I’ve lost my best friend of 10 years. A friend who knew everything about me, didn’t judge or indict me, just assisted me and helped me absolve my guilt. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing was a statuesque, beautiful, striking woman, always so composed. Dignified. And ready to listen to whatever problems I presented…

It’s been roughly a month since Ayesha Curry—wife of NBA superstar Stephen Curry and mother of NBA post-game press conference superstar Riley Curry—published the tweet that would launch a million more tweets, a thousand more think pieces and a hundred more “clever” memes incorporating “thoughts” and “thots.” The dust and debris left by this dustup…

In an effort to distract myself from the bad news of recent days—the fate of New York-area sports teams, the latest Kanye track, my most recent bank statement—I’ve kicked off some binge-watching of A Different World. A cursory Google search of the series will generate hundreds of thousands of words written about A Different World…

I feel about Tyler Perry the way Spike Lee did before they both called a truce on bashing each other in the media, which is to say, with rare exception, I’m no fan of Perry’s work. I respect that many good people are Perry fans. Case in point: Perry has four shows on OWN, including…

The holidays are finally over! You’ve had to endure nearly two months of interacting with “family” that fondly remember changing your diapers when you were 22 months old, while simultaneously fondly forgetting that $500 you lent them when you were 22 years old. Oh, and there are also those longtime hometown “friends” that you duck…