culture

Live news broadcasting is serious and important business, but it can also lead to memorable gaffes. Here are a handful of examples. Grace Under Pressure: Lester Holt Viewers who saw it live Saturday night were convinced that a weather reporter was relieving himself when anchor Lester Holt tossed to him. But an NBC representative says that…

A “cloaking device” would have come in handy last week for a traveling companion of Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the popular, classic TV series. The 81-year-old actress was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport Friday after her 20-something male companion was discovered carrying drugs, New York’s Daily News reports, citing…

Revenge allegedly was on the mind of a Hueytown, Ala., teen, who is accused of robbing four Subway Restaurants. Zachary Rapheal Torrance, 18, allegedly told investigators he was angry and wanted his money back after failing to lose weight on the eatery’s famous so-called Jared diet, according to AL.com. He was arrested Thursday and charged…

Saturday Night Live was poised to deliver a winning show last night, with Chris Rock returning as host and Prince appearing as the musical guest. And the stars delivered the goods. Prince performed four new songs during a sublime eight-minute jam. Rock joked about everything from ISIS, the Boston Marathon bombing and even the Freedom…

At the heart of the ABC series Black-ish lies one question: How do you go about instilling certain traits and values about hard work and success in your children if your kids have a much more privileged upbringing than you had? It’s a question that is furrowing the collective eyebrows of middle-class and upper-middle-class black parents…

During a recent talk about race in America with Fusion host Jorge Ramos, director Spike Lee tackled the issue of a post-racial society under President Barack Obama. “People who get in trouble are the people who forget they’re black,” he said when asked what he teaches his children about race. “You can’t just think I’m…

The so-called leader of a group of Florida A&M University marching-band students who fatally beat drum major Robert Champion Jr. was convicted Friday of multiple charges related to the death, according to CNN. Dante Martin, 27, was found guilty of manslaughter and felony hazing by a jury after just an hour of deliberations, the report…

The shooting death of the unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin influenced the outcome of the trial of a white man who was convicted in August of killing a black woman on his suburban Detroit porch, the man’s lawyer told the Detroit News. Cheryl Carpenter, a lawyer for Theodore Wafer, who was convicted in August of…

Veteran U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel came under fire this week for saying that some members of the Republican Party “believe that slavery isn’t over,” Mediaite reports. The longtime Democratic congressman made the remark during a rally Thursday for Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as he appealed to Democrats to go to the polls for…

One of the cool things about moving through urban public space is what happens when you cross paths with your fellow humans on the street. In the mid-1990s, when I first moved to Washington, D.C., I quickly learned to say the requisite “Hey, how you doing?” to passersby. And in my parents’ native Georgetown, Guyana,…