culture

A peculiar thing happened on the way to Children’s Hospital Oakland as Jahi McMath lay in a coma and her family openly sparred with doctors over keeping her alive: You didn’t see any conservative or Republican politicians on it. The family’s tragedy is, ultimately, what’s most important here: They reached a delicate agreement with the…

Last November, George Zimmerman’s 27-year-old girlfriend told police that he had threatened her with a shotgun during a heated domestic dispute that led to a 911 call. While the girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, later withdrew the charges, saying in a sworn statement (pdf) that she was “intimidated” during police questioning and believed investigators had “misinterpreted” her…

An interracial couple in Columbus, Ga., went out for a nice dinner, but once they picked their car up from the valet, they saw a derogatory note attached to their ticket, CBS Atlanta News reports. The couple had dined at Spondivits restaurant, and “the experience besides the valet was wonderful,” Samuel Aarons told the news…

A man and a woman walked into a Florida Wal-Mart, loaded up a shopping cart with cases of beer and walked out without paying for them. A manager spotted the couple in the parking lot putting the beer into the bed of a pickup truck, so he walked over and confronted them, WRDQ/WFTV Eyewitness News…

A young mother was gunned down and killed while picking up her son from a babysitter’s house around 6:30 p.m. in Lauderhill, Fla., on Monday, NBC Miami reports. Nicole Grier, 19, was strapping the child into her car when gunmen riding in a sedan with tinted windows pulled up and opened fire. The babysitter, Camille…

A judge has refused to toss the lawsuit brought against rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson by a Florida woman over a sex video that was posted online. In the video, 50 Cent has been edited into the footage as the narrator, “Pimpin Curly,” 50 Cent’s Jheri-curl-wig-wearing alter ego, the New York Post reports. Judge Paul…

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal sits down with Rickey Vincent, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, to discuss Vincent’s recently released book, Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers. Watch below:

We’re witnessing the democratization of celebrity. There’s the selfie phenomenon, and those impromptu photo shoots in which everyone seems to take part, even for the most unceremonious occasions. The exploitation of our ordinary lives is faciliated by Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Our lives are everywhere. Everyone is everywhere. Everyone is special, therefore no one…

The mother of former Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the team after his body was exhumed so that his brain could be examined for trauma, the Kansas City Star reports. Cheryl Shepherd reportedly filed the suit in Jackson County Circuit Court in Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday, charging that…

Jemele Hill, an ESPN columnist and co-host of ESPN2’s Numbers Never Lie, said that while Time magazine uses its Person of the Year award to recognize impact, she wouldn’t use “Sports Person of the Year” to recognize high performers such as Serena Williams or Peyton Manning. Instead, she would nominate the n-word for 2013’s most impactful…