culture
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Democratic Rep. Calls Arizona a ‘Desert Racist Wasteland’
After Sunday’s Seattle Seahawks loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Joe Fitzgibbon, a Democratic state representative whose district includes Seattle, took to Twitter to express his upset. “Losing a football game sucks. Losing to a desert racist wasteland sucks a lot.” Yahoo Sports reports that he quickly deleted the tweet, but not before the Washington…
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Phil Robertson Isn’t Ducking Controversy
Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty clan, isn’t backing down from his racially charged and homophobic comments that appeared in GQ last week. According to an exclusive in the Daily Mail, Robertson led a Bible study group in his hometown of West Monroe, La., and told attendees: “I will not give or back…
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’Tis the Season for Black Nonprofits to Suffer
For Thembi Duncan, it seemed like the kind of opportunity best described as golden. A popular Washington, D.C., radio talk show wanted Duncan—the new producing artistic director of the African Continuum Theatre Company—for an interview on the air. As recently as 2011, the African Continuum, once billed as D.C.’s only professional black theater company, had…
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Why Can’t Fox News Leave Christmas Alone? Christmas Is Doing Just Fine
Ah, another year. Another “war on Christmas.” If the likes of Fox News (and its acolytes Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly) didn’t bang on those war drums every year to let me know that Christmas was under assault (in America, where 83 percent of Americans are Christians), I’d never know. Because for something “under threat,”…
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Alabama Town Decries Cross-Dressing Holiday Dance Troupe
The holiday parade in Semmes, Ala., is usually a predictable affair, with marchers, floats and carolers, but not this year. Some members of the town erupted in furor Saturday when one of the acts turned out to be a group of black drag queens, the Raw Story reports. The troupe, known as the Prancing Elite,…
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Duck Dynasty Courted by Other Networks
Two cable channel executives have said they would gladly broadcast Duck Dynasty if the A&E channel decides to drop the hit reality-TV series. Executives at the Christian-affiliated Hunt Channel and the outdoorsy Pursuit Channel told TMZ that they believe in the freedom of speech and would like to air the show, which came under fire after a…
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Heartbreaking: 94-Year-Old Widow Receives Remains of POW Husband
Ninety-four-year-old Clara Gantt’s wait to be reunited with her husband ended before dawn Friday on a tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, Calif. But it was not the ending she had hoped for after six decades, NBC Los Angeles reports. Her husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Gantt, died as a prisoner of war…
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Justine Sacco Apologizes for Africa AIDS Tweet
Justine Sacco, the fired public relations executive, released a statement apologizing for her racially insensitive tweet that touched off a maelstrom in the world of social media, ABC News reports. In the statement, Sacco says she is a native of South Africa. Until recently, she worked for InterActive Corp., which owns websites like Match.com, Dictionary.com…
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Chicago Boy Killed en Route to Get Christmas Haircut
An 11-year-old South Side Chicago boy was killed Saturday when a carjacker fleeing from police slammed into his family’s vehicle, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Donovan Anthony Turnage was headed to the barbershop with his father and older brother to get a Christmas haircut when the crash occurred about 12:30 p.m., the report shows. The incident…
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Obama Dishes on Dating Talks With Daughters
Barack Obama says he does not plan to hover over daughters Sasha and Malia when they begin dating, saying it’s intimidating enough for a young man to ask out the daughter of the president, Reuters reports. He told comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey during a television interview that aired on Friday that Malia,…

