culture

First lady Michelle Obama’s slip of the tongue while promoting her Let’s Move! campaign, accidentally calling herself “a busy single mother,” continued to reverberate a day later. Proponents and opponents tried to analyze the statement, asking whether there is marital strife, pointing out the president’s public acknowledgment of another beautiful woman, along with a lot…

(The Root) — When Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert died on April 4 after a battle with cancer, a cross-cultural, countrywide coalition of fans expressed grief over the loss of the 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner. You didn’t have to be a Chicagoan to have heard of his work, which had a national audience. And…

CNN is reporting that a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the morning-after birth control pill available over the counter to people of any age without a prescription. This order overturned a 2011 decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to require a prescription for…

We all know that President Obama likes to joke, but did he cross the line when he praised the beauty of California Attorney General Kamala Harris? By now you may have heard that he called her “the best-looking attorney general” during remarks at a fundraiser in Atherton, Calif., according to ABC News. “You have to…

Writing at his blog, Earl Ofari Hutchinson lambastes critics of same-sex marriage who use the Bible to bolster their case, saying that scholars have written volumes debunking the passages because of errors and misinterpretations. The long standing reason for shoving the courts, the federal government and the states into the private relations between two adult consenting men…

Writing at the New York Times, The Root’s contributing editor Jack White proffers the argument that while enormous wealth may inoculate some politicians from the bald-faced greed that has landed so many public officials in prison, they tend to be out of touch with the electorate.  … But it is just as likely to infect…

Beyoncé fans sort of got what they were looking for on Thursday when Pepsi released an ad showcasing her dancing to her upcoming single, “Grown Woman,” which is produced by Timbaland. The ad, called “Mirrors,” highlights some of Beyoncé’s outfits and dance moves through reflections seen in a studio of mirrors. The commercial is part…

CNN, quoting the Chicago Sun-Times, which syndicated Roger Ebert’s column, is reporting that the legendary film critic, who this week said that he was facing a recurrence of cancer, has died at 70. Writing at his blog on Tuesday, Ebert said that he was planning to slow down and reduce the number of movie reviews…

The Huffington Post is reporting that in a school board meeting on Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett defended the district’s plan to close 54 neighborhood elementary schools, saying that she is insulted by claims her actions are “racist.” “That is an affront to me as a woman of color and it is an…

New York City’s fast-food workers planned to walk off the job on Thursday in what organizers promised would be the largest-ever strike against the fast-growing, virtually union-free industry, Salon reports. Will employers give in to their demands? The workers are demanding that chains like McDonald’s and Wendy’s raise their wages to $15 an hour and…