the browntable

Via Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, here comes the news that ought to have US moviemakers quaking in their shoes: Nollywood is officialy bigger than Hollywood. John Boonstra at UN DISPATCH reports: According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) survey, Bollywood – as the Mumbai-based film industry is known – produced 1,091 feature-length films in…

When I heard about Marion Berry’s wild, misguided rant against gay marriage in D.C., I had just one question: Who the hell cares? Let’s review the elements of this story for a brief, dispassionate moment. First off, Chocolate City has long had one of the more pro-gay, progressive municipal governments around. Let us count the…

This week, the state of Maine became the fifth in the United States to allow marriage protections for same-sex couples. The edict, signed into law by Governor John E. Baldacci, adds to the growing list of states–Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont–that have decided that gays have the right to marry one another. It also follows…

Fans of “The Wire” and fans of the Big Easy are about to get one mother of a mashup: David Simon, reporter, author, and prolific creator of HBO’s “The Wire” as well as other classic dramas like “Homicide: Life On The Street” and “The Corner,” has confirmed plans to create a series for HBO based…

Three of my favorite editors in Washington—Mark Schmitt, Frank Foer and Michael Tomasky—spoke at the NDN think tank this afternoon, on “The Early Days of Obama” (a clever dodge of the first 100 days conceit, which Schmitt hates). The trio was moderated by Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN, and all four men made some very…

This is just sad. It wasn’t enough for Condi spin her torture-is-legal mess for Stanford students last week. Now she’s lying to grade-schoolers, too. Last week, as Cenk Uygur reported on his The Young Turks show and HUFFPO, Rice told a group of Stanford students that waterboarding wasn’t illegal “by definition” because the president signed…

As numerous sources are now reporting, David Souter, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, will retire at the end of this year’s term. The news came on the 101st day of Barack Obama’s presidency and adds one more difficult and weighty decision to the pile of woes—two wars, trillions of wealth lost, and…

Let me be among the first to say that the move by some to rename ‘swine flu’ to ‘Mexican flu’ is offensive on its face and in its roots. It does everything to fuel unfounded fears, and it politicizes a serious health crisis in a thinly veiled effort to stoke hatred toward an already-vulnerable group.…

A new law being touted as the “Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights” passed the House today. Sponsored by Reps. Barney Frank, Carolyn Maloney and Luis Guttierez, the bill would provide protections against the type of ugly predations that countless famlies and individuals have been subject to in the age of easy money from which…

Pace Jon’s post: CNN’s “swagga” video is a must-watch. Anchor Kyra Phillips hosts a segment on president Barack Obama’s “swagga” (going to basketball games, eating dinner, hugging people) featuring correspondent T.J. Holmes after which Holmes entreats Phillips to “hug it out” and then Phillips insists that she “gotta get that bump” (read: terrorist fist-jab) before…