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NFL Draft: The Big Lie
The NFL draft, which will dominate ESPN and ESPN2 this weekend, is one of the biggest lies in all of American sport. But it’s too much fun not to follow the results. The big lie is that the draft is the first step toward bad teams getting better. The reality is much more complex than…
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New Rule: You Gotta Have Balls, So Poker Is Not a Sport
With protests raging in the streets of Tibet and world-class athletes pulling out of the games (from fear of Beijing’s dangerous air pollution), I know there are many controversial topics that the International Olympic Committee needs to confront as it prepares for the summer games in Beijing. However, since that worldwide spectacle is just around…
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The Democrats' Radical Pique
For those of us who identify with the American Left, the last month or two has been disheartening. This election campaign should be the best chance in decades for the Left to be relevant in the national political discussion: U.S. imperialism is more unpopular than ever, and the current economic situation is calling attention to…
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A Nightmare of their Own Making (Smoked-Filled Rooms II)
They’re working. The rules are working as designed (see my earlier piece, No Time for Smoke-Filled Rooms), to guarantee that in a deeply divided, complicated and dangerous primary season the party elders will have the last say in choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. But the people who designed, and seem so eager to…
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David Swerdlick: Fly Schtick
David Swerdlick is an associate editor at The Root. Follow him on Twitter.
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Less like Jigga, More Like Mike
That’s the message Barack Obama should glean from the trouncing he received last night in Pennsylvania. If he wants to be President, he first has to defeat Hillary Clinton in both North Carolina and, more important, in Indiana two weeks from now. To do that, he is going to have to behave less like Jay-Z,…
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Keys to Obama's Keystone Loss
As most experts predicted, Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Given his recent resurgence in momentum, however, many believed that Obama could close the gap to a respectable 5 or 6 percent. Instead, Clinton garnered a commanding 9.2 percent victory that will justify her extended stay in the increasingly volatile primary…
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Stealing Obama's Candy
On summer afternoons in the Dexter-Davison neighborhood of Detroit where I grew up, my brothers and I would return from the party store around the corner from our house with snacks of sugar-filled goodies. My older brother Che favored “Now and Laters,” while I preferred Faygo Red Pop (65 cents a bottle) and Jay’s Red…
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We Voted Today, Finally. Guess for Whom?
It’s been a long six weeks since Clinton and Obama set their sights on Pennsylvania and finally, today is the day we can put all the speculation to rest and cast our votes. My husband and I, along with our two young children, Yannick and Olivia, arrived at the polls at 8:00 am this morning.…
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Winning Over Hillary
My first brush with Obama’s Pennsylvania problem came during a visit to the dentist. As a light-skinned black man, I sometimes pass undetected “behind enemy lines.” Such was the case at the dentist’s office last fall when the oral hygienist—a young, white gal from small-town Western Pennsylvania with the ironic first name of Hillary—stated firmly…