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Talking the Talk, Walking on Water
The man does not merely have supporters. He has disciples. Sen. Barack Obama’s rhetorical themes clearly tap into the religious subconscious and spiritual sensibilities of Americans. Obama has cleverly become the first contemporary American politician to successfully collapse the distinction between religion and politics—all without ever using explicitly religious language. The fervor of the excited…
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A Happy Ending for Barry Bonds?
Iʼm really not a happy-endings kinda guy. It could just be my crabby nature, but I figure it owes to growing up in the early ʽ70s loving American new wave cinema; movies like Dog Day Afternoon and Network gave me my passion for real-life conclusions. And I really, really donʼt like happy endings in sports.…
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Committed: Why I'm Sticking With Hillary
In late 2006, I made the choice to support Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, long before Sen. Barack Obama or even Hillary herself had declared their candidacies. My decision to support her was not one that was self-serving. My support was, and still is, based on her consistent support of issues that are important to…
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Reclaiming True Grits
Mention “soul food” and you will hear scores of health and medical professionals claim that it is the downfall of the health and well-being of African Americans. It is true that African Americans have some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers of any group in this country. But frankly,…
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Watch Your Back, Barack
Legend has it that early in his political career, aspiring Texas politico Lyndon Baines Johnson ran a campaign in which his camp started a rumor that his opponent was having sex with his farm animals. There was never any hint of truth to the charge. Still, his opponent spent all his time trying to put-off…
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Digging Kunta Kinte
Watching [The Root’s Editor-in-Chief] Henry Louis Gates Jr. delve into the ancestry of African Americans on PBS recently got me thinking about Alex Haley’s Roots, the book that started it all. Both the book and the phenomenally successful mini-series based on it came out during the 1976-77 academic year when I was a Nieman Fellow…
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Blackness Primer Revisited
My recent piece on a definition of blackness seems to have created some misunderstandings. Many seem to think that if all people of African descent do not exhibit a cultural trait, then there are no grounds for designating that trait “black.” Upon which I note: ostriches do not fly; bats do. Does this mean that…
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Fool Me Once …
I’m disgusted with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not merely because they played the race card on Barack Obama, but because they’ve done it before. It worked to perfection for them in 1992. I saw it up close when I was a part of the Los Angeles Times’ political team covering Bill Clinton’s successful bid for…
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A Colorblind America
The Clintons covered a lot of slimy ground in the run-up to South Carolina. They dismissed the relevance of Barack Obama’s victory, chalking it up to black voters supporting their own. They put racially loaded jabs in blackface, through stooges like BET founder Bob Johnson. And they lured Obama into daily, petty spats that left…
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Mugabeflation and the $2.5 Million Loaf of Bread
Usually when I get an sms (text message) from a young journalist needing to see me, it’s about career advice. But when I get one from a young journalist from Zimbabwe, I know it’s because that young journalist needs bread—and not of the cash kind. Robert Mugabe’s government has clamped down on the independent media…