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Sotomayor's Judgment Day
As confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor begin before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, it’s probably best to keep some perspective on the significance of the proceedings. Unless there’s a violent crime in her past, Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Given Al Franken’s recent seating as…
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The All-Star Jam
Baseball’s All-Star game is this week, but I regard the mid-season break in the action as more significant than the game itself. Now that we have dozens of interleague games crowding the schedule, the All-Star game itself feels kind of unnecessary. Yes, it determines home field advantage in the World Series, but the last World…
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Smith's Rules for Global Domination
While you weren’t looking, no doubt tracking the fortunes of the Hope, Will Smith became the world’s biggest movie star. With the financial success of his superhero comedy Hancock ($62 million domestic on opening weekend, $190 million in its first full week global), Smith can claim five films that opened at No. 1 on July…
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Julia’s, Ollie’s Trolley, Over-the-Rhine…
I covered my first NAACP convention 11 years ago in Pittsburgh. Next week will mark my second, again in the city where I live (now Cincinnati). A lot has changed; then I was an intern at the New Pittsburgh Courier, my hometown black paper. Today, I’m a bona fide journalist with a serious body of…
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A ComplAKAted Kind of Sisterhood
I have always been a tomboy. My idea of a knight in shining armor is a guy who gives me ice cold beers and watches sports. I play flag-football on Saturdays. You will rarely catch me in a dress. I might seem like an unlikely candidate for AKA, but I really didn’t have much of…
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$4.79 a Gallon? That Ain't Regular!
When you grow up in a big California city, you learn at an early age that factors beyond your control can have a powerful impact on your life; factors like earthquakes, violence and whether your family lives in the mean flatlands or the glorious hills. This year, three young Californians have been forced to add…
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Will Work for Gas!
My first taste of freedom came in the form of an ’87 Buick Century—Ol’ Bessy, my older brother called her. I just called her an escape. Back then, all it took was a few dollars to keep her gassed. Skim a little from my lunch money, charge a few kids for rides home after practice,…
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When The Man is One of Us
On one level, it is easy to dismiss the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s crudely worded metaphorical threat to castrate Barack Obama for supposedly talking down to black people as the raving of an increasingly irrelevant, former big shot suffused with resentment at the rising star who pushed him off stage. That, after all, is the…
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A Legendary Revival
Certain birthdays are special for almost all jazz fans. On April 7, the mental iPod almost always lands on Billie Holiday classics in honor of Lady Day’s birthday. Ditto April 29 for Duke Ellington, May 26 for Miles Davis, September 23 for John Coltrane, March 9 for Ornette Coleman and October 10 for Thelonious Monk.…
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Oh, What a Tangled Web, My Weave
Strange things happen when the husband of a happily married woman goes out of town. She calls up her girlfriends and begs them to come over, plying them with champagne and cupcakes. She spends inordinate amounts of time online, staring at dresses that if her husband were home, he would mock derisively. “I hate those…