Uncategorized
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Don't Hog The Ball, All-Star
When the NBA all-stars take the court in Phoenix Sunday night, it will mark a subtle but distinctive change in the game. During the last few years, the game’s top players have been moving away from the concept of a great player with a supporting cast toward a more team-oriented approach where the best player…
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Taming the Party Animals
If you’re a through-and-through progressive, or maybe even the Speaker of the House, and you’re still counting on a far-left agenda from President Obama, you should think again. If you’re part of the Republican leadership, or a maybe a rank-and-file Rush Limbaugh “Dittohead,” waiting for Obama to enact a flurry of “socialist” regulations on the…
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Zadie Smith Speaks Obama
Like most corporate Negroes, The Buzz is a pro at code-switching, been perfecting the artform since birth. So it isn’t exactly news to us that our new President has mastered the art, as our homie Jack Shafer recounts in fascinating detail in Slate. I a speech reprinted in the New York Review of Books, the…
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Broke Hearts
Romance needn’t be the latest casualty of the recession. The Buzz was disappointed to hear the NPR report by Sam Fullwood III that flower sales are down at one of our favorite U Street shops. But take heart: Over at AfroBella, The Root contributor Natalie McNeal a.k.a. The Frugalista, gives these pointers on how to…
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Judge Takes Money to Jail Children
Two Luzerne County, Pennsylvania judges admitted to taking money from juvie centers to hand out longer sentences to youth. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan collected payoffs from PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare for at least three years. The companies that run juvenile detention centers allegedly receive state funds. So the more juvies incarcerated,…
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He's Just Not That Into It
On a day when President Barack Obama spoke in Springfield, Illinois and Washington, D.C. about Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, shared sacrifice, and the importance of national unity, noting that history teaches us, “There are certain things we can only do together,” Sen. Judd Gregg, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, and the third Republican slated to…
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Exit Interviews With My Exes
A year ago, I decided to go back and ask all of the men in my past why they ultimately did not want to be with me. My girls were concerned. “Isn’t it just rehashing painful memories?” “Couldn’t you end up feeling awful about yourself?” But I was tired of the “it’s not you, it’s…
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The Prose of Passion
Cultural observer James Baldwin once compared love to a battle; he also said that love is growing up. Writer Zora Neale Hurston said it “makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place,” while poet Nikki Giovanni declared it an adventure. Novelist Harriet Wilson called love an “arbitrary and inexorable tyrant.” Me? I think it…
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My African Sister
THE FIRST TIME I VISIT my father’s bungalow at the University of Nigeria, I perch on a vinyl settee in the parlor and drink milky tea while my father rambles on about the student riots, the military government’s Structural Adjustment Program, his college years with my mother, what he recalls her saying about the family…
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Got Bank?
In this economy, having a well-off friend who constantly says “I’ll get it” when the check arrives after dinner, or the movie tickets have to be paid for or you both spot a really cute bracelet but only one of you can afford it sounds like a little slice of heaven. But after awhile, it…