Uncategorized
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M.I.A.'s Pregnant Moment
Watching last night’s live performance of the monster hit “Swagger Like Us” at the Grammy Awards featuring the 9-months pregnant M.I.A., Lil Wayne, Kanye, Jay-Z and soon-to-be-locked-down rapper T.I., it’s clear to The Buzz who had the biggest balls on stage. Watching the Brit-by-way-of Sri Lanka’s performance last night, which happened to fall on her…
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A Clean Jobs Corps
The hopeful conveners of the “Good Jobs, Green Jobs” conference held in Washington this week are convinced that they have a solution to the twin problems of a shrinking U.S. job market and the existential threat of climate change. Their answer? Green-collar employment for millions of Americans. We’ve heard of white- and blue-collar work—but green…
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More Than an Infection
Jamal, a gay black man, was diagnosed 10 years ago with HIV. He can’t hold a job, battles drug addiction and suffers from serious depression. He has no car, and public transportation isn’t an option without help. Years of poor health, mental illness, lack of family support and the daily grind of coping with the…
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Confronting the Epidemic
God really does watch over babies and fools. It was around this time eight years ago when I took my first HIV test. I was 31 years old, and it was just before I got married. My wife and I wanted to make sure that we were both HIV-negative. It seemed like the right thing…
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Finding Lincoln Smart and Funny
The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores some of the arguments in his new book Lincoln on Race and Slavery and the related PBS series “Looking for Lincoln.” On the bicentennial of the Great Emancipator’s birth Gates tackles the important and troubling question “Was Lincoln a racist?” And there is no end of interest…
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Michael Phelps: Lessons of a Tokin' White Boy
When I learned that Olympian Michael Phelps had been suspended after photos of him with a bong to his mouth were made public, I couldn’t help thinking that he was getting a raw deal, and that we are witnessing a very subtle, soft racism in play here. Black athletes, up until recently, are seldom reprimanded…
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25 Ways to Overshare, Choose One
By now you’ve gotten tagged, oh, 6 million times. The Buzz must admit we’re only mere mortals, and even we have succumbed to the “25 Random Things About Me” Facebook craze in the same herd-following way we signed up for Facebook in the first place. In the course of these taggings, we’ve learned more than…
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This Is Not Working For Us
The country moved into its second year of uninterrupted job losses last month, with companies shedding another 598,000 jobs — the most since December 1974 — and the unemployment rate moving up to 7.6 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Economists had forecast a loss of 540,000 jobs and a unemployment rate of 7.5…
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Obama Goes Soft With the Faith-Based
The Big O promised to uphold Bush’s faith-based program. Cue the conservative crowd: Screams and Hallelujahs. However, the Big O promised to correct one glitch in the program—the ability of groups to receive federal aid and discriminate in hiring practices on basis of religion. Cue the conservatie crowd: Boos and hisses. Cut to the National…
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Durant Durant
NBA fans, meet your new superstar, Kevin Durant. If that last sentence seems a little strange, then it’s because Kevin Durant has been presented to basketball fans as a superstar for two years now. He was Player of the Year in college, won Rookie of the Year last season. From Day 1 in the NBA,…