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The Root Day of Service
Natalie Hopkinson is a Washington, D.C.-based author whose current projects deal with the arts, gender and public life. She is the author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. Follow her on Twitter. PHOTOS BY AARON ROBERTS A detail from a painting of Marvin Gaye taken from inside the Riverside Center in Northeast…
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Michelle, Our Belle
It’s difficult to avoid being completely fascinated with our new First Lady, Michelle Obama. She’s an Ivy League black woman who’s as tall and fashionable as a supermodel. She’s the mother of 10-year-old twist sporting Malia and sassy Sasha. And President Obama glows every time she’s by his side. But The Buzz is not alone…
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He's not that into you, Sista
Racialicious’ Latoya Peterson goes to the movies—not—as she talks about her impressions of the trailer for the new movie, based on the book He’s Just Not that Into You. She makes a well-observed point about the role that black women take in mainstream romantic comedies: either the Magic Negress who has all the answers or…
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Jindal All the Way?
Rush Limbaugh referred to him as “the next Ronald Reagan.” Newt Gingrich called him “far and away” the best possible running mate for John McCain. And Michelle Malkin has gone so far as to label him the “future of the GOP.” Republicans are now desperately seeking their own Barack Obama—someone bold and transformative to re-energize…
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Grand White Party
The GOP has a problem. Well, two. One of them has just been inaugurated with an approval rating near 70 percent—but the other is going to be just as hard to fight. You see, as former Bush speechwriter David Frum put it on NPR, the Republican Party is the “party of white America.” And in…
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Brand Nubian Hope
The harsh sun was setting on the city of Aswan, an ancient trading hub in southern Egypt last week, but the city’s bazaar along the Nile still bustled with life. My wife and I strolled past old Nubian men sipping mint tea in brightly painted cafés. European tourists haggled over prices for straw baskets and…
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Old School, Modern Times
Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s maiden blog, and who e-mailed queries (see below). We are off to a very good start! One consistent thread that was laced through just about everyone’s comments was how awkward it is to use the home training you were raised with (or acquired along the way) when the…
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Closing In on Inauguration
Via CNN, here comes a neat experience to cap off your frenzied week of Barack Obama inauguration overload: the Gigapan! This cool application stitches together a series of 220 digital photographs taken from the north media tower on the Capitol during last Tuesday’s inauguration, allowing viewers to zoom in on the crowd—way in. If you…
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What Can Brown Do For You?
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama granted his first sit-down network TV interview to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network—the erstwhile CNN of the Middle East. As Al-Jazeera (the FOX News of the Middle East?) reflects on the reasons why it got scooped by its counterpart, viewers across the Middle East will evaluate Obama as he tries to…
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Revolutionary Road
I’ve tried to avoid the hype. I don’t wear Che T-shirts, and there are no pictures of Che Guevara on my walls. Although I spent 10 years researching the Argentine doctor-turned revolutionary, I don’t know if I’ll go see Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour biopic, Che, based on the real-life adventures of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. I know…