Uncategorized
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Is It That Kind of Party?
After suffering major losses in the last two elections, Republicans have a chance to make history as well as inroads with crucial minority voting blocs next weekend when they meet to select their next chairman. Two African Americans are campaigning to lead the Republican National Committee when it holds its annual winter meeting Jan. 28-31…
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Black President, White Hands?
In the four years since the “skinny kid with a funny name” vaulted to national prominence, President Barack Obama’s face has been subject to countless artistic riffs and interpretations—many of them for sale. Kitschy knickknacks inspired by Obama, from “rednecks for Obama” T-shirts to “the audacity of soap” cleaning products, are a boom industry. None…
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Come Correct: A blog about Doing The Right Thing
You remember when you were growing up, your parents, uncles, aunts, neighbors and the rest of the village it took to raise you schooled you well on how to behave. In our community, one of the most complimentary things that could be said about you was “that child was raised right.” And what you never…
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The Inaugural Obama Cutout Gallery
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. Obama’s cutout emissary was on hand at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to snap photos with guests at…
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Lee Daniels and Push take Sundance
Producer-director Lee Daniels [Monster’s Ball, The Woodsman] has hit the high mark with Push. A coming of age tale about Precious, a pregnant Harlem teen who navigates through incest, physical and emotional abuse, racism, self-hatred, illiteracy, HIV and obsesity [this is not a Disney flick]… Precious struggles until she stumbles upon a radical schoolteacher who…
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Good Luck With That, Mr. President
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are bracing for a fresh request from President Obama for another massive round of spending to shore up the nation’s faltering financial system, which could send the total price for the bailout soaring toward $1 trillion. So far, Congress has approved $700 billion for the financial system rescue. The first half…
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Praise for the Black Preacher
Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has written a spot-on ode to the black preacher for The Daily Beast. While it’s easy to pooh-pooh the political machinations of high-profile clergy like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Raines focuses on the recently-lionzed Joseph Lowery. Though Ta-Nehisi Coates is moderating some heated back and forth…
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Turned Around
“The president of the United States is black. Literally, not figuratively, not in some socio-psycho-political sense. But dark skin, black wife, black children. His name is Barack Hussein Obama, and despite the fact that it was a worldwide spectacle witnessed by billions or that the oath of office was administered twice, there is still a…
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Don't Sass Me, Girl
Huffington Post better watch what they write about the youngest White House kid, Sasha Obama, from now on. Michelle Obama Watch (MOW), a blog dedicated to reporting on anything and everything about the new First Lady, jumped on Huffington Post’s case after it posted an article on it’s 23/6 site calling 7-year-old Sasha “sassy.” This…
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Paterson’s Power Play
David Paterson has spoken, and the junior senator from New York is… Kirsten Gillibrand. Wait, Kirsten who? “I recognize, for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you’ve heard my name,” Gillibrand said, after Paterson introduced her at a midday press conference. But, we’ll come back to that. But first, a word in defense…