MALCOLM X NOVEL ANNOUNCED IN 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONG LIST

I always look forward to reading the lists of finalists for the National Book Awards, but my eyebrows arched a bit higher this morning when I saw the subject areas covered by the authors in the Awards’ long list for Young People’s Literature: a Malcolm X novel, co-written by one of the daughters of the […]

LOOK WHO’S TALKING – GIULIANI SCHOOLS DE BLASIO ON HOMELESS ISSUE

The good news about former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani crawling out of his makeshift 9/11 shrine to write a New York Post article about current Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the city’s homelessness problem is that Giuliani never mentioned 9/11. I’m sure of that. I read the article twice. Plus, I skimmed […]

A WAY TO EXPLAIN WHY SLAVE TETRIS IS A BAD IDEA

You would think that I wouldn’t have to burn electrons explaining why Serious Games Interactive CEO Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen’s Slave Tetris mini-game is dumb, if not outright disrespectful to humanity, but he apparently doesn’t get it — even after he pulled the mini-game from his larger Playing History 2: Slave Trade game. The intent of this […]

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON MOVIE THOUGHTS, PART TWO

Part Two: This Movie and Planet Earth Now that I’ve discussed the social backdrop for the Straight Outta Compton movie in my previous post, I want to start this post by giving props to film director F. Gary Gray because Compton was shot and edited well. But of course I have some feedback about the storyline. […]

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON MOVIE THOUGHTS, PART ONE

Part One: Plantation Cultivation and the American Dream Straight out of the 1980s–90s plantation known as Compton, California, and powered in part by President Ronald Reagan’s Narcotics Entrepreneurship and Small Arms Specialist Training Program, better known to the rest you as the Iran-Contra scandal, five young men pushed their way to entertainment stardom and out […]

PUBLIC WON’T STOP HAVING SEX WITH NICKI MINAJ WAX FIGURE

While members of the general public continue to pretend having sex with entertainer Nicki Minaj’s wax statue at Madame Tussauds Museum—thus validating the warnings of Azealia Banks—the museum announced that it will provide extra security for its apparent Ode to Venus Hottentot. https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/631349263134384128 https://twitter.com/AZEALIABANKS/status/631352334296035328 Let’s pull together three data points to understand if Team Madame […]

BACK TO WHY TRUMP IS WINNING

(Laughing) After Thursday night’s Party of No Brains Presidential debate, are you ready to call Donald Trump’s campaign a damn thing yet? I made this pre-debate assessment about Trump’s chances for staying in the race: …if Americans saw a President in a man known more for his acting ability than his public policy chops in […]

DONALD TRUMP—AMERICAN ‘HERO’ FOR THE TIMES

I find the mainstream media and politicians’ response to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the recent widening of his lead (pdf) above his clown car of fellow Republican opponents odd. Well, sort of. It’s not surprising that Trump’s campaign was initially met with dismissal, before it was treated with forecasts of his ephemeral potency — […]

YOU IGNORE THAT SANDRA BLAND DIED OVER A CIGARETTE

A few years ago, I shared a Reuters story about a restaurant owner in Turkey who was shot dead after he tried to stop customers from smoking in his establishment. Some Americans laughed at the killing, as if to say “That’s Turkey for ya.” I suppose their dismissal was code for “This could never happen […]

‘GO SET A WATCHMAN’ BACKLASH – TO FIT WHOSE NOVEL RACE FANTASY?

Much of America is losing its collective Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea over the new Harper Lee book, Go Set a Watchman—a quasi-sequel of sorts to the author’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but the former features hero attorney Atticus Finch as an older man who harbors racist views toward African descendants in America. The new book is considered a […]