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Tim McGraw Loves Obama–and Clinton, Too
A little surprise isn’t bad for you. Upending expectations and stereotypes provide unbounded benefits. Before this gets too general: country music legend Tim McGraw is an Obama supporter. In the way of...
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Jessica Williams Doesn’t Want Jon Stewart’s Job
For those who have been rooting for Jessica Williams, today is a sad day. She announced on Twitter: “I’m extremely under-qualified for the job!” The young Daily Show phenom has been touted as a...
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#BlackHistoryMatters And ‘Jeopardy’
It’s Black History Month, and it’s usually about this time in the month that people begin debating its relevance and writing impassioned columns about why black history is American history. You shake...
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Should Malia Obama Attend A Historically Black College?
Having your dad come along as you tour colleges doesn’t seem really cool. Luckily, Malia Obama’s father is among the busiest men in the world and so won’t make the excursions with her this year to...
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Eddie Murphy Is Really Norbit
If this is right, then Eddie Murphy wins Gentleman Comedian of the Year. During the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live (SNL), Murphy begged off doing a bit critical of Bill Cosby. The “why” would...
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50 Years Later, Coltrane Reigns ‘Supreme’
Wow, do the years go by. This month marks the 50th anniversary of tenor saxophonist John Coltrane‘s “A Love Supreme.” “A Love Supreme” offers one of the most variegated and complex of musical...
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Why The Wall Street Journal Loves Clarence Thomas
The Wall Street Journal gave U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a ringing endorsement as the black conservative race man of this era. To say “race man” and “black conservative” is...
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Kim Kardashian’s 8 Favorite Makeup Products
Kim Kardashian has the sort of face that would make a man (like Kanye West) shower 30 times in order to get near it. So inevitably the question is: What is Kardashian’s makeup routine? The curious...
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This Just In: Lester Holt Can Draw’em
This just in: Lester Holt can draw viewers. Apparently, households across America have registered their approval of Holt’s steady hand (or anchormanship?) during a tough period in NBC’s history,...
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Drake, Chris Brown And The Rap Beefs of 2015
A lot of dissing going around these days, you say? And if you didn’t know, read it here: Chris Brown and Drake have renewed a rivalry that was on yellow. Chris Brown started it, of course: he mocked...
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Is ‘Empire’ Mastermind Lee Daniels Smarter Than Mo’Nique?
Is Lee Daniels a sellout? Several weeks ago, Mo’Nique told The Hollywood Reporter that she was being blackballed by the Hollywood establishment since her 2010 Oscar win for the movie Precious–allegedly...
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Kanye West At Oxford — Did Rap Mainstream Too Fast?
Rapper Kanye West gave what people are calling a “totally surreal and brilliant” talk at Oxford University recently. West arrived as a self-proclaimed genius and gave a “stream of consciousness”...
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Celebrating Ida Mae Gladney, Heroic Symbol Of The “Great Migration”
“Now, we ain’t got nothing to do with God’s business,” she says, sitting back in her seat. She adjusts herself and straightens her scarf, contenting herself with whatever the day has in store.” —...
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Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Dad Donates $50 Million To Harlem
Bill Gates has found a philanthropic disciple: William Louis-Dreyfus, billionaire and father of Seinfeld‘s Julia Louis-Dreyfus. who has decided to sell his art collection. Louis-Dreyfus won’t give his...
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Rapper Waka Flocka Gets Serious
Rapper Waka Flocka has embraced social protest: He has canceled a concert at the University of Oklahoma after the release of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity’s racist chant video, according to XXL....
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Fox News’ Jon Stewart Was The Best Thing On Cable
The hosannas have not been apparent since Greg Gutfeld announced and then aired his last episode of “Red Eye” on Fox News. Perhaps for two reasons: It is on Fox News and was a 3 a.m., show. Not many...
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Was Vogue Editor’s Picture Really Offensive?
The fashion world is stirred up this Paris Fashion Week, and it isn’t solely about the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson bravura catwalk. There’s something about finding amazement in the triumph of taste and...
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Charlie Parker — Bird Last Flew 60 Years Ago
Jazz scholar Ted Gioia (author of The History of Jazz and other books) reminds us in the Weekly Standard that this month is the 60th anniversary of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker’s premature death:...
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So Long, Verve Records!
The recent history of storied jazz labels does not inspire awe. All have undergone unsought market pressure to get with the program of pop devolution. A sad, sad story. Yesterday, it was Blue Note—the...
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Creflo Dollar’s Crazy Ask — Will He Get The Jet?
For those inclined to read their Bibles, where (chapter and verse, please) does it say: Thou shall serveth the Lord, and be blessed with a $60 million Gulfstream jet? Hmm, that question is begging to...
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It’s James Madison’s 264th Birthday — Warts And All
Today would be James Madison 264th birthday. Madison is universally known by the sobriquet “Father of the Constitution” because he did most of the grunt work in getting that document signed, sealed,...
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Lauryn Hill Makes Surprise Appearance At Library Of Congress
The Library of Congress has announced its annual list of National Recording Registry selections. It contained a surprise: Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. The august institution would...
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Billie Holiday At 100 — The Art Over The Life
Today is the centennial of Billie Holiday’s birth. Already, jazz media has remarked upon the tragic glaze that runs through her life and art. That’s cliché territory. When her art is examined, the...
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What Does Kanye West’s Influence Mean?
Kanye West is having a good year. He was invited to Oxford University, a world-class meeting place of the exceptionally brilliant and creative. His fashion career, while not totally convincing, has...
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The New ‘New Republic’ vs. Cornel West, Round 2
Oh, you assumed things would be different. Last year around its 100th anniversary, The New Republic had the greatest and most dramatic departure from its masthead in the history of small magazines....
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Who Was Michael Eric Dyson Talking To?
When Georgetown professor and MSNBC pundit Michael Eric Dyson wrote his reply to the criticisms of his anti-Cornel West philippic, he addressed the most important question about the contradictory...
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Peter Gay Is (Sadly) History
Peter Gay was an urbane gent, according to the obituaries but he was also a great historian, perhaps not in the grand mode of an Edward Gibbon or Henry Adams, but nonetheless a historian of such...
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The Death of Jazz Has Been Greatly Exaggerated: Ornette Coleman, RIP
Frequently, it is said jazz is dead. The music no longer caters to an audience willing to endure its complexity when pop offers so much more in passive, easy, listenable entertainment. Jazz, say these...
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Gunther Schuller and the Crisis of Jazz Criticism
The world has been praising Gunther Schuller for his wide-ranging contributions to the world of music. If not exactly a force of nature, or in the heroic mold of the great classical composers and...
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Cornel West’s Ta-Nehisi Coates Problem: Pure Envy?
Come to think of it, Georgetown professor and MSNBC personality Michael Eric Dyson had a point several months back in The New Republic. Today, Cornel West has proven it. On Facebook, West rips...
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Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison
What’s the Difference between a Slight and a Tribute? The Case of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison The New York Times Magazine has a new feature where notable people list the 10 books they would take...
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Milan Kundera vs. Yale School of Music
Recently, Yale music dean Robert Blocker was quoted in The New York Times dismissing jazz as something apart from the Western canon. “Our mission is real clear,” Robert Blocker said about the Yale...
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Nas At Harvard — Setting Hip-Hop’s Parameters
For a while now, hip-hop has undergone a steady acceptance as the cultural monument to black urban life and as a serious poetical art. Not only in anthologies of its key masters, biopics such as...
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Ralph Ellison’s Progeny Prominent At National Book Awards
Veteran watchers of the National Book Awards will note the first black writer to receive the prestigious award: Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man (1954). The award was a boon for Ellison...
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Is Patti Labelle Truly ‘Petty Patti’ — or Not?
It was the YouTube video seen around the world. It has more than 3 million views. It had Walmart selling out of unusually bright orange sweet potato pies one recent weekend and beyond. That’s right:...
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Great Year For Black Literature, If Not Black America
The novelist Ralph Ellison gave black writers a specific cultural charge. To wit, in Invisible Man: “Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its...
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Dana Gioia California Poet Laureate a Win for Arts in America
It slipped under the radar but it is unsurpassingly good news for poetry: the poet, critic, and arts administrator Dana Gioia has been made poet laureate of California. Poet laureate positions don’t...
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Bernie Sanders First White Guy Endorsed by The Nation
Timing is everything, so the saying goes. For Bernie Sanders, the timing could not be better. Polls have The Bern up in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s had major profiles in news magazines. Now, he’s...
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Original Aunt Viv Beefing With Will and Jada Smith
Whatever you think of the #sowhiteoscars protest, this was the most incredible, the most sensational, the most epic shade thrown in black Hollywood. In mid-January Janet Hubert, aka Aunt Viv on The...
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Manny Pacquiao Homophobia Echoes Holyfield, Tyson
Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao leaves little doubt he simply hates gay people. First, the boxer compared gay people to animals. Or rather Pacquiao used animals as an illustration of the perversity of...
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