Entries Tagged 'Controversy' ↓

Not exactly the best white father to his Black sons: Thomas Jefferson

Jesse Jackson was completely and absolutely correct: Of course, Barack Obama was, and is, talking down to Black people. If there’s any doubt about this, compare the tenor of very first major speech he gave after he effectively captured the Democratic nomination—one to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) Annual Policy Conference on June 4th—to that of the one he gave at Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Father’s Day, June 15th.

Continue reading →

Director James Marsh’s new movie, Man on Wire: A Tale of High Crime, documents French high wire artist Philippe Petit’s August 7, 1974 tightrope walk between the then new, 1350-foot-high twin towers of the World Trade Center.

The film opens next week, Friday, July 25th. Marsh is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 18th, 2 pm ET.

Continue reading →

Someone went through a lot of trouble to fake this protest against the Beijing Olympics, above, and get it to look like an Amnesty International effort. (Click on the image to see its details—like the AI logo and eratz URL—at full size.) But even after the organization disclaimed it, via Boing Boing, it still retains its primal power.

(Thanks to the everlasting gobstopper called BoingBoing for pulling this, above, from betwixt Living in Small Sizes‘s low-hanging fruit.)

I’m tellin’ ya, Barry: These techies do not like you moonwalking on the FISA bill. But you didn’t even need David Axelrod to tell you that!

I’m taking bets: How many of these banners do you think we’ll see in Denver at the Democratic National Convention next month?

Also, if they get within camera view during his speech, like Shimaa Abdelfadeel and Hebba Aref nearly did in Detroit, what will “volunteers” do?

It is a headline seemingly so odd that, upon reading it, one’s first thought is that it must be incorrect: “In Japan, Buddhism May Be Dying Out.”

Continue reading →

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle: Christopher Hitchens gets inarticulate

While perhaps not exactly an advocate for waterboarding, journalist / pro cynic Christopher Hitchens has certainly been seen as an apologist for the highly debated technique of “information extraction.”

But no one would accuse Hitchens of being uncurious. So, when Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter asked him if he’d like to be waterboarded, then live to tell about it, the doughy, two-pack-a-day smoker leaped at the chance.

Continue reading →

Vocalist Rene Marie prepares to knock one outta the state

Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” speech is now officially retired as my favorite “Straight Jack-Move Racial Protest by a Musician in a Public Forum.” It’s now a distant second to Colorado jazz vocalist Rene Marie’s singing the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” July 1st, at Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s State of the City address, but, instead of using Francis Scott Key’s traditional words, switching them out for the lyrics to James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called “Black National Anthem”!

Continue reading →

Not talking, either: Cindy McCain on The Today Show

It’s the question that won’t go away. Since The Huffington Post reported John McCain’s foul outburst back on April 7, and MEDIA ASSASSIN followed up with its own post on April 16th, “Does John McCain Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?”, more and more folks in the blogosphere are asking: Did John McCain once use an unprintable epithet—the so-called “c-word”—in a tirade against his wife?

Continue reading →

According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, via The Huffington Post, world leaders, meeting in Japan on Monday to solve the global food crisis, stuffed themselves stupid at an 18-course banquet, below, specially prepared for the meeting, calling down, no doubt inaudible, worldwide outrage. (“Meanwhile back at the Vomitorium” stabbed The Daily Kos. “Crumbs from the rich nations’ table” dripped the capitalism-giddy, sherbert-toned Financial Times.)

Continue reading →

This story came out earlier in the year but, clearly, has not gotten the traction it deserves, and probably never could: According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, via Alternet.com, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements, in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Continue reading →