Entries Tagged 'Entertainment' ↓

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Actually, no: Cartoonist Daryl Cagle underestimates white backlash

How has Oprah Winfrey’s standing with her overwhelmingly white audience been affected by her association with Barack Obama?

In her piece for The Root.com, “The Trouble With Transcending Race: Why the Double O’s are standing on shaky ground,” Majorie Valbrun expands on what most Black women probably long expected, even before Fordham professor Costas Panagopoulos’s Politico.com piece, which she quotes, below, made it explicit:

“Ten days after she went on the stump for Obama, Oprah’s favorability ratings dropped to 55 percent, the lowest level of favorability ever registered for Oprah in opinion surveys,” the article states. “Oprah’s negatives also spiked, with one in three respondents (33 percent) reporting unfavorable impressions of her.”

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“Now, pretend that you’re Corey Clark”: Paula and Skat role-play

Was Paula Abdul on drugs?

Not last week, when she tried to judge American Idol contestant Jason Castro’s non-existent second performance. No, was she high in the early ’90s, when she agreed to a cameo in the video for MC Skat Kat’s solo debut, “Skat Strut,” a Fresh Prince-ish piffle over Earth Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove” bassline.

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The next James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, may have the corniest title of any 007 movie to date, but the filmmakers are totally not sleeping in the advance poster department. This double-sided German piece, slightly smaller (23.25″ x 36.2″) than an American one-sheet (27″ x 41″), is $25 at MoviePoster.com.

I’m not exactly a huge LisaRaye fan.

I think she’s really pretty, and, in some instances, astonishingly so. When she’s lit well and in motion—like she is in this ignominiously titled YouTube clip, “Lisa raye lookin sexy big butt”—her face has a sculptural quality, an interesting-from-any-angle form. I loved her in 2Pac’s “Toss Is Up” video, much less in The Players Club…and don’t even mention the execrable All of Us.

But when I first saw the inside-gatefold cover of Smooth, issue #36, above, I have to admit I was actually a little disappointed.

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If you get a chance, do please take a gander at my review, in Wednesday’s Village Voice, of the Roots’ new, this-is-the-way-the-world-ends-ish album, Rising Down, above.

“Get Busy,” the first single, burns like the bombing of MOVE, mating a weighty kick-and-snare to a morbid chorus of fuzzy synth drones. “My squad half-Mandrill, half-Mandela,” rapper Black Thought intones. “My band ’bout 70 strong, just like Fela.” Coupled with guest lyrical maestros Dice Raw (“I’m half-dead/Never felt more alive”; “I’m kinda W.E.B. DuBois meets Heavy D & the Boyz”) and the reedy Peedi Crack, the whole fest bristles with the nervous energy of riot control on dust.

It’s a jaunty read, if I, myself, say so. Enjoy!

Keepin’ it real unreal: Margaret “B. Jones” Seltzer gets into character

Who, exactly, is Margaret Seltzer? Empathic writer? Gangster wannabee? Estranged daughter? One-time aspiring eco-terrorist?

MEDIA ASSASSIN has obtained what appears to be the only known copy of a damning video that Margaret “B. Jones” Seltzer’s publisher, Riverhead/Penguin, buried last month, once the book documenting the author’s foster home-living, gangbanging, drug-running past—Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival, right—was revealed to be completely and totally fabricated.

The 10:10 video, shot and edited before she was exposed as a liar, may be the only existing footage of Seltzer in her full-on “hood” persona.

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I missile you much: GTA IV‘s Niko Bellic sends his regards

The worst job I ever had was working in the car loans department of the now defunct Chemical Bank, at the Huntington Quadrangle in Melville L.I. It was a small office of about ten to twelve mutually limited, small-minded people, held under the managerial thumb of a doughy, mouse-faced, unsmiling, bespectacled woman with yellow smoker’s fingertips and a bad perm.

Our task was taking in loan requests by fax or phone from GMAC finance dealers, processing them, and passing them up the chain for approval. What I remember most was how tense this office was, as this woman kept us under the grind to turn out precious loan apps. My solace was ducking into my ’75 Impala at lunch time, loudly playing Grandmixer DXT and Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock album, and sleeping.

But pristinely nested on the other end of my employment karmic balance is the job I loved the most: The 2 1/2 years I spent, from 2004 – 2006, working in public affairs at Rockstar Games, maker of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of video games.

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An estimated 5,000 Black human beings were lynched in the United States between the years 1890 and 1960. By averages, that’s one African-American dying horribly, in racist mob violence, every five days for seventy years. In almost all of these cases, no one was ever charged for the crimes. So affirms the guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, April 25, 2 pm ET.

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I’m surprised Racialicious hasn’t picked this apart, yet: Six Flags’ “More Flags, More Fun!” campaign, and its English-gargling Asian pitchman.

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