Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

Were Alaska state governor Sarah Palin, left, and 30 Rock‘s Tina Fey separated at birth?

[Via Kath•arsis]

That’s an artist’s photographic rendition, above, from The Daily Mail, of what Michael Jackson, who turned 50 this past Friday, might have looked like today had he not fileted his face, over the past few decades, with what presumably turns out to be weeks of plastic surgery.

Continue reading →

In Diary, Gary Anthony Sturgis, left, tells his lawyers who’s boss

I was flipping channels this past weekend, saw three black men walking around the curve of a Richard Meier-esque expanse of office building white marble, above, noticed actor Steve Harris acting lawyerly, and figured I’d tuned into a rerun of The Practice.

Wrong. It was Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Overbroad and maddeningly melodramatic, I would have immediately jumped over to some reality show had it not been for what I heard next.

Continue reading →

I post to MEDIA ASSASSIN every weekday, usually before 10 a.m. I’ve never sent up a message this late, mere minutes before 6 o’clock in the evening.

Why? I got grinded to a halt by a weird sore throat / headache today, no doubt due to a weakened immune system, depleted by a couple of weeks of sleep-inverted days and nights.

Lots of rest is beginning to take care of the wacky sleep schedule and headache, while Singer’s Saving Grace Extra-Strength is banishing the prickly texture of my membranes. It’s $11.98 for a 1 oz. bottle, above, while a quarter-ounce spray will run you about $4. Zakiya, my wife, found it and considers it primo. She says that, for maximum effect, break it out the moment you feel a single tingle. Here’s proof: You’re reading this post. The woman knows her stuff, folks.

Laying the smack down: Barack Obama’s DNC acceptance speech

It was like faceting a diamond in mid-flight.

Barack Obama’s speech last night, accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination as its candidate for President of the United States—the first time a major party has so ensconced an African-American—had to accomplish a set of diverse objectives, without wasted words, in a very short period of time. (His real audience, obviously, was not the nearly 84,000 gathered inside INVESCO Field at Mile High stadium, where he spoke, but the 25,000,000 watching on TV, like I was, plus the other 275,000,000 Americans.)

Obama had to do the following:

Continue reading →

Who is this? Don’t name him, and win a $1.6 million cash prize

Jesse Washington, my colleague, former editor, and the recently named Associated Press race and ethnicity writer, said it best and most succinctly: “Obama avoids race on King’s ‘Dream’ anniversary.”

In the entirety of his DNC acceptance speech, notes Washington,

Obama did not utter the words “black” or “African-American.” He said “McCain” 21 times, according to the transcript released beforehand. He said “American” 25 times and “promise” 32 times as he sought to create a new definition of, and a new path to, that immortal dream.

But even more so, adds Washington, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech,

Obama accepted the nomination Thursday night standing on the shoulders of King and thousands of others who suffered and bled to give blacks the right to vote — yet Obama did not speak King’s name. …

Continue reading →

In his book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel Golden rips the lid off of the modern university’s dirtiest secret: How colleges often quietly admit the lackluster, not-so-bright offspring of America’s wealthiest families, in order to solicit choice, multimillion-dollar donations from their parents, later.

He reveals how the sons of former vice president Al Gore, one-time Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist leapt ahead of more deserving applicants at Harvard, Brown, and Princeton. He explores favoritism at the Ivy Leagues, Duke, the University of Virginia, and Notre Dame, among other institutions. He reveals that colleges hold Asian American students to a higher standard than whites; comply with Title IX by giving scholarships to rich women in “patrician sports” like horseback riding, squash, and crew; and repay congressmen for favors by admitting their children. He also reveals that Harvard maintains a “Z-list” for well-connected but underqualified students, who are quietly admitted on the condition that they wait a year to enroll.

Daniel Golden is the guest, today, on this rebroadcasted edition of my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, August 29, 2 pm ET.

If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.

Barack Obama. (Photo by Damon Winter for The New York Times)

Fascinating piece in The New York Times about the challenge Barack Obama faces, not only, externally, to his ascendency, but also internally, from himself.

In the way Mr. Obama has trained himself for competition, he can sometimes seem as much athlete as politician. Even before he entered public life, he began honing not only his political skills, but also his mental and emotional ones. He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels. He does not easily exult, despair or anger: to do so would be an indulgence, a distraction from his goals. Instead, they say, he separates himself from the moment and assesses.

“He doesn’t inhale,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist.

Continue reading →

I don’t know about you, but, as an Apple true believer, it’s got to be the fastest decade I’ve ever experienced: This month marks ten years since the original “Bondi blue” iMac, above, first shipped.

Continue reading →

Unless I’m wrong, Solange Knowles’ tempest-in-a-thimble with KVVU-TV’s Monica Jackson wasn’t the most interesting note to come out of the 2:28 clip.

The most odd detail is that she, perhaps inadvertantly, confirmed Jay-Z’s marriage to her older sister, Beyoncé, by making mention of her “brother-in-law’s establishment,” and thus affirming she has a legal, familial relationship with him through marriage.

Continue reading →