Birmingham
How the New York Times Screwed Martin Luther King Jr.
Why Democrats Should Give Thanks For Mitt Romney
As Democrats gather for turkey or tofurkey in Brooklyn and Berkeley and, yes, even in Birmingham, they should offer thanks for Mitt Romney. Not just for being a clumsy candidate in a year when a more agile one might have knocked off Barack Obama—but for the broader benefit he served the Democratic Party as a powerful clarifying force. READ MORE >>
No Southern Comfort For Wishful Liberals
London Journal: How Britain Left Behind the Poor of Tottenham
I’m in London, having arrived on Saturday evening. The Sunday morning papers had absolutely nothing about the enormous riot in Tottenham the night before. But the online press had plenty—except who exactly was doing the rioting. I got all my news all day from this—shall we say incomplete?—source. The front pages of the print press on Monday, however, had almost nothing else. (Except, de rigueur,the disastrous news of advanced capitalism in further collapse.) READ MORE >>
Dropout Factories and America’s Unemployment Rate
The unemployment rate, reported this morning, stayed relatively steady at 9.6 percent in August. But there are 1.1 million discouraged workers that don’t show up in that stat, who, at the same time, ironically contribute to its stubbornness. READ MORE >>
Chinamen
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History By Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton, 354 pp., $26.95) READ MORE >>
Chinamen
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History By Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton, 354 pp., $26.95) READ MORE >>
Life Imitates The Simpsons
News from England: A married gay couple subjected to years of homophobic abuse by a neighbour saved his life during a deadly house fire. READ MORE >>
Think Locally, Act Globally
Did anyone notice that NEC director Larry Summers quietly exploded old-fashioned urban policy last week? READ MORE >>
Tavis Smiley's Backstep: Why Not Just Have a Party?
Not long ago, Tavis Smiley did something I would not have expected, which is rare. He announced that he was discontinuing his annual State of the Black Union conferences. These have been powwows where the Usual Suspects are invited to make the usual points: roughly decrying racism while genuflecting to the radical idea that people are responsible for repairing their own culture too. They have had black conservatives sprinkled in for “balance,” to be sure, but we all know the drill. READ MORE >>
