“It’s not over until the lady in the pant suit says it is.” Tell it, Angela! Hillary wins big in West Virginia Democrats, while Obama’s peacenik, self-consciously liberal loyalists press “you’re with us, or you’re a racist” case. And because that whole separate-and-unequal superdelegate thing has been such a smashing success, George McGovern has a plan! If it’s going to be about more than race, then stop making it about exposing the racist heart of America and start figuring out how to make that state full of people you just called bigots vote for your guy in November [Sheesh, talk […]
Brainwashing The American Public For Fun & Profit
HUFFINGTON POST: In April, The New York Times published a story exposing the deep ties between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries. The Times noted that “the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform” media military analysts, many of whom have clients or work for companies with an interest in obtaining Pentagon contracts, “into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.” HuffPost’s Jason Linkins noted at the time that neither the Times nor […]
EDITORIAL: Why Whitey Can’t Vote
“You know something people, I’m not black but there’s a whole lotsa times I wish I could say I’m not white.” — Frank Zappa, 1966 BY JONATHAN VALANIA As I write this, Hillary Clinton is exit-polling ahead of Barack Obama in West Virginia by a fairly astonishing margin of 40 points. Which is why I am thinking the time has come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until they come to their senses. Seriously, I just don’t think they can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore. I give you Exhibit A: The last […]
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW: Cecil B. Moore Avenue
[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY Possibly the largest and most elaborate memorial we’ve seen so far is the mountainous pile of stuffed animals, votive candles and other assorted personal objects stacked up on the corner of American Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. There’s a reason for its enormity: On Jan. 13, three young Latin kids from nearby neighborhoods were killed here in an auto accident that rocked the community and spurred an outpouring of sympathy for the victims’ families. The accident was a hit-and-run — the other vehicle’s driver, Hanifasim Saed Presley, fled the scene on foot […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Duffy Rockferry
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you, ya big dummy! BY ED KING ROCK EXPERT How can I review Welsh import Duffy‘s Rockferry album without getting caught up in the UK retro-pop marketing race? “If you like the sound of Amy Winehouse but are put off by the extraneous skank angle, try Duffy!” That works for me. Beside, there’s no topping Winehouse’s take on Lenny Bruce’s “Girl Singing” bit, and the cost of producing bubblegum with Sugar in the Raw is prohibitive. Duffy’s the cute, ever-so-slightly sassy good girl of swingin’ ’60s culture. She’s at her dinner […]
THE DISCONNECT: Philly Wi-Fi Goes No-Fi
PHILADELPHIA – EarthLink Inc. is pulling the plug on its troubled wireless high-speed Internet network in Philadelphia, once touted as a model for how big cities should deploy Wi-Fi. The Atlanta-based Internet service provider said Tuesday that it could not find a buyer for the $17 million network and that talks to give it to either the city or a nonprofit organization had failed. City officials have said it would cost taxpayers millions each year to operate the network. “It’s been an unfortunate situation,” Chief Executive Officer Rolla Huff told The Associated Press. “It was a great idea a few […]
MANSCAPE: Papa Cries, Sinatra Licks, O’Reilly Cusses
Philly sports fans know plenty about anguished tears, but on last night’s 6 p.m. Action News broadcast, Gary Papa shed tough guy tears while reading a report about Eagles coach Andy Reid visiting sick kids at CHoP. So verklempt was ol’ Gary — a cancer survivor and father of two — that he actually couldn’t go on and had to throw it back to Jim Gardner, who made it all better with a joke about how Papa’s breakdown would surely be on YouTube within minutes. Sure enough, DMac comes through with the clip…. The Francis Albert Sinatra commemorative 42-cent stamp […]
20th Century Art Titan Robert Rauschenberg Dead At 82
NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked. Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Last Good Campaign
[via the current issue of Vanity Fair] In 1968, with the country divided over the war in Vietnam, the Democratic Party struggled to rally behind a candidate. Amid this political turbulence, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, guided by a set of principles and his burning opposition to the war, entered the race. The party establishment reacted with dismay, but his candidacy, coming just five years after the assassination of his brother John F. Kennedy, filled the electorate with hope — a hope that met a violent end just a few months later. By Thurston Clark Two months after John F. Kennedy’s […]
EDITORIAL: Lifting The Veil On Black Islam In The 215
BY JEFF DEENEY Back at the beginning of April I spent an afternoon hanging out with Saddiq Abdul Jabbar and Tunji Turner from the Germantown Masjid which, according to the Daily News, has become embroiled in an international controversy over its decision to not provide a burial service for a Muslim man killed during the botched bank robbery that left police officer Stephen Liczbinski dead. The City Paper was doing a three part series called “Politics Lost” focusing on what impact the impending Pennsylvania primary election might be having on some of the more isolated neighborhoods in the city. They […]
EVERY TUESDAY: The Afterlife Of A Statistic
The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney, the man who brought you Today I Saw, knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather and share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. Look for it every Tuesday on Phawker! Why? Because we love you!
UPDATE: China Quake Death Toll Hits 10,000
[Photos via STUCK IN CUSTOMS] NEW YORK TIMES: BEIJING — A powerful earthquake struck a mountainous region of western China on Monday, reportedly killing more than 8,700 people, including as many as 5,000 people in a single county, and trapping more than 900 students beneath a collapsed high school as tremors shook buildings throughout China and were felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam, according to interviews and reports in China’s state media. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in Sichuan Province on Monday afternoon, and the death toll steadily increased throughout the evening, raising concerns that the number could […]
NO JOKE: Let’s Invade Burma And Save A Million Lives!
TIME: The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur. So what is the world doing […]