NEW YORK TIMES: GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who bowed out of the presidential race in January, is expected to endorse Senator Barack Obama at a rally being held here tonight. Officials announced the news shortly after Mr. Obama landed here late this afternoon. The campaign has timed the announcement to coincide with the start of the major evening newscasts, which would have otherwise focused on Senator Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in West Virginia, which raised new questions about Mr. Obama’s strength with white working class voters. Mr. Obama’s campaign is hoping it […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Suze Rotolo — she was the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan — was Bob Dylan’s girlfriend in the early 1960s. She’s an artist, and a teacher at the Parsons School of Design in New York. And she’s written about her relationship with Dylan in a memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. Reviewing the book for Salon, Stephanie Zacharek writes, “This is an honest book about a great love affair, set against the folk-music revival of the early 1960s, but its sense of time […]
All This Happened While You Were On The Internet
THE LIFE DRAMATIC: Owen Wilson shooting Marley & Me, Broad & Walnut, 1:45 PM * RELATED: Actress Kate Hudson has denied rumours she is engaged to Owen Wilson. Hudson, 29, was spotted sporting a diamond ring on her wedding finger on Thursday, fuelling speculation the on-off couple is taking their relationship to the next level. The pair met on the set of 2006 movie ‘You, Me & Dupree’ and were romantically linked later that year after Hudson split from her husband of six years, rocker Chris Robinson. The couple parted ways in June 2007, just two months before Wilson’s alleged […]
MEOW MIX: Don’t Cry For Me West Virginia
“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 […]