The Daily Beast
Prince.
April 21, 2016
June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016
‘Compassion is an action word with no boundaries.’
‘A strong spirit transcends rules.’
‘…in this life, you’re your own crazy. Go crazy.’
Stories are powerful, as is the story teller. Today on twitter, a post shared from The Daily Beast’s Matt Wilstein to remember a special night after the SNL 40th Anniversary Show, in New York City’s The Plaza, as could only be told by someone who shares the passion, compassion, and enthusiasm for music and musicians, Jimmy Fallon. On The Tonight Show the next evening, for millions of us who weren’t invited to the party, Fallon made us feel like we were. And Prince was there.
(Edited on Saturday, April 23rd – – footage released of Prince’s SNL 40th anniversary afterparty performance.)
‘The charade of a post-racial America.’
March 6, 2016
‘Beatty’s characters do more than acknowledge their racism—our racism. They revel in it. Racism becomes a path to honesty, even self-knowledge. It’s an improvement on the current status quo, at least, better than the denial of the racism that pervades our culture and our institutions. The Sellout tries to make sense of a time in which acts of racism are not as taboo as the acknowledgement that no Americans are actually colorblind.’
[…]
‘Beatty, like his narrator, manages to discriminate against every race at the same time. Each ethnic and identity group is held up to ridicule, the stereotypes taken to absurdist extremes. Some of the gentler (printable) examples include a classification of whiteness in America, ranging from Regular (“Benefit of the Doubt,” “Higher Life Expectancy”) to Super Deluxe (“Military Service is For Suckers,” “All Vices and Bad Habits Referred to as ‘Phases’”); a scene at the Supreme Court in which Judge Sotomayor utters Spanish profanities under her breath and Clarence Thomas’s robe is stained with barbecue sauce; and a social justice organization called “The L.A. LGBTDL Crisis Center for Chicanos, Blacks, Non-Gays, and Anyone Else Who Feels Underserved, Unsupported, and Exploited by Hit Cable Television Shows.” But Beatty directs his most biting satire at liberal intellectuals who boast of racial progress and bristle at politically incorrect language.’
The Daily Beast
Charlie Mike-‘The Best War Book of 2015’
November 16, 2015
They came home from Iraq and Afghanistan with psychological wounds that healed only in helping brothers and strangers. Here, an excerpt from Joe Klein’s new book, Charlie Mike.
From ‘The Daily Beast’