​The last time blackface rode into town, the showdown ended with Megyn Kelly losing her job at NBC Today and disappearing from television.  But not without lawyering up and collecting a reported $30 million due on the remaining two years of her $69 million contract.  That’s how much the network wanted to put an end to the controversy.
 
Now Blackface is back and ready for another showdown.  Will Governor Northam of Virginia lose his job over blackface and Ku Klux Klan images in his medical school yearbook?  Will Justin Fairfax, the African-American Lt. Governor, next in line for the top job, be impeached over sexual assault allegations?  Can Virginia's attorney general come out of this mess unscathed after revealing that he too has worn blackface?  What about Katy Perry's shoes and Gucci's blackface sweater?  Or Cindy Sherman's controversial "Bus Rider" series, which became known in the art world as "Cindygate"? 
 
And what about Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, and Jimmy Fallon, who have also resorted to blackface in order to keep the masses entertained?  Or the dozens of other American entertainers listed on this Wikipedia entry? 

​Is there no one who can rid us of this egregious insult once and for all?

With Albert Finney’s departure from the world stage on February 7, there’s plenty to say about his exceptional career.  Two favorite scenes from The Dresser (1983) are included here.  The film is about a small ragtag acting troupe that brings Shakespeare to the provinces.  It’s a sendup of bombastic old-school acting and a poignant study of the lead actor’s personal assistant or “dresser.”  The film opens with Finney's character in the role of Othello.  As you can see from the above photograph, his entire body has been darkened.  Tom Courtenay, his dresser, is shown assisting him with a post-performance bath.  

Taken on its own and out of context, the image is both compelling and off-putting.  It seems especially relevant to the current social moment when blackface is trending yet again.  What does it mean when a white actor darkens his skin to play Othello?  Is that the same as the kind of blackface historically used to denigrate African Americans?  Or something different?  

​One critic calls it Driving Miss Daisy in reverse.  But for my money The Green Book goes a lot deeper as it takes a long, hard look at what ails us—and hints at what’s required to heal our national divide.  Even though it’s set during the early 1960s before passage of the Civil Rights Act, the movie’s themes could not be more relevant to today.  
 
If you’ve never heard of the actual Green Book, which gives the film its name, you’ll learn during this two-hour excursion that even high-profile African-Americans were not allowed to eat or sleep in “whites only” establishments when they performed in the American Deep South.  The film won’t tell you this, but it was a Harlem post-office employee, Victor Green, who published the book.  Between 1936 and 1966, the Green Book was the essential guide for black travelers, providing a city-by-city list of restaurants, hotels, and gas stations where you would not be humiliated or harmed.

“Of course they’re guilty.  How is it possible for men to cross women time and time again and go unpunished?  If men were held accountable they’d hang hour after hour, every day of the year.”  

This crucial line from the new adaptation of Wilkie Collins' A Woman in White comes during the first 60 seconds of a visually striking five-part series on PBS.  But something about it seems all wrong.  Not because it lacks truth but because it does Collins' novel an injustice.  

Part of the fun of the story--one of the first and finest mysteries ever written--is deciding for yourself who did what to whom and whether they're guilty or not.  

​This 2018 adaptation seems to tip the hand in favor of certainty from the get-go.  Its avenging-victim theme is so pronounced, I wondered if screenwriter Fiona Seres was more interested in making a case for #MeToo than in remaining true to the taut thread of suspense that makes the book such a thrilling ride

When Jimmy Carter called on Georgia’s GOP Gubernatorial candidate (Brian Kemp) to resign his position as Secretary of State in light of numerous voter-suppression complaints, you didn’t really think that would happen, did you?  (Read the full text of Carter's letter.)
 
But at least President Carter focused much-needed attention on Georgia’s voter-suppression issue.   When I saw him trending on Twitter one week before the election, I also noticed that the Megyn Kelly blackface story had waned considerably (down to just 30 tweets per hour).

I’m glad Carter managed to push Kelly to the back pages where she belongs.  As Toni Morrison has pointed out, racism is a distraction.  Voter suppression, on the other hand, though racially driven, is a form of oppression.  It’s a blatant attempt to keep minorities from casting ballots.  What follows is fact-based information on the shocking extent of the issue and how to deal with it if you encounter it on Election Day. 

 1) Voter Suppression Tactics in the Age of Trump

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, ninety-nine bills designed to diminish voter access were introduced last year in thirty-one state legislatures. Many of the recent Republican-led efforts stem from the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder. In an opinion that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that discrimination still exists, but not sufficiently to warrant the “extraordinary” remediation measures that the act imposed on the states of the former Confederacy. (More via The New Yorker) ​

Only two days have passed since the tragic Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Like everyone else, my heart aches for the victims and their families. Like most other folks, I am also trying to come to terms with yet another mass shooting of innocents.  This latest so similar to the massacre of African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, in June of 2015.  Back then, nine people were murdered while they prayed.  In Pittsburgh, eleven people were killed.  In a synagogue.  A house of prayer.
 
It is impossible to make sense of heinous crimes like this.  We have categories, of course.  But they fail.  Words like “hate crime” come up.  Also racism, anti-Semitism.  You know the ones.