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Paul Holdengräber is not the Lone Ranger. He cannot take all the credit for the exhilarating cultural exchange knowns as Live from the NYPL, though he is its creator and director. It takes more than a few Tontos to keep a series of public conversations and performances like that running strong in the Big Apple for 14 years. It also takes the willing cooperation of the leading cultural lights of the day, most of whom Holdengräber has engaged in lively, stimulating conversations that take the art of the interview to a whole new level.
But in case you haven’t heard, Paul Holdengräber is leaving his beloved lair between the roaring lions of the Fifth Avenue public library. At the end of December, he will ride into the sunset toward a new home and a new job in Los Angeles. Do not look for a silver bullet. There won’t be one.
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Last weekend I came across a Hidden Brain podcast called “Voting with Your Middle Finger,” which reveals some unpleasant insights about the adverse effects of stereotyping others. Since I'm black, I know how it feels to be seen as a stereotype. You get pigeonholed as a concept before anyone even bothers to ask your name. Definitely not fun. But in this case, the stereotyping is about what happened to white blue-collar workers over the past several decades We already know that Donald Trump got into the White House by tapping into their pain. But there's a lot more to the story than that. Why, for instance, do his followers remain loyal to him no matter what?
This Hidden Brain podcast is a discussion with two authors who break down the significance of race and class in determining voter behavior. Whether you realize it or not, your class identification--the way you move through the world and relate to others--tips the scale almost as much as race. Sure, sure. But there's an aspect to this we tend to overlook.
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.
UPDATED 10/25/2018: Although I originally imagined that NBC might be happy about the publicity Megyn Kelly's blackface comments generated, published reports in Variety now indicate the opposite. Kelly has reportedly lawyered up for what appears to be aggressive negotiations with the Peacock network. By Thursday evening, most major news outlets (Fox, NPR, CNN, et al) were reporting that she would not be returning to the Today Show. And only a slim chance remained that she would remain at the network in any capacity at all.
But I'm not backing away from the rest of my post. The Today Show executives had to know what she was when they hired her away from Fox. Jesus was white. Santa Claus is white. So of course blackface must be okay, right? If we’ve learned anything from the 2016 presidential election, any publicity is good publicity. In this case, it may not be great for NBC, but it won't be bad for Kelly, even if she and NBC sever all ties. With enough free PR, you can laugh your way to the bank—or even to the White House. It should come as no surprise that the current power struggle between conservative and progressive elements within the Catholic Church has swirled out beyond the Vatican.
What does surprise—and even shock—is that it's touched Atlanta’s “most historic church,” the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. A group called Concerned Catholics of Atlanta has petitioned the Archbishop, Wilton D. Gregory, to remove the Shrine’s pastor, Monsignor Henry Gracz, from his role as a spiritual advisor to victims of sexual abuse, an appointed position he has held since 2011. Why? Because of his support of the LGBTQ community, which they believe runs counter to established church teaching.  A hilarious satire about what really went down when a famous coffee house closed its doors for racial-bias training--and one man's campaign to set things right once and for all. (Written under my nom de plume to protect the unprotected.)
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Hi... I'm a storyteller whose background includes talk radio, newspapers and TV news. I've hosted a morning-drive classical music program on the California coast and published nationally in Reader's Digest, the Christian Science Monitor, and Playboy. I've won awards for my journalism and my fiction. One of my essays even made it into an anthology for college English courses. For real? Yes, for real. SUBSCRIBE
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