Episodes of three popular Adult Swim series—Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Boondocks, and The Shivering Truth—have been removed from streaming due to current “sensitivities,” The Daily Beast has learned exclusively. Eagle-eyed Redditors first noted the absence of Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s Season 6 episode “Shake Like Me” from the series’ page on HBO Max in June. In the 2009 episode, titled in homage to John Howard Griffin’s seminal race text Black Like Me, a Black man irradiated by toxic waste bites Shake, turning him “stereotypically” Black in manner and appearance. Also missing from the service was an infamous, incomplete Season 5 […]
Racism in the United States
102 posts
While one could fairly question how much influencers have given to us—as a species and a society—it’s undeniable that they’re real innovators when it comes to finding ways to be weird about race. Whether it’s blackfishing or posting black squares on Instagram as though that somehow supports Black Lives Matter, influencers just have a knack for being thoroughly embarrassing. And now they have a new medium: a photo-editing app with a brand-new feature that allows users to make their photos appear as though they were “were born on a different continent.” We can all see where this is going, right? This […]
When a Louisville grand jury chose not to charge any of the police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor for their role in killing a 26-year-old Black woman, it was confirmation that, to many, my life as a Black woman does not matter. And as a native Kentuckian, that shattered me. I spent my early years and every summer in Southeastern Kentucky. As I grew up and moved around, I was made fun of for my “country accent” that eventually faded as I got older. But jokes never ended about my “country” upbringing and whatever myths people chose to […]
When the cuffs came out and my head was slammed onto the hood of my rented car, I knew this was more than a traffic ticket. True, I was doing 40 in a 30 zone or something like that. I’m not sure. The signs changed so quickly and so often, some obscured by trees, it was hard to tell. The first thing I learned was that handcuffs, if secured with a certain intent, hurt. The next thing I learned is that when this stuff starts to happen, reason gets you nowhere. Halfway into my 45 minutes in the backseat of a […]
In October of 2006, the FBI released an intelligence assessment titled, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.” Though the document—culled from FBI investigations and open sources—was heavily redacted, it reached a number of disturbing conclusions. The assessment revealed that white supremacists “have historically engaged in strategic efforts to infiltrate and recruit from law enforcement communities”; that many of these white-supremacist infiltrators are known as “ghost skins” who “avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend in”; and that the KKK have longstanding “ties to local law enforcement.” These firm ties between white supremacists and law enforcement persist to this day. Last […]
Appearances are everything down South, part of the region’s noted cordiality and social decorum. Yet on coastal Alabama’s Mobile Bay, a group of residents is determined to peel back their languid locale’s veneer of colonnaded mansions and Spanish moss-draped oaks to confront the proverbial “ugliness that cuts to the bone.” And to build something better from those truths. A cross-section of faces spanning age, sex and race popped onto computer screens and launched into friendly banter. Finally, a woman’s voice quelled them and asked for committee reports. It is the Mobile County Remembrance Project’s monthly online meeting, 20-plus activists driven onto […]
Trump’s four-year mantra to Black voters, people like me, has been “what do you have to lose?” He has proclaimed it loudly since the summer of 2016 to all who will listen. Trump has stepped up that refrain in recent months, saying, “I have done more for Black Americans than any President, maybe with the exception of Abraham Lincoln.” What about old Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson to name a few? Each of those presidents dramatically expanded opportunity and freedom for African Americans in ways Trump couldn’t imagine […]
When the coronavirus began ravaging New York City, Chenghui Zhang’s parents begged her to return to China. But Zhang, who is 25 and also goes by the adopted first name Helen, would not leave her adopted home of nearly seven years. “It was very scary, but I told them that it was better for me to not move for now,” Zhang told The Daily Beast on a Zoom call. “I said, ‘It’s even more dangerous if you go to the airport.’” Zhang’s mother, Limin Chen, lives in Beijing, where she has been spared the worst of the pandemic. She has been […]
It is, allegedly, the last time we will see Richard Nelson’s Apple family during the pandemic. How are the liberal, white, arty, upstate-dwelling American upper-middle classes feeling as lockdown eases and the election approaches? The last of a trio of plays, Incidental Moments of the Day suggests the answer is, as confined and confused as the rest of us. Here again, discussing, needling, laughing, and consoling are siblings Barbara (Maryann Plunkett), Richard (Jay O. Saunders), and Jane (Sally Murphy), with Marian (Laila Robins) mostly absent out on a date, and Jane’s partner Tim (Stephen Kunken), an actor turned restaurant manager, away […]
As we come to the 19th anniversary of 9/11, the New York City Fire Department has renamed its highest award for bravery from that of an avowedly racist newspaper publisher who supported slavery to that of the chief who died while directing operations at the World Trade Center. After he nearly perished in the collapse of the South Tower, Chief Peter Ganci remained in harm’s way as he sought to evacuate its stricken twin. He died as an exemplar of the FDNY’s finest traditions. “I’m not leaving my men,” he was heard to say in his final moments. Source link
Give the players credit. The first two teams to take the field for the 2020 NFL season—the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans— knew a lot of eyes would be on them Thursday night. After a summer of athlete protests, including postponed NBA, MLB and NHL games, they could have refused to play. They could have all taken a knee during the national anthem. But instead they played, and played it cool. The Texans stayed in their locker room during the playing of both the national anthem and “Lift Every Voice”—also known as the Black national anthem. Only one player on […]
In the fall of 2018, I returned to my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help fix a broken health department. Among other scandals, the agency had failed to follow through on monitoring for possible lead poisoning among local children. As the only Black woman health officer in the state, the luster of being in the role wore off rather quickly. Mostly, I found myself praying that things wouldn’t get any worse. Fast forward to late 2019. We were paying attention to Wuhan, China. But just like other emerging deadly diseases like Ebola and SARS, we suspected COVID-19 was something that couldn’t […]
As she was putting together her portfolio collection during her last year as a fashion student at Parsons School of Design, Najla A. Burt called her mother for help. She needed to come up with a name for her clothing line. “We had a conversation around why she should not make her label her name,” Cynthia Burt, Najla’s mother, recalled in an interview with The Daily Beast. “We talked through the legal thing of not making your name the brand, because there are so many avenues for people to sue you personally. But beyond that, Najla said, ‘We’re not going to […]
A few weeks ago, I re-watched Jordan Peele’s racial thriller Get Out. The movie still elicits a visceral response of horror, mostly due to its banality and familiarity. The upper-class liberal white family is creepy, but they are given the benefit of the doubt, repeatedly. The situation is familiar to many of us who move in racially mixed social and work spaces. We ignore the uneasiness until we realize that, like a frog in water set to boil, it’s too late. They never actually saw your humanity. Instead, they saw you as a commodity, and you and the labor of your […]
Theatre for One: Here We Are boils drama down to essentials: one viewer, one actor, and a visceral live-wire connection that manages to transcend physical space. Presented by Arts Brookfield and billed as a digital theatrical experience, the eight micro-plays burn fast and bright, pairing one performer with one audience member for a live two-way video call. Written, performed, and directed by Black, indigenous, and other racial minority women artists, Theatre for One connects viewers screen-to-screen with characters whose stories are reflected among ongoing global calls for racial justice. Viewers are first instructed to enter a 10-digit code on the website’s […]
Two House Democrats are urging the nation’s top intelligence official to make public what they argue is crucial information about the extent to which foreign actors are exploiting recent racial and social unrest in the U.S. to advance their own agendas. In a September 1 letter obtained by The Daily Beast, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Val Demings (D-FL), members of the House Intelligence Committee, thank the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, for his response to their inquiry on “how foreign adversaries are heightening and exploiting tensions and social unrest in American communities to further foreign interests.” But the response […]
Here we go. It’s law and order week. And with the eyes of the nation fixed on Kenosha, Joe Biden is going to… southwestern Pennsylvania, to give a speech on why you aren’t safe in Donald Trump’s America. And Trump is going to Kenosha on Tuesday. So we confront one of the enduring questions of American presidential politics, which goes back to Richard Nixon’s time: Can the Republicans scare enough white people into thinking that their beautiful suburb is going to be taken over by Black criminals if the Democrat wins? Pretty much every liberal I know is terrified that the […]
As a Black queer millennial, I’m often told I’m strong. For my mere existence alone is often said to be an act of resilience. I live in a world where people who look like me are being extrajudicially killed by cops on viral videos. A global pandemic is taking away my skinfolk more rapidly than any other population. And bigotry, H.I.V., gun violence, opioids, and poverty continues to disproportionately cut at the intersections of my Black queer community unforgivingly. Living in Philadelphia, a city that is now second to Chicago in homicides, I have witnessed too many loved ones who have […]
I attended my very first Sundance Film Festival in January of 1997. I loved the energy and the community that came together around a shared passion for independent film and the discovery of new filmmakers. But when the lights came on, I saw very few people in the audience who looked like me. It was mostly white men. Were there Black filmmakers who didn’t know about or weren’t invited to Sundance? I began to wonder if there might be an opportunity to create an alternative platform for them—for us—primarily focused on content by African Americans for Black audiences. And if such […]
What can definitively be said about the Republican National Convention’s weaponizing of Blackness and poverty to spout predictable American mythology? Trump and his cronies say again and again that he has “done the most for black people.” In fact, every U.S. government has failed and brutalized Black Americans and countless racialized people in the country and outside of it. The most significant positive change to Black life has been made through grassroots activism. Not even Lincoln himself is responsible for the movement that would eventually lead to the eradication of slavery, yet U.S. politicians would have you believe otherwise. Historically, both […]
I dare you to examine the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins and tell me America has changed. Yusuf Hawkins was a 16-year-old Black teenager who, along with three friends, went to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, one summer night to look at a used car his buddy Troy had found for sale in the newspaper. Yusuf didn’t know anyone in Bensonhurst, but he and his friends found themselves surrounded by a mob of 30 young white men swinging baseball bats, wielding handguns, and accusing them of not belonging in their all-white neighborhood. The mostly Italian men forced themselves between Yusuf and his friends, pinned […]
Stephen Colbert opened his show Wednesday night with a confession. “Now, full disclosure: I did not watch much of the convention tonight. And fullest disclosure: I did not watch any of it,” the Late Show host said. “Because right now in America, we’re facing a global pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans, heavily armed Rambo wannabes are murdering people in our streets, the strongest hurricane in the history of the Gulf Coast is making landfall as I speak, and the RNC’s message is: Who’s up for four more years?” “I know by not watching the RNC I didn’t do my job […]
Before the NBA kicked off its rebooted season in Disney World, promises were made. The league and Commissioner Adam Silver swore that despite being ensconced in a semipermeable bubble in Orlando, Florida, players would in no way be hindered from participating in the nationwide uprising against police brutality and state-sanctioned violence largely inflicted upon people of color. In fact, their voices would not only be heard, but amplified, according to Silver, as long as they continued to both literally and figuratively play ball. At the time, some players weren’t convinced. They voiced concerns that once the vast bulk of the sports-loving […]
After the NBA suspended all playoff games on Wednesday night following a protest walkout by the Milwaukee Bucks over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, Charles Barkley shared his uncensored reaction on CNN. The former basketball star and current co-host of TNT’s Inside the NBA said the Bucks “deserve a lot of credit” for their “courageous” act of refusing to play, but his biggest question is what comes next. “What is their next game plan?” he asked. “They canceled the games for today. I think that puts tremendous pressure on the players not to play tomorrow also. So are they boycotting […]
More than once in our conversation, the Broadway producer Brian Moreland qualifies an optimistic thought with, “I know that sounds very Pollyanna of me.” Moreland, one of the few Black producers working on Broadway, is hopeful for not just the healthy, post-pandemic return of Broadway, but also for a renewed kind of commercial theater which looks, sounds, and feels more diverse. “I feel there’s change in the air,” he told The Daily Beast. The lead producer of upcoming productions of Charles Randolph-Wright’s play Blue (which had been set to open at the Apollo Theater in May) and Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of […]
What is it about courtside at the Oakland Arena that really brings out the worst our country has to offer? You may recall, during the 2019 NBA Finals, when Golden State Warriors’ part-owner and venture-capitalist scumbag Mark Stevens took a second out of his night to shove Raptors guard Kyle Lowry and then call him a “piece of shit,” all for the crime of trying hard at his job. It was a moment of pure id from the billionaire class—a rank display of how they regard the people they lord over, even when those people are multi-millionaire future Hall of Famers. […]
On September 11, 2017, Jemele Hill tweeted, “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounding himself w/ other white supremacists.” And, even though the 99-character pronouncement came a few weeks after Trump referred to a group of white nationalist protesters as “very fine people,” pearls were firmly clutched. A vocal faction of conservatives, including the president and his then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, called on ESPN to fire Hill. They publicly censured her instead, calling Hill’s actions “inappropriate” and strong-arming the SC6 co-host into issuing a half-hearted apology to the Worldwide Leader. Five months—and one tweet criticizing Cowboys’ owner […]
Citing health concerns, the president of the National Organization for Women stepped down Sunday, amid a flurry of allegations of racism at the nation’s oldest and largest feminist organization. In an email to the NOW board, state presidents, and staff on Sunday night, President Toni Van Pelt announced she would be stepping down with two weeks’ notice effective Aug. 28. Vice President Christian Nunes will take her place, and the board will begin the process of appointing a new vice president. In her email, Van Pelt said she had been struggling with a “very painful health issue” over the last year […]
The only thing more dangerous than monsters in Lovecraft Country are racists—although there are plenty of both in HBO’s new series, and sometimes they’re one and the same. Blending comedy and drama, horror and sci-fi, social commentary and genre thrills, showrunner/writer Misha Green’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel tackles American intolerance through the prism of author H.P. Lovecraft, whose famed work about ancient, incomprehensible evils lurking just behind the veil was colored by his own noted intolerance for those with darker skin complexions. It’s a bold, heady venture with ambitions as grand as its creatures. Yet at least in its […]
Since he was in elementary school summiting flagpoles, eating his lunch at the top of basketball hoops, and wriggling his way up the exposed seams of brick buildings, Kai Lightner has been a fearless climber. The 20-year-old professional from Fayetteville, North Carolina, has tackled some of the hardest routes in the world, ascending the formidable Era Vella in Margalef, Spain, when he was just 15. Still there are some spots he won’t go near—not due to any dangerous grade or slope, but because of the name. Across the U.S., Canada, and parts of Mexico, the so-called “First Ascensionists” who create routes […]
It’s clear enough that Ben Shapiro and Republican candidate James P. Bradley’s puritanical pearl clutching over Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s (censored!) music video “WAP,” which stands for Wet-Ass Pussy, is largely irrelevant. Shapiro’s and Bradley’s statements decrying the explicit message of the song and the (un)dress in the video constitute the kind of performative moral panics that are so baldly opportunistic as to render them banal. (Though, aside from his ranty and tedious video, Shapiro’s tweets express a bizarre curiosity about the rappers’ vaginal health in which he solicits input from his “doctor wife”.) Yet, here I am writing […]
Warning: This post contains content that may be disturbing to viewers. Newly released video shows a North Carolina man’s final moments in a county jail, where he called out, “I can’t breathe,” as detention officers held him face down for 12 minutes and made jokes while trying to remove his handcuffs. The footage was made public on Wednesday after a group of news outlets, including The News & Observer, a daily newspaper in Raleigh, and the Associated Press and The New York Times filed a petition for its release. The Daily Beast joined this coalition. John Neville, a 56-year-old father of […]
Fox News star Tucker Carlson—currently facing outrage from network colleagues over his racist rhetoric—upped the ante on Monday night, claiming it was “probably illegal” for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to prioritize Black women in his running mate search while calling those candidates unqualified. Carlson, whose former head writer was recently outed as an outspoken racist, kicked off Monday night’s broadcast of his hit primetime show by singling out the women of color whom Biden is reportedly considering as the vice-presidential nominee. “We’ve taken a closer look at three potential candidates. All of them are said to be on Joe […]
On Sunday night, John Oliver kicked off the latest edition of his acclaimed late-night show Last Week Tonight by addressing the ongoing brutalizing of Black Lives Matter protesters by Trump’s federal agents in Portland, Oregon. “The protests in Portland have actually been going on daily for nearly two months now, since the killing of George Floyd,” said Oliver. “But the deployment of federal agents was a sharp escalation of questionable legality, and yet, to hear the president tell it, he had no choice and it was a terrific idea.” Yes, in a press conference with reporters, Trump announced, “We’re doing a […]
During one of the many contentious exchanges that occurred with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this weekend, President Donald Trump randomly invoked Al Sharpton’s name in response to an unrelated question about renaming military bases. Now the reverend and MSNBC host is firing back. When Wallace asked Trump if he really plans to veto a bill that would rename bases like Fort Bragg that are named after Confederate generals, pointing out that “the military says they’re for this,” Trump shot back, “I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to make the decision.” “We’re going to name it after […]
Roger Stone appeared to use a racial slur during a live interview Saturday with a Black radio host who pressed him on whether he got special treatment from President Trump. Morris W. O’Kelly, the host of The Mo’Kelly Show, told Stone he believed his close ties with the president “weighed more heavily” in his commutation than Trump simply wanting to right a wrong in the justice system. “There are thousands of people treated unfairly daily. Hell, your number just happened to come up in the lottery. I’m guessing it was more than just luck, Roger, right?” O’Kelly said. After a pause […]
After Minneapolis, Minnesota, became the nucleus of Black Lives Matter anti-racism demonstrations across the United States, many state and local authorities have looked at new measures to correct existing racial inequalities. The Minneapolis City Council determined on Friday that racism is a public health emergency, pledging increased funding and resources to “name, reverse, and repair the harm done” to people of colour in the city, the Star Tribune reports. Voted unanimously just two months after the death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of white Minneapolis police officers while in custody, the bill is dedicated to connecting social issues […]
The Daily Show host Trevor Noah checked in on Tuesday with Tucker Carlson, “Fox News primetime star and mom haircut model.” The previous night, Carlson finally addressed the controversy surrounding his show’s top writer, Blake Neff, who was fired by Fox for a history of racist, misogynistic and homophobic online posts. “So Fox News got rid of the guy,” Noah said, “but it appears Tucker Carlson might have some mixed feelings about how it all went down.” After telling viewers that he does not “endorse” Neff’s comments, Carlson said, “we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests […]
Whoopi Goldberg assumed that Meghan McCain might want to take a pass on talking about the resignation of Tucker Carlson’s top writer because she used to work for Fox News. She was wrong. “I’m happy to speak on this,” McCain said, setting herself up for a rant against “cancel culture.” “I think about cancel culture a lot,” she said. “I think every person who’s in mainstream media that has a platform, probably at one time or another thinks about it. Every woman on this show, at one point or another, cancel culture has tried to remove one of us from this […]
There’s a joke that Richard Kind likes to tell about himself. It goes like this. The executive in charge of actor contracts comes home one night and asks his wife, “You know that guy who you like so much? He was on Mad About You and then you liked him on Spin City, and then he was on Curb Your Enthusiasm?” The man’s wife says, “Oh, I love him.” “Yeah. I really fucked him over today,” the man responds. Few character actors work harder or more consistently than Kind. He had major regular roles on the sitcoms Mad About You and […]
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty “She fucks Black dudes? She probably has something.” Those were words said to me in high school — by a friend. I spun on my heels and told him how those words were racist, and my friend, who was nice and would give someone the shirt off his back, listed every reason why he couldn’t possibly be racist. He wasn’t a card-carrying Klan member, like the racists I’d seen on TV; his words were racist, I didn’t know whether or not that made him racist. I knew I was angry, though. But he didn’t understand it. I walked away […]
“She fucks Black dudes? She probably has something.” Those were words said to me in high school — by a friend. I spun on my heels and told him how those words were racist, and my friend, who was nice and would give someone the shirt off his back, listed every reason why he couldn’t possibly be racist. He wasn’t a card-carrying Klan member, like the racists I’d seen on TV; his words were racist, I didn’t know whether or not that made him racist. I knew I was angry, though. But he didn’t understand it. I walked away to preserve the remainder […]
A Wilmington, North Carolina police officer who was fired for taking part in a violently racist conversation has filed an appeal, claiming his comments were protected religious speech. Wilmington Police officer James “Brian” Gilmore was one of three officers fired last month for taking part in recorded racist conversations. One of those conversations, for which Gilmore was not present, involved racist slurs and talk of massacring Black Americans in a second Civil War. Gilmore claims that, because he only explicitly made reference to white people “worshipping” Black people, his comments were not racist but stemmed from his religious convictions against idolatry. […]
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump demanded an apology from Bubba Wallace for supposedly perpetrating what he falsely labeled a hate-crime “hoax” after what looked a lot like a noose was found in the Black NASCAR driver’s garage stall. Wallace responded on social media with a message of positivity and love, but he had a bit more to say when he appeared as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday night. Comedian and black-ish star Anthony Anderson, who was filling in as guest host for Kimmel, said, “As a kid growing up, not once did you ever think that you would […]
When one of Bloomington, Indiana’s most prominent Black activists filmed a harrowing encounter by men who allegedly threatened to hang him, locals held a protest in his defense. But that same Monday night, the protest was met with a car plowing through demonstrators. Bloomington, like many American cities, is undergoing a public reckoning over racism. One Bloomington incident made national news this week, after activist Vauhxx Booker shared videos of a group of white men attacking him in the woods on July 4 and pinning him to a tree. Booker claimed the men had accused him and his friends of trespassing, […]
Meghan Markle has ghosted her sometime best friend Jessica Mulroney after the latter was caught up in a dispute over white privilege. Mulroney now believes that being ditched by Markle may see her lose her career, according to a report in British newspaper the Sun. However, Mulroney, who was accused of trying to “silence” a Black Canadian influencer and lost her job as a TV host as a result, could exact a vicious revenge on Markle, the apparently well-sourced report suggests. In a not-very-veiled threat a source tells the Sun Mulroney “knows all her secrets and everything she’s been through. This […]
After years of doubling down on racist jokes and choosing to “opt out” of critical conversations about her portrayals of people of color, Tina Fey’s work has finally caught up with her. Last Tuesday, the Saturday Night Live alum joined a chorus of Hollywood comedians and showrunners trying to rectify acts of racism and racial miscasting by requesting the removal of certain 30 Rock episodes containing blackface—four, to be exact—from Hulu and other digital platforms. While the internet didn’t seem all that interested in interrogating limp statements by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Jenny Slate and others about their past (but fairly […]
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty The archetypical Karen has ruined countless cookouts and lemonade stands, and she’s made a mess of a few telltale accessories. Close your eyes and think of the kind of privileged woman who might call the cops on any slight, perceived inconvenience: spiky bob haircut, chunky highlights, oversized sunglasses from Nordstrom Rack propped upon her head to communicate a self-bestowed authority. The idea of a woman gleefully rifling through her discount Coach bag in search of a cell phone, ready to tattle on Black people just trying to eat, or celebrate, or birdwatch in peace, […]
If the sky is the limit, as the saying goes, a striking performance this weekend will harness those lofty ambitions quite literally. “In Plain Sight” is a complex and politically-charged nationwide choreography that involves skytyping powerful phrases, selected by 80 artists and activists, across the United States. With a sense of irony and provocation, the performance is timed with Independence Day weekend on July 3rd and 4th. These dictums and calls-to-action will pointedly hover above American venues loaded with a poisonous history or deeply problematic present: immigrant detention centers, sites of former internment camps, borders, and incarceration facilities. Three fleets of […]
In a podcast episode published Wednesday, seven Barstool Sports employees of color spent 80 minutes talking around the fact that their boss Dave Portnoy, whose racist videos had gained attention this past weekend, had not apologized publicly or in private to them. Objectively, the discussion was pathetic. Former NFL player Willie Colon and Brandon Newman had five of their co-workers on The 2Biggs Podcast for a discussion about Portnoy’s comments; the episode was titled with the acronym for “Now It’s Gonna Get Extremely Real.” (Not every participant signed off on that title.) Most of the conversation featured the group trying their […]
Veiled by comfortably coded references to local control, curricular discretion, and choice, racial bias subsists throughout the educational status quo. The threads of racism are deeply woven into the fabric of American schooling. To start with the most obvious targets, school district lines and property taxes largely follow patterns of racial and income segregation, with wealthier, whiter districts often getting even wealthier by disproportionate access to rigged systems of state aid. The map of America’s over 10,000 school districts is the geography of institutional racism. Whatever other more neutral reasons are ascribed to this politically determined checkerboard: “neighborhood,” “community,” “self-determination,” it […]
Fox News host Tucker Carlson continued his relentless attacks on social justice movement Black Lives Matter on Wednesday night, likening the protests over police brutality to coronavirus while describing the city where George Floyd was killed as “our Wuhan.” Carlson led off his top-rated Fox News primetime program by referencing COVID-19, a disease that has currently killed roughly 130,000 Americans, in an effort to draw a comparison to the recent push for racial justice kicked off by Floyd’s late-May death. “We spent an awful lot of time this spring talking about viruses and how they spread,” he proclaimed. “One person infects […]
Cops lie, not just often, but with the bravado and confidence of people who know they will neither be caught nor held accountable. And plenty of those lies are made against people working for crap wages and no benefits in the service industry. In recent weeks, New York City officers fabricated poisoned Shake Shack milkshakes, a Georgia cop paranoia-conjured a tainted McMuffin, and a Los Angeles officer tweeted photos of what is definitely not a tampon-contaminated coffee. The trail of lies goes back years prior, and includes a Utah cop accusing a Subway employee of putting THC and meth in his […]
Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of lower Manhattan on Sunday for the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, a rallying cry against police violence that combined the spirit of Pride with the ongoing calls of the Black Lives Matter movement. Late afternoon reports on social media showed disturbing moments of confrontation after a largely peaceful march, with the police pushing through crowds of protesters and appearing to detain multiple people. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that two people were arrested in the act of graffiting a police vehicle, and that pepper spray was […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox every Sunday. Whatever the state of the relationship between Prince Harry and Prince William, two things are most certainly not helping: royal “sources,” and an expanse of miscommunication-facilitating ocean between them. The apparent fraternal conflict is being exacerbated by a wealth of new claims about the circumstances by which Harry and wife Meghan Markle ended up quitting their roles as “senior royals.” Source link
This year’s season of “Pride Plays,” produced by Rattlesticks Playwrights Theater in New York City, is showing online at Playbill.com. This is the first of two articles focusing on the Black queer playwrights with plays in the season. Rodney Hicks’ play, Just Press Save, is about the hopes, fears, and intrigues of a group of six high school seniors, including twins who are undocumented immigrants and a Black trans man. Hicks, 46, is also an actor who starred in the original productions of Rent and Come From Away. Just Press Save is directed by Michael Greif, who directed Hicks in the original production […]
NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace appeared Tuesday night on CNN to respond to the FBI’s conclusion that he was not the target of a racist hate crime, saying he was “pissed” that people are doubting his character and integrity. Days after NASCAR announced that a noose was found hanging in the garage of Wallace, the league’s only Black racer who has recently been outspoken on racial justice issues, the FBI determined that “that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall.” “We appreciate the FBI’s quick and thorough investigation and are thankful […]
The president of the United States is facing a vexing problem: the racism he ran on is no longer in style. In fact, “76 percent of Americans—including 71 percent of white people—called racism and discrimination ‘a big problem’ in the United States.” This is an enormous shift in the America Donald Trump was elected to govern just three years ago. And while Trump’s base may be the same as it always was, the optics of the world have changed. This puts pressure on Trump to pretend to be less racist than he is. But even if the country is “theoretically” less […]
On Sunday night, John Oliver took a break from his ongoing flame war with “racist” Fox News host Tucker Carlson to roast President Trump over the embarrassingly low attendance at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday night. Prior to the event, White House officials—along with Trump—boasted repeatedly that over a million people had registered for the ego-stroking endeavor, and that the crowd would be so large that they needed to construct an overflow area outside the Bank of Oklahoma Center arena to house all of the accused serial sexual abuser’s adoring fans. And yet, according to the Tulsa Fire Department, […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox every Sunday. Prince William’s 38th birthday today has been happy and also a tad dramatic, with reports claiming royal aides fear a new book about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will see William “painted as the bad guy” in the tumult over their exit from the royal family. William’s birthday coincided with Father’s Day, the twinned events marked by new pictures taken by Kate Middleton showing William enjoying playtime with his three […]
The inaugural Antonyo Awards chose the evening of Juneteenth to honor the work of Black theater artists on and off Broadway with a virtual celebration. With the 2020 Tony Awards postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, and in the midst of a global uprising calling out the value of Black lives, the streaming event was a welcome moment to acknowledge the extraordinary achievements of Black theater artists in a season that was cut short and put to bed with little fanfare. “The Antonyo Awards seek to fill the gap between Black talent and public acknowledgement,” said Drew Shade, founder of […]
This week, Soledad O’Brien releases the documentary Outbreak: The First Response—a look at how public health cared for its most vulnerable in the place where COVID-19 first arrived in the U.S. The documentary airs on Hearst Television’s NBC and CBS stations at 8 p.m. on Friday, and on Hearst Television’s ABC stations on Wednesday at 8 p.m. America is burning. Or, more correctly, America has been burning. It’s just gotten harder to ignore. Long before Americans had even heard of COVID-19, homelessness was a major national problem; the federal minimum wage hadn’t increased in a decade; approximately half of all Americans […]
During an appearance with Martha MacCallum on Fox News Wednesday night, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson accidentally made the exact opposite argument of the one he was trying to make. After once again defending the police officers who have now been charged with the killing of Rayshard Brooks, saying there was “wrong on both sides,” Carson addressed the larger debate over “systemic racism” in America. “We live in a period of time where, if there’s any incident that goes on that involves a Black person and a white person, you can be guaranteed that the term ‘racism’ is going […]
Cities across the world have erupted in protest against police violence and anti-Black racism, but who are they marching for? In the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, global communities have participated in themed protests to honor their lives. From #IRunWithMaud to celebrity-led comedy specials, there’s no shortage of coverage of their deaths. But since these protests picked up steam, I’ve noticed a quieter trend on my timelines: sprinkles of posts reminding authorities to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, like accent colors in a monochromatic room. Source link
In the weeks since the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd—an unarmed, restrained Black man—in broad daylight, as he begged for his life, there has been a sort of cultural atonement for the myriad ways white power structures have routinely exploited people of color. Some white folks have resigned; other have joined book clubs; and Hollywood, never to be outdone in the performative allyship department, recorded a funereal PSA. A farrago of pained expressions, darting eyes, and black shirts, the ad featured a chorus of actors, some recognizable and some not, taking “responsibility” for turning a blind eye to racism, thereby facilitating […]
In a new interview with The New York Times, Jon Stewart insisted that he does not miss hosting The Daily Show. “If you’re asking, Do you wish you had a show? Sometimes I do,” he said. “But not the one that I had. The one that I had is in wonderful hands and continues to elevate in a way that I couldn’t have.” That statement has never been more true than in our current political moment. As the only Black host on mainstream late-night television, Trevor Noah has met the moment when it comes to systemic racism and police brutality. And […]
In a new, massive federal survey of novel coronavirus cases in the United States, a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers an in-depth breakdown by gender, race, ethnicity, and health factors. Among 1,320,488 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases considered by the CDC between January 22 and May 30, 2020—of which only 45 percent had race or ethnicity data—33 percent were Hispanic or Latino of any race and 22 percent of infections were among Black Americans, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released Monday found. For context, those communities account for about 18 percent and 13 percent of the U.S. […]
It happened in Atlanta. In San Francisco. In D.C. and in Charlotte. Over and over again in recent weeks, black female mayors have stepped onto the national stage—and been forced to publicly face their contradictory roles. Not only are these women in positions of power and obligated to uphold the law, but they also find themselves promoting racial justice in a movement that does not always fight for black women. “I’m in charge of this city,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed told The Daily Beast, but “I’m still a black woman who is sadly still being treated in a disrespectful way, […]
On Sunday night, John Oliver took some more shots at his new favorite target: Tucker Carlson, the white nationalist-adjacent Fox News anchor, former bow tie enthusiast, and heir to the Swanson TV dinner fortune. Two weeks ago, when Carlson claimed that the protests in Minneapolis were worse than “police brutality,” Oliver said, “OK, first: Fuck you, Tucker… people like Tucker love to venerate order at moments like this, and that’s easy to do when order in its current form is designed to benefit and protect you.” Carlson’s George Floyd protest rant (and all the dog-whistle-filled rants in its wake) cost the […]
When President Donald Trump announced his plan to restart his 2020 campaign rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19, it was met with widespread disgust. Not only is the date he chose one that honors the freedom of all enslaved African Americans in the U.S., but the Juneteenth rally was to take place in a city that was home to what may have been the most brutal anti-Black slaughter in post-Civil War America, the Tulsa Race Massacre. For once, even he couldn’t ignore the outrage and moved his event to the following day. But even if his campaign had planned the […]
As the tear gas clears across America, the nation is facing an unprecedented reckoning about systemic racism and, particularly, the criminal justice system. What makes this moment even more unique, though, is how it’s unfolding not because of presidential leadership—but, almost uniquely in American history—in spite of the president. There are moments when history unfolds quickly, when America’s foundational quest to strive toward becoming a more just and equitable nation overcomes inertia and major shifts happen in weeks and months after years and decades of delay. In the summer of 2015, in the two weeks after Donald Trump’s escalator ride down […]
As hundreds of protesters gathered in Palmdale, California, on Saturday to demand more investigation into the death of a 24-year-old black man found hanging from a tree, questions emerged about a similar death 10 days earlier and 50 miles away. The family of Robert Fuller, whose body was discovered by a passerby on Wednesday, said they don’t believe he would take his own life. And now relatives of 38-year-old Malcolm Harsch, who was found in a tree in Victorville on May 31, say they are skeptical he killed himself outside the city library. Harsch’s family came forward on Saturday to say […]
On the same day President Trump is scheduled to give his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination at the big arena in Jacksonville, Florida, another group will meet in a nearby park where Klansmen in Confederate uniforms handed out ax handles for a racist rampage exactly 60 years before. The permit for the Aug. 27 gathering at Hemming Park was secured by one of that murderous white mob’s targets on what became known as Ax Handle Saturday. Rodney Hurst was the 16-year-old president of the youth council of the NAACP back in 1960. He will be joined this year as in […]
Da 5 Bloods is, like BlacKkKlansman, another attempt by the prolifically astute Spike Lee to blend fact and fiction so to better tell the truth of our times. But with this film, streaming on Netflix now, the subject is the complex and differing experiences of four black Vietnam War vets—the eponymous Bloods—who return to the country to uncover a lost treasure as well as the remains of their fallen commander (Chadwick Boseman, in flashbacks). It’s a weighty project, nimbly navigated by actors Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock, and Norm Lewis—titan character actors who evaded star status mostly because of the […]
Thousands of theater professionals assembled this week for #BwayforBLM, a three-part online forum that was raw, emotionally charged, and bracingly frank about the systemic problems plaguing the medium’s white-dominated spaces and institutions. The forum took place amid a global uprising over the death of Black Americans at the hands of police, and a reckoning with anti-Black racism across a growing number of industries—including media, retail, and tech. The event closed out a week that also saw the circulation of an open letter, “We See You, White American Theater,” decrying racist structures and practices across the profession nationally, signed by more than […]
From one vantage point, the death of Akai Gurley was a familiar story. On Nov. 20, 2014, while walking down a darkened stairwell with a companion in Brooklyn’s Pink Houses projects, the unarmed 28-year-old black man was shot by a New York City Police Department officer. Though ambulances were called to the scene, Gurley didn’t survive. At a present moment in which George Floyd’s murder has sparked nationwide (and global) protests against racist police brutality, Gurley’s tale resounds as a case study of the very prejudiced violence so many are now confronting, and seeking to systematically dismantle. However, as Down a […]
United Skates, a 2019 documentary film highlighting the history of black roller skating rinks, opens with a shot that is all-too-prescient for this summer of Black Lives Matter demonstrations: police sirens. As black families, many of them with children, wait to enter a roller skating rink, they are monitored by officers. Even at a recreational space long associated with nostalgia and good clean fun, the cops keep a close eye. But then the doors to the rink open, and the audience is treated to a weekend night at the roller rink. Two men in matching neon camouflage pants skate in unison, […]
Fox News host Harris Faulkner gave President Donald Trump every opportunity to calm tensions over racist police brutality during an interview in Dallas that aired, in part, Friday afternoon. He either had no interest in doing so or was ultimately incapable. Faulkner began her interview by asking Trump if he was the right president to “unite all of us, given everything that’s happening right now.” “Well, I certainly think so and I certainly hope so,” Trump replied. He proceeded to call the “riots” over the police killing of George Floyd “unnecessary,” blaming mayors and governors for failing to keep things under […]
A 24-year-old black man was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale, California, this week, sparking a massive public outcry and demands for a more thorough investigation after officials almost immediately described it as a suicide. Robert Fuller was found by a passerby at about 3:39 a.m. Wednesday near Palmdale City Hall in Poncitlán Square, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Homicide investigators said they had found “no signs of a struggle” and suggested Fuller had died by suicide—an assessment echoed by city officials who attributed the death to emotional despair caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “Sadly, it is […]
Taylor Swift has no interest in preserving and protecting statues of racist leaders. In a lengthy Twitter thread posted Friday, the singer condemned several “racist” monuments in her home state of Tennessee. As protests have erupted across the country in support of Black Lives Matter, demanding justice for black Americans murdered by police, statues of various racist figures, most of them Confederate leaders, have toppled. As a result, a debate has begun to rage regarding these monuments’ historical significance as some states vow to repair and replace them—despite the violence and bigotry they represent. “Taking down statues isn’t going to fix […]
There are few actors as accomplished, or as effortlessly cool, as Delroy Lindo, who for more than three decades has brought a commanding intensity, sharp humor and easygoing magnetism to a wide variety of film, TV and stage roles. That charisma is once again on grand display in Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee’s Vietnam War film about four vets—played by Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis—who return to their former battleground to recover both the remains of their dearly departed comrade Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman) and the millions in gold bars that they buried decades earlier. With its […]
Another fashion brand reportedly preaching inclusion online has been called out for its allegedly real-life racist practices. Anthropologie, the retailer owned by Urban Outfitters known for its overly dainty selection of candles and cardigans, has been accused of profiling customers and not paying black content creators for their work. As first reported by the Instagram fashion watchdog account @DietPrada, Anthropologie’s June 1 Instagram post—a Maya Angelou quote and caption calling for “equality and empathy”—quickly became a place for former employees and shoppers to detail their experiences in stores. Black customers wrote about being followed around by hovering salespeople while shopping, and […]
Jessica Mulroney, the Canadian stylist, Good Morning America correspondent, and close friend of Meghan Markle, has been fired from her Canadian TV gig after black influencer Sasha Exeter dubbed her an “Amy Cooper.” Equating Mulroney to the white woman who called the cops on a birdwatcher in Central Park last month, Exeter took to Instagram to tell a story of alleged online bullying at the hands of Mulroney. “Today, I’m opening up about something that has been haunting me for the last week,” Exeter wrote to her 74,000 followers. “I have felt like a complete fraud fighting for racial equality and […]
The two-night special OWN Spotlight: Where Do We Go From Here? that was hosted by Oprah Winfrey Tuesday and Wednesday night was remarkable. It aired across 19 different Discovery-owned networks simultaneously in primetime, which means on outlets like OWN, HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, and the Travel Channel—in other words the channels that program content that people typically flock to in order to escape the harsh realities of the news and the world. But, even if only for an hour, it was significant that programmers rallied and said, “No cooking competition, no home makeover specials. Tonight we’re going to confront and […]
At least three black Liberty University employees have resigned directly as a result of President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s tweet in which he declared he would only wear a COVID-19 mask if it were one depicting the 1984 photo of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam allegedly wearing blackface. Falwell, the long-time head of the evangelical Virginia school founded in 1971 by his father, tweeted the infamous photo of a person in Ku Klux Klan robe and another in blackface on May 27, attempting to mock the Democratic governor’s mask requirement amid the coronavirus pandemic. He apologized on Monday, but questions about his school’s […]
GoFundMe suspended pro-Trump personality Candace Owens from its fundraising platform on Sunday, after Owens raised more than $200,000 on the site for an Alabama cafe whose owner called George Floyd a “thug.” Owens has become one of the right’s most prominent critics of Floyd and the protests held after his killing, with one video she made highlighting his criminal record going viral on Facebook. Those same remarks appear to have prompted GoFundMe to ban Owens. She later repeated the same attacks on Floyd during a chat with right-wing star Glenn Beck, and that video was then boosted by President Donald Trump. […]
If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. Become a member to get it in your inbox every Sunday. Prince Charles “terribly sad” Former coronavirus patient Prince Charles finds it “terribly sad” to be disconnected from family and friends because of the pandemic lockdown. Charles told Sky News, “I haven’t seen my father (Prince Philip) for a long time. He’s going to be 99 next week, so yes, or my grandchildren or anything.” Source link
A few of the women seemed nervous as the cameras began to roll and the orgy got underway—not unusual for newbies. Except there was one woman who appeared to be dodging a particular male performer. If he got too close, she’d walk off-camera or reposition, creating a buffer of other performers’ bodies between them. It seemed personal. His physical performance began to suffer. Ugh. Wood problems would mean longer working hours for everyone. When several performers called for bathroom and water breaks, and with the scene paused and fewer people nearby, he sat down next to her and asked why she […]
Despite the Muslim and African-American communities both being minority groups, and the fact that nearly one third of the Muslim American community is black, there’s been a history of tension or mistrust between many in the two groups. And George Floyd’s tragic murder and the reaction that followed both conjure up the past challenges for these two communities—and offer an inspiring sign of hope for the future. One of the primary areas of friction arises from the fact that some Muslims own delis or even liquor stores in urban neighborhoods where they gladly accept the money of black customers but show […]
At the end of a day in which Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) was forced to excoriate his colleague Rand Paul (R-KY) for blocking an anti-lynching bill, he spoke frankly and emotionally about his own experience with racism and the police on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Booker began by saying he almost feels “embarrassed” that he wasn’t with the protesters in Lafayette Park this week to “confront what has been, in my opinion, in my lifetime, one of the greatest affronts of our most sacred principles and ideals.” For President Trump to speak “from one side of his mouth” about […]
LinkedIn prides itself on being the highly professional, troll-free antithesis to all other social-media platforms. But on Wednesday, the company’s own internal meetings looked more like a “dumpster fire” Facebook comments section than anything on the company’s famously civil website. Earlier this week, the career networking website announced that it would hold a virtual global town hall to address the nationwide social unrest sparked by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The meeting was billed as an event to discuss racial inequality by “reflecting on our own biases, practicing allyship, and intentionally driving equitable actions.” “We’ll spend most of our […]
A professor at the University of Central Florida faces calls for his removal after claiming in a Twitter rant that “black privilege is real” and insisting that the answer to systematic oppression is to “stay in school” amid nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd. Charles Negy, an associate professor in the Psychology Department, has fired off over 30 contentious tweets about race, inequality, and oppression since May 25—the day Floyd was filmed repeatedly saying he couldn’t breathe while an officer pressed his knee on his neck for several minutes. The controversial tweets, which were sent while thousands of people […]
Jimmy Kimmel opened his monologue with some expected jokes about President Trump’s tear-gas-fueled photo-op Tuesday night. But things really got interesting when he shifted gears and looked at himself. “Over the past week, I’ve been hearing and reading very thoughtful posts and words from very smart people, some of whom say white people shouldn’t be talking now, they should be listening,” the late-night host told viewers from his house. “And I get that. And I don’t disagree with that. But I’m the only one here and it’s a talk show.” So he decided to share some of what he has been […]
As protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody boiled over in New York City on Saturday and video of an NYPD vehicle driving into demonstrators sparked outrage, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would not “blame” police officers facing such an “impossible situation.” “If those protesters had just gotten out of the way and not created an attempt to surround that vehicle, we would not be talking about this,” de Blasio said in a call-in appearance on NY1 just before a hastily scheduled late-night press conference. That was his first live appearance in over two nights of nationwide […]
Minnesota law enforcement’s latest spate of terror started with the murder of George Floyd and has continued unabated with cops firing rubber bullets and tear gas—in the midst of a respiratory pandemic—at peaceful protesters. They’re far from alone. Officers have launched attacks against demonstrators in cities all over the country, Omaha, San Francisco, Portland, Columbus, Dallas, New York and Denver among them. People in Michigan protesting Floyd’s murder and centuries of state-backed violence against black folks were met with chemical munitions liberally fired off by police. What a difference from how the cops behaved one month ago, when gun-toting white folks […]
After broadcasting from his New York apartment every weeknight for the past two months, Trevor Noah went on hiatus this week. But he couldn’t wait until Monday to share his take on the protests that have followed the police killing of George Floyd. In a long, no-frills, joke-free video, shot vertically, The Daily Show host connected the dots between Amy Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery and now Floyd. His most impassioned commentary, however, came when he addressed the backlash to the looting and riots that have happened in response. To those who are telling protesters, “You do not loot and you do not […]
MINNEAPOLIS—Hours after a now-fired Minneapolis cop was charged with murder in the death of 46-year-old George Floyd on Friday, protests exploded in major U.S. cities across the country, with demonstrators demanding that all police officers involved be brought to justice—fast. In New York City, where dozens were arrested in Manhattan a day earlier, hundreds of people swarmed to meet police officers outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Around 7:30 p.m., cops unleashed pepper spray on the chanting crowd. In Atlanta, thousands of demonstrators marched to protest Floyd’s death, a largely peaceful gathering until clashes with police erupted outside CNN Center. Pepper […]
A protest in Denver on Thursday night over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis police custody took a violent turn when a driver apparently plowed into a crowd of protesters on purpose—speeding up and nearly running over a man who just barely escaped being seriously injured. Video of the incident posted to social media shows a black SUV honking repeatedly and trying to make it through a crowd of demonstrators as one of the protesters clings to the hood of the vehicle. The driver then accelerates and the man jumps off and walks away, but the driver turns […]
Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Michael Brown. Their names, and those of far too many other unarmed African-Americans killed by police (or in their custody) have become a grim litany etched in the memories of a whole generation of Americans. And now, George Floyd, who was violently detained for a “forgery in progress” on Monday by as many as four Minneapolis police officers, including one with a knee pressing his neck into the ground, has become yet another casualty of excessive force. Floyd’s death stands apart because his death represents perhaps the most high profile case of this […]
Grant, a History Channel miniseries airing over three nights beginning on Memorial Day (May 25), is an overt—and timely—reclamation project. His reputation having faded over the past century because, as many here assert, the South’s “Lost Cause” rewriting of Civil War history invariably downplayed his accomplishments, Ulysses S. Grant is restored by this informative and entertaining TV documentary to the prototypical modern American hero. Based on Ron Chernow’s critically acclaimed 2017 biography of the same name, it’s a stirring tribute to an individual who embodied America’s finest ideals: hard work, determination, courage, resolve, and belief in democracy and equality for all, […]