We don’t need minstrel shows or vaudeville now. We have YouTube. Are Sweet Brown and Antoine Dodson the newest version of the old minstrel show?
The Modern Minstrels
america
Hatch Show Print in Nashville: iconic style, letter by letter [WATCH]
You may not know the name Hatch Show Print, but you know the style. Its block letters are visually synonymous with Nashville and country music history. I was lucky enough to be invited behind the scenes, and my video shows just how damn cool it is.
Manzanar, where decent Americans were destroyed [WATCH]
The history of the United States could fairly viewed as a succession of excuses for not living up to its contractual obligations. All men were not created equal, according to the Declaration of Independence: Slaves were allowed. The Supreme Court said the Cherokees were a sovereign nation: The South took their land anyway. Every citizen… Read more »
The mass grave under Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park [WATCH]
I am tremendously excited about this video that I researched and hosted for AOL On’s “What Remains” series. It takes off from my popular blog post about the mass grave in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. I think the broadcast-quality production these guys put together is phenomenal. The short version is explained in my post, linked… Read more »
Scenes from the dedication of the FDR memorial in New York City
In a way, the monument is as much to Louis Kahn as it is to FDR, as proven by how many times each of the speakers invoked both of their names. Former President Bill Clinton, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Tom Brokaw, Ambassador William vanden Huevel, Mayor Michel Bloomberg. All nodded to Louie. It’s odd: The son’s impetus to memorialize his architect father is what led us, even enabled us, to memorialize the president. From small questions rise large deeds.
Andersonville: America’s concentration camp [WATCH]
Andersonville wasn’t done to Americans by the Viet Cong or the Japanese. Americans did this to other Americans. This is our burden entirely. If we forget it, we forget it’s possible.
There’s a plaque for everything
Jimmy Carter spent two nights here in 1994. Steinhatchee, Florida.
Revisiting Rosewood, Florida, today [WATCH]
We pass desultory intersections like Rosewood’s every day. And we will never know how many of them were once the settings for brutal events, in which Americans, believing they were right and on the side of God, were in fact the instruments of something sinister and evil.
Welcome to the Low Self-Esteem Economy
More of us are being told by businesses that because the economy remains in a muddle, we’re all the equivalent of rank beginners. Welcome to the new Low Self-Esteem Economy.
The State Department STEPs up outreach to travelers
U.S. consulates or embassy are never places that welcome a weary traveler, not even if you have the privilege of carrying a passport with a bald eagle stamped on the cover. Indeed, the diplomatic fortresses we build abroad, such as the bunker on London’s Grosvenor Square and the $750 million citadel in Baghdad, are resolutely intent on keeping us out.