Suey Park, as Dan Choi

He was the man who some say singlehandedly brought down the military's policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, placing his entire person in full view of the public. Wearing the Army's dress blues and the stare of a disciplined infantryman on the cover of The Atlantic, Lt. Dan Choi became the face of a revolution that would …

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Suey Park Would Have Hated George Carlin, Too

In this new era of instant celebrity and fame, individualism has taken a turn for the pathological. All it takes nowadays is a Twitter account, some controversial tweets, or a catchy movement to gain notoriety and followers. George Carlin, in his prophetic genius, spoke about this in his 2006 special, "Life Is Worth Losing." Carlin …

Foolish False Equivalence and the Black Progressive “Brand”

When the name Ta-Nehisi Coates comes up, many people treat him and his work as the immutable gospel of the Black struggle; the spirit of James Baldwin made flesh, so to speak. His words are treated as the final say as to what the true face of racism is, and all those who dare disagree …

Yes, Social Justice Takes Time

If I were to give a metaphor for my philosophy of how I personally view equality ("my truth", if you will), it would be that of a table, spread with food and drink. Seated at my table are people from all walks of life; multiple ethnicities and cultures, orientations and philosophies, coming together to enjoy …

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Genius Lost

You get used to heroin if you're a native to Baltimore. Even if you've never used the drug yourself, the scars of Baltimore's unmentionable love affair with heroin become gaping eyesores. You see these scars up and down North Avenue, especially on the eastern end at Gay Street, where throngs of people in various stages …

MSNBC & The Controversy of Truth

To echo the sentiment of Frank Rich and Joan Walsh, you would think that liberals would know better by now than to feed into the Right's feigned sense of victimhood. After all, this is a continuous, pathetic game of gotcha played by the Right every time they are called out for their heinous, bigoted stances …

An Ode to The Conversation

Ah, The Conversation! We direct it, move it, shift it-- Call it debate, call it Spirited Give it nuance; make it balanced Just make sure you call it The Conversation.   We blog about it, write about it Have them in groups! The dialogue; the discussion; the Panel! Establishment minds, the hottest new pundits-- Old …

Why I am Cynical on Matters of Race

The calm, dinner table scene in 1998's American History X still haunts me to this day, even more than the scene in which Edward Norton's character, the brutal skinhead Derek Vinyard, curb-stomps one of the Black men that tried to break into his truck. The calm, smooth manner in which Derek's father, a cop bitter about how …

I Want My Thirty Minutes Back, Lena Dunham

Last night on Twitter I joked about who was going to write the first "think-piece" on the HBO pseudo-comedy, Girls. The first person I thought was going to do so was MSNBC's Toure', which I was completely wrong about. In searching for tweets and positive reviews of Girls I thought he had written, I instead found a very interesting …