Sunday, July 22, 2018

Yvette Nicole Brown to host AMC’s The Talking Dead

In June, AMC pulled Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick’s talk show Talking with Chris Hardwick, and removed him from hosting network’s aftershow, The Talking Dead while it conducted an investigation relating to allegations of emotional and sexual abuse of actress Chloe Dykstra. AMC has revealed that Community star Yvette Nicole Brown will take over his duties on The Talking Dead, at least for now.

AMC told Deadline that Brown would “step in as an interim guest host of The Walking Dead Season 9 Preview Special on August 5 and Talking Dead when it returns following the premiere of Fear the Walking Dead on August 12,” while it finishes its investigation into Hardwick’s behavior. Brown will also take over for Hardwick at San Diego Comic-Con this week, and will moderate the network’s Hall H panels for The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead.

In June, actress Chloe Dykstra published a Medium post alleging emotional and sexual abuse from an ex-boyfriend, widely speculated to be Hardwick. Hardwick has since denied the allegations, and has seen himself distanced from places like AMC and the website he founded, Nerdist.

[SOURCE: THE VERGE]

The Democratic Party Apologizes to Black Voters

The DNC's bid to energize African American turnout this fall began with these words from Chairman Tom Perez in Atlanta: "I am sorry."

Swanky fund-raisers don't often begin with an apology to the well-heeled donors who shelled out thousands of dollars to sip wine, eat steak, and listen to pep-rally speeches. But as he looked out over a predominantly black crowd gathered at the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday night, Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, felt compelled to issue a mea culpa.

"I am sorry," Perez said.

At first, it seemed like Perez was voicing one more generalized regret for the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House—the squandered opportunity that abruptly ended the Democrats' hold on the presidency and immediately put at risk its policy gains of the previous eight years.

Perez, however, soon made clear that his apology was much more specific. "We lost elections not only in November 2016, but we lost elections in the run-up because we stopped organizing," he said. "We stopped talking to people.

"We took too many people for granted," Perez continued, "and African Americans—our most loyal constituency—we all too frequently took for granted. That is a shame on us, folks, and for that I apologize. And for that I say, it will never happen again!"

Applause broke out before Perez could even finish his apology, heads nodding in acknowledgment and appreciation.

That he would choose this event, and this city, to try to make amends with black voters was significant. Thursday's gala was the party's first major 2018 fund-raiser to be held outside Washington, D.C., and the I Will Vote initiative it supported aims to bolster DNC efforts to register new voters; fight voter-suppression efforts in the United States; and, ultimately, turn out Democrats across the country in November.

High turnout among black voters was key to Barack Obama's two presidential victories, and dips in participation when he was not on the ballot contributed to the Democratic wipeouts in 2010 and 2014, and to Hillary Clinton's narrow losses in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016. But there are signs of a revival, not only in response to Republican efforts to reverse Obama's legacy, but also in response to efforts to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect African Americans. In Virginia, strong black turnout helped elect Governor Ralph Northam and the state's second black lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, last November. A month later, black voters—and black women in particular—powered Doug Jones to victory over Roy Moore in Alabama's special Senate election.

This year, nowhere will black turnout be more crucial to Democratic hopes than in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is vying to become the first African American woman elected governor of any state. Her nomination over Stacey Evans, a white woman, in May drew a surge of national attention, and the DNC's decision to hold Thursday's gala alongside an African American leadership summit in Atlanta brought major party donors to Abrams's home base.

[SOURCE: THE ATLANTIC]

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Dem congresswoman Joyce Beatty takes #inmyfeelings challange to promote millennial voter turnout

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) posted a half-minute video Friday afternoon, writing that the Trump administration's policies had her and other Americans "in my feelings."

"I don't know who Keke is but I want her to vote next November because this @WhiteHouse has me and many other Americans "in my feelings". #KekeMustVote #InMyFeelingsChallenge," Beatty wrote in a post accompanying the video. Watch the video below:

Anonymous donors are dismantling Confederate statues

Renaming schools and removing statues can be expensive, so donors are quietly stepping up to help communities pay.

Three elementary schools in Virginia formally dropped their Confederate affiliated names this week after the largely African American city of Petersburg received a $20,000 donation from an anonymous donor to cover the costs of changing the schools’ signs and other places where the names appeared. The schools previously stood as symbols of institutionalized racism, honoring various Confederate generals and war heroes. After the makeover, however, A.P Hill is now Cool Springs, Robert E. Lee is called Lakemont, and J.E.B. Stuart is Pleasants Lane.

The donation is emblematic of a new trend of anonymous giving which has funded the removal of historically bigoted statues or the renaming of buildings and institutions. In September 2015, an anonymous donor agreed to cover the costs of removing three Confederate statues and a monument in New Orleans. (The erroneously honored were Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and the Battle of Liberty Place.) The process was coordinated through the Foundation for Louisiana, which accepted the donation and, in turn, worked with the city to cover costs.

In August 2016, Vanderbilt University completed the complicated process of removing the term “Confederate” from its previously named Confederate Memorial Hall. The university had been trying to do so for at least 15 years, but ran into legal trouble because that original name was part of a charitable gift received in 1933 from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In 2005, a Tennessee court ruled that the school could only delete the name if it repaid the $50,000 gift, whose value had ballooned to $1.2 million current value. A pool of anonymous donors subsequently raised the cash. Efforts like this have steadily gained steam since a white nationalist rally of known hate groups turned deadly in Charlottesville in August 2017.

Read more: Anonymous donors are dismantling Confederate statues

Friday, July 13, 2018

John Legend's Emmy Nomination Brings Him One Step Closer to EGOT

John Legend has won 10 Grammy Awards. In 2015 he also won an Oscar for Best Original Song "Glory" from the movie Selma. In 2017 he won a Tony award for best revival of a play for the play Jitney.

He is now just one award away from achieving an EGOT. That is short for wining an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.

The singer has been nominated for his executive production and starring role in the new NBC program, Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert.

If he wins he will join a select group that includes only 18 others including entertainment Greats like Audrey Hepburn, Whoopi Goldberg, and Mel Brooks. Others like James Earl Jones and Harry Belafonte have also achieved this feat but their Oscar wins were honorary.

The Emmy Awards take place on September 17, 2018.