Daily News Feed 11.10.2009/Vocab: soporific

Larry Johnson’s legacy with Chiefs not the one he wanted
Dick Vermeil recalls a running back who ran with a vengeance. A young man who wanted his coaches and teammates to do more than just notice. Larry Johnson wanted them to remember. Johnson would take the ball, run toward the opening at the line and target a defensive player. They wouldn’t forget this. “He knocked the hell out of them,” Vermeil, a former Chiefs coach, said Monday. But Vermeil also remembers a player who wasn’t always in control of his emotions, who occasionally practiced poor judgment, whose unfiltered words and deeds made those outstanding things he did on a football field seem secondary. (Continue Reading…)

Activists allege racism in Connecticut child welfare agency
Taking advantage of a short reprieve from a rainstorm, Rev. Cornell Lewis and one of his followers don bright yellow jackets and trek to one of the poorest sections of Connecticut’s capital city to slide white sheets of paper into doors and mailboxes. The Saturday morning ritual has been going on for the past month in Hartford’s North End, where Lewis’ group “The Men of Color,” block by block, is trying to persuade residents of this economically depressed, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood to refuse services from the state’s child welfare agency. They’re attempting to create “A No-DCF Zone,” referring to the Department of Children and Families, to draw attention to what they say is a lack of minority input into a state agency whose clientele are more often black and Hispanic than not. (Continue Reading…)

Hollywood: Same as it ever was for Black actresses
With Precious, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are attempting to change both the Oscar game and what audiences have come to expect from black movies. Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire, is extremely powerful, but I sincerely doubt it will change anything for black actresses in Hollywood. The film is strong, but not that strong. Even if totally successful on every level—from box office receipts to a cultural shift away from the paralysis of self-pity—Hollywood will continue to go along as it has gone. Too many people are satisfied with the cardboard darkies that supposedly represent black women on film in the past. (Continue Reading…)