Friday , October 16 2026

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Obituary: Max Schmeling, Dead at 99

Max Schmeling’s death at the age of 99 conjures up a rainbow of feelings. Joe Louis’s famous knockout of Schmeling occurred in 1938, right around when my parents were born and exactly a generation before I popped into the world. Schmeling was born in 1905, the same year as my …

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Jacko Purrs to Geraldo, Gags Ex

In an interview recorded two weeks ago that will air Saturday at 10 p.m. ET on the FOX News Channel’s “At Large With Geraldo Rivera,” Michael Jackson says, “The bigger the star, the bigger the target. I’m not trying to say I’m the super-duper star, I’m not saying that. I’m …

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Ray Charles: Genius Won’t Go Away

Ray: how can we miss you when you won’t go away? Kidding – it isn’t Ray’s fault he made one of the most popular and successful albums of his career just before he died, or that his mastery of virtually every American musical form is perhaps unparalleled and has taken …

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Hot Stuff for Black History Month on the BET Networks

BET and sister network BET Jazz are delivering a diverse menu of special programming for Black History Month. Anchoring BET’s Black History Month fare is the annual CELEBRATION OF GOSPEL, back for its fifth year celebrating both the traditional and contemporary art form as sung by some of the biggest …

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State of the Union: Behind the Scenes and Expectations

Amusing and interesting behind the scenes look at the cobbling together of presidential speeches from former Bush deputy director of speechwriting Matthew Scully: When we began last year’s effort, my colleague Mike Gerson had taken to calling it our “seven-day death march.” Mike Gerson and another senior writer, John McConnell, …

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CD Review: Ella Blame, Ineffable Desire

The Ella Blame duo combines Michael D. Temple’s hypnotic electronica with Ella Blame’s snaky vocals. Blame’s voice is a startlingly versatile instrument prone to a metallic nasality. Some of Temple’s music is quite pretty, while Blame’s voice most of the time isn’t, and that makes for interesting contrasts. The duo …

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North Korea: Hair Apparent

For those so inclined, there is an article that painstakingly, soberly, fascinatingly details a North Korea “on the verge of collapse,” as “entering its death throes,” a country whose children are 20% shorter and lighter than their contemporaries in South Korea after years of malnutrition, a country whose economy has …

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