Jezebel: do the right thing

Celebs Fight The Power At Do the Right Thing Anniversary Party

Sadie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

"It's the hottest day of the summer. You can do nothing, you can do something, or you can..." Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee's classic joint (Bed-Stuy represent!) celebrated its 20th anniversary last night in New York.

In a prior life, I dealt with Rosie Perez in various aspects of the service industry. She is very nice and lives in Brooklyn and, as you see, likes jersey that she can throw on. DtRT was her first film.

Two things: Joie Lee looks amazing and, wasn't she hot? It was like 80 degrees in NYC yesterday.

Did you know that paisley is in fact Scottish in origin? I was kinda old before I knew that. Also, what "there but for the grace of God go I" meant, even though it's pretty literal. Gloria Reuben is kinda rocking a cruise-wear vibe, which is, obviously, her prerogative.

I normally hate both the term "ageless" and patchwork jackets, but am willing to make exceptions to both rules in the case of Ruby Dee.

Yeohlee Teng kind of looks like a central-casting "designer" here - which, in fact, is what she is!

There they are! It looks like they've got the whole neighborhood - save, of course, Ossie Davis, RIP.

Images via Getty

You Know, Cindy, He Might Have Been More Tactful But John Sorta Has A Point About The Tranny Makeup

Moe — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:30:00 EDT

John McCain called his wife a "cunt" sixteen years ago. The full quote, in response to Cindy's "playful" mention of his male pattern baldness, was: "At least I don't plaster on makeup like a trollop, you cunt." I have to give him bonus points for using the word "trollop" and also, calling her out on what looks to be an unhealthy relationship with Mary Kay, and by the same token I have to give Cindy bonus points for adopting a Bangladeshi child, weaning herself off painkillers and throwing all that addictive energy into applying nine coats of foundation. (And what can we say, Meghan: she comes by it honestly.) [Wonkette]
Spike Lee is really glad he made Do The Right Thing, otherwise Barack Obama would have taken Michelle to see Soul Man and America's greatest union would have been jeopardized. Also: the "Clintons would lie on a stack of Bibles." [NY Mag]
61% of historians agree that Bush is the Worst President Ever, according to an unscientific History Network poll of 109 historians. And just how did he go about pulling that off? Well, he combined "the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover," in the words of one historian, and applied laserlike focus to doing "only two things well," explained one of the survey's "most distinguished" historians. "He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches." [History Network]

We now interrupt our regularly-scheduled broadcast of John McCain's speech on the success of the troop surge to report on mortar fire hitting the Green Zone! [Think Progress]
The Washington Post's Dana Priest, who won a Pulitzer two years ago for revealing the existence of those secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where torture — which is not the same as torment! — is allowed...won another Pulitzer! For revealing that Walter Reed Johnson hospital is not much better! Dana Priest, incidentally, is female. [Wash Post]
But the Post won other Pulitzers, unfortunately none for their courageous effort to legalize Ecstasy, but one for Gene Weingarten, who IMHO should have won a long time ago for this epic and eerily prescient masterpiece on the state of education in America.

Before Michelle, Barack Obama Thought Marriage Was A Meaningless Institution Blah Blah

Moe — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:00:45 EST

You know they worked at the same law firm and saw Do The Right Thing and ate Baskin-Robbins on their first date, but there are still a lot of unknown unknowns about the courtship of Michelle and Barack Obama that feebleminded swooning McDreamers like us have been gorging ourselves on Kucinich romance news to make up for. Well, thank the Oprah gods for the New Yorker! This week's issue profiles Michelle Obama, who allowed Barack to touch her knee during Do The Right Thing but did not, presumably, bone him until the second. And it worked! Because Barack was one of those dudes who, you know, was actually pro the whole "breakdown of the family" thing."We would have this running debate throughout our relationship about whether marriage was necessary," Michelle tells the magazine. "It was sort of a bone of contention, because I was, like, 'Look, buddy, I'm not one of those who'll just hang out forever.'"

You know, that's just not who I am. He was, like" — she broke into a wishy-washy voice — "Marriage, it doesn't mean anything, it's really how you feel.' And I was, like, 'Yeah, right'"

He finally proposed one night at a nice restaurant called Gordon, where they went ostensibly to celebrate finishing the bar exam:

"And he got me into one of these discussions again, where, you know, he sort of just led me down there and got fired up and it's like you've got blah blah blah blah, and then dessert comes out, the tray comes out, and there's a ring!"

Later in the Audacity of Hope he recalls what he saw in his wife in those days.

In "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama perceives a vulnerability in his wife, one so closely guarded that even her brother professed to me never to have noticed it. There was "a glimmer that danced across her round, dark eyes whenever I looked at her," he writes, "the slightest hint of uncertainty, as if, deep inside, she knew how fragile things really were, and that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quickly unravel."

The Other Obama [New Yorker]