Antoine 'Fats' Domino was a 1950s rock n' roll pioneer, a larger-than-life New Orleans figure, and a role model for the African-American community in a time of deep segregation.
Despite allegations by liberal advocacy groups that voter suppression tactics by the right hindered minority voting, blacks represented 13 percent of the electorate in 2012, a percentage about equivalent with 2008.
Leftist, anti-fascist activists known as Antifa, whose stated goals are to stamp out racism, white supremacy and authoritarianism, sometimes do use violence.
Hurricane Irma devastated the U.S. Virgin Islands, leveling homes, knocking out power, and turning the landscape into a 'battered wasteland' where some say media coverage was minimal and help was late to arrive.
Artists know they need to have digital presences to build and bolster their fan base, and fans have exploited that fact.
2017 saw a slew of big pop and hip-hop records, a number of breakout female singer-songwriters and all-girl bands, and the return of beloved '60s soul artist Don Bryant and pop star Kesha.
Not every dollar spent to gain influence on Capitol Hill comes from a big global industrial behemoth. Hundreds of small advocacy groups and nonprofits spend thousands each year to lobby Congress and federal agencies on the issues they care about most, and their efforts often go under the radar.
Every Valentine's Day, I pretend I don't care. Like many of us, I say I don't want the flowers or chocolates or a homemade card. How cheesy. I pretend that it's over-the-top to want the person you like to make you a ridiculously nice dinner, or do some showy gesture, ala John Cusack with the boombox in 'Say Anything.'
When American poet Alice Notley was very young, she used to sit in front of the radio and just listen. When she got older, she began to hear words and songs in her head everywhere she went - songs she loved, like 'Begin the Beguine' by Cole Porter, and her own words that sometimes tumbled out into poems.
At first glance, The Color Run does look a lot like Holi. Its website is populated by photos of people throwing coloured powder at each other and in the air, outdoors, at the start of spring. The only difference, it seemed, was that there was a 5 km. run added in. And that it cost $54.99 to participate.
What compels the Hindu right's volcanic reaction to Valentine's Day? Some of its members have protested that the holiday is the product of a 'rotten imported culture' from the West.
The Museum of the Bible, the sprawling, 430,000-square-foot tribute to the good book, has been dogged by controversies long before opening day. It's been criticized for not including enough Jesus, for excluding various religious traditions, and for being evangelical propaganda.
Hindu nationalist outfits like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh perpetuate a false notion of the 'love jihad' - the false idea that young Muslim men are making Hindu girls fall in love with them to trick them into converting to Islam.
Rock music has always embraced - and even represented - rebellion, rowdiness, and a robust disdain for social decorum. But along with more classical art forms like theater, opera, and the symphony, it's suffering from the distracted, smartphone-carrying audiences of the digital age.
HIV/AIDS isn't a top priority for any of the three major LGBT groups in the U.S.: not the HRC, or the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) - who together are somewhat pejoratively known as 'Gay Inc.'
India has a long history with devotional, even obsessive love, be it for a personal god or for your lover.
The Food Stamp Challenge, which challenges higher-income families to live as if they are on food stamps, estimates that a person on food stamps has a budget of about $1.25 per meal. In other words, a family on food stamps must buy an entire meal per person for less than the cost of an average cup of coffee.
There is a perception that the media is very liberal, very biased, produces fake news.
President Obama has shelled out more in federal spending than the five presidents that came before him.
In 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' protagonist Winston Smith works at a propaganda department for the state called the 'Ministry of Truth,' where inconvenient news can be discarded down a 'memory hole.' Orwell was fixated on the idea that under certain governments, the past can be altered or documents rewritten.
