I just found out that Push, a new film by Philly-based producer/director Lee Daniels, won two top awards at this month’s prestigious Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize for U.S. dramas and the festival’s highest Audience Prize. Since the film has yet to find a distributor, I haven’t seen it, which means that I don’t quite know if such critical and popular praise is a good or bad thing.

Daniels is the unconventional filmmaker responsible for helping to create provocative and disturbing independent films such as Monster’s Ball (famous for Halle Berry’s controversial sex scene with Billy Bob Thornton) and The Woodsman (which boasts Kevin Bacon’s riveting and sympathetic portrayal of a pedophile). Shadowboxer, his 2005 directorial debut, was most cited for its incestuous interracial sex scenes (between Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Helen Mirren). But I own a copy of that movie simply to ...

So, I ended my last post (a pithy rant about anthropology’s potential relevance vis-a-vis our contemporary efforts to fix the economy) with a list of themes that have been proposed as part of this year’s American Anthropological Association meeting. And the early critique has been simple and certain: Anthropology’s relative marginalization is a function of its obscure and useless jargon. Anthropologists only speak to themselves, the argument goes, and in obfuscating language (faux theory) that alienates most readers. But I don’t buy it.

Anthropologists don’t corner the market on disciplinary jargon.

How about legalese? That’s the quintessential example of purposefully opaque language. And lawyers own the public sphere.

My last post was specifically about economics. And that field clearly has its own investment in jargon.

Of course, the argument can be made that economists are ...

I am helping to plan this year’s American Anthropological Association conference, and the title for the meeting is “The End/s of Anthropology.”

That is not simply meant as a cheeky way to argue that the field has outlasted its usefulness. Not at all. If anything, it is a call for anthropology to recast itself as an important perspective from which to engage some of the most pressing questions of the day. For example, as Congress votes on Obama’s choice for Treasury Secretary today, I’ve been trying to think about all the many reasons why anthropology could be a useful voice in the deafening debates about a “global economic crisis” that he is being enlisted to help fix.

Anthropologists aren’t highlighted or invoked in such conversations, at least not as much (or as often) as they could be. Economists debate the merits of various fiscal vs. monetary policies, and our new President...

A lot of the people I know have already made their plans for Inauguration Day. Either they have headed down to DC, or they will find a cozy couch somewhere for a more mediated front row seat.

I spent the weekend watching HBO’s high definition broadcast of the star-studded inaugural show. With Lincoln looking over them, everyone from Stevie Wonder and Garth Brooks to will.i.am and Josh Groban belted out tunes to the massive crowd assembled on the mall, including the real guests of honor, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and their families.

The performance included one fantastic moment after another: Michelle Obama mouthing the words to “Lean on Me” along with Mary J. Blige, U2’s Bono singing its ode-to-MLK hit song, Jamie Foxx bursting into an impromptu impression of Obama right at the podium. It was amazing!

Some of the biggest names in entertainment quoted from famous Presidential...

Am I the last one to read all the interconnected prophesies (attributed to everyone from Nostradamus to ancient Mayan leaders) about the significance of the year 2012?

I thought 2000 was supposed to be our watershed moment, but 2012 has become the next big hurdle for human existence. People are preparing for some kind of major (even cataclysmic) change in three years.

Some theories argue that the cosmos will shift in ways that will block the sun’s rays from Earth, certain doom for life on this planet. Other theories maintain that a Y2K-like computer bug will be unleashed — maybe even purposefully, via a computer with robust artificial intelligence. The more positive gloss on 2012 looks forward to a moment of worldwide spiritual transformation, the dawning of a new Aquarian age.

The YouTubed video above focuses on St. Malachi’s 11th century predictions about the end of the...

I’m a little bit of a televisual rubbernecker. I can’t get enough of the crazy antics producers use to increase viewership in a Reality TV moment. They are constantly upping the ante, raising the stakes, and praying for some authentic sparks to fly.

And at this point, I’ve decided to just start DVRing ABC’s “The View” on a daily basis. The show always seems to come up with some of the wilder water-cooler moments of the week.

This time, it was Ann Coulter’s visit to the set. I didn’t catch it live yesterday morning, but I was a guest on a Philly-based radio show today, WHYY’s “Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane,” and the other guest, my Penn colleague Salamishah Tillet, mentioned the Coulter segment during our discussion. So, I had to check it out on YouTube.

The women are ostensibly discussing Coulter’s new book, but the segment degenerates into a series of back-and-forth jabs...

Oakland ushered in 2009 with a controversial police shooting. Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed a 22-year-old African-American, Oscar Grant, while taking him into custody on a BART station platform January 1st. This would have been a tragedy no matter what, but the stakes were raised enormously as a consequence of one relatively new technological innovation: the cellphone video camera.

As Mehserle and his fellow officers were handcuffing Grant, nearby straphangers decided to use their cellphones to videotape the arrest. What they captured, now available all over the Internet, is the actual moment when Mehserle fires his gun. Nuanced details are out of focus and hard to make out. It is a low-quality video image. But the broad strokes are pretty clear.

The officers had Grant face-down on the ground when Mehserle’s took out his gun and discharged a bullet into his body. (The...

In 1966, amid race riots and related urban unrest in America’s poorest neighborhoods, one of Chicago’s native sons, a 26-something African-American named Ben Ammi, led a group of African-Americans out of the “wilderness” of 1960s America. Every Sunday morning, Ammi (born Ben Carter) delivered his emigrationist message atop a literal soapbox on Maxwell Street in one of the city’s crowded shopping districts. After convincing some 400 people to sell their homes, stockpile canned goods, ignore jeering relatives, and purchase tents for the journey, Ammi began to lead this exodus in the heat of July the following year.

Their first stop, Liberia, proved to be a temporary sojourn. Ammi (who is still alive and well) believes that African-Americans are actually descendents of ancient Hebrews, which means that West Africa was never necessarily their final destination. So, in 1969, these...

There is little legal justification for the Democrats to stop Roland Burris from taking Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

Harry Reid and the Dems might not admit it, but they have no legal recourse for preempting his ascension to the post, even with all the ongoing corruption probes circling Rod Blagojevich’s gubernatorial head like political vultures conspicuously biding their time before a swoop. They can vote him out, but they probably can’t block his entry.

But just because there’s nothing technically illegal about the nomination (and Burris isn’t one of the people invoked as part of that alleged “pay-to-play” scheme) doesn’t mean that Burris should have accepted it. In fact, I’m shocked that he did.

Who wants to be such an obvious political football for a desperately flung Hail Mary?

Talk about playing “the race card.” Blagojevich looks like the worst kind of cynic in this ...

As one of the many Americans considering a descent on the inauguration ceremonies next month, even without any actual tickets in hand (and nary a perfunctory response to my queries about possibly obtaining some from my local Congressman), I have been following the “transition” fairly closely. And I’m not just talking about the president elect’s cabinet picks. I also mean his decisions for the ceremony itself. The brilliant choice of poet Elizabeth Alexander; the more controversial decision to ask Rick Warren to offer up the day’s prayer.

Obama is certainly trying to demonstrate his commitment to an inclusive political conversation that allows for many different ideological positions. Frank Rich persuasively challenges the limits and contours of that move vis-a-vis the Warren choice in today’s New York Times. But it is clear why Obama feels he has to make such massive gestures in ...