News: Janet Jackson, Wall Street, Hillary, Keith Boykin, Matt Foreman

· The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) will recognize Janet Jackson as one of its Special Honorees at the upcoming 19th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.

· Top economist at investment giant Merrill Lynch: U.S. is headed for the worst consumer-driven recession since 1980.

· Despite yesterday's major losses, Wall Street pulls off a stunning comeback and the Dow Jones industrials surge more than 300 points. The Nikkei and Hong Kong are up and the European markets are down.

· Keith Boykin joins the Huffington Post and compares Barack Obama's presidential campaign to Sidney Poitier's coming of age in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. "In one of the most famous lines of the classic film, young Dr. John Wade Prentice, confronts his father's racial baggage. 'I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will,' says Dr. Prentice. 'But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.'

"Forty years later, the same poignant line could have been delivered by Barack Obama to African Americans who questioned whether the young senator should run for president and doubted if he could win among whites. While many African Americans think of Obama as a black man, he thinks of himself as a man."

· South Carolina's largest newspaper, The State in Columbia, endorses Obama, noting that while the policy differences between he and Hillary Clinton are "minute," he is more likely to unify the country.

· Hillary Clinton campaigns in Pennsylvania and receives the endorsement of Gov. Ed Rendell, "a key endorsement in a delegate-rich state that could be critical if the race remains unresolved after Super Tuesday."

· Matt Foreman, the longtime executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task, will step down in April to lead the Gay & Lesbian Program at the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. During the five years of Foreman's tenure, staff "grew to 54 full-time positions and [the] budget more than doubled to nearly $10 million."

Comments

[Chris]

I really liked reading Keith Boykin's piece and really agree with it. I think many of us agree with the assertion that we are so much more than what mere labels tell us.

I even see this with the LGBT community. I am in my thirties and really straddled different worlds in the queer community (even the fact that I go back and forth between gay and queer shows something). What I hope, though, is that those world can talk to each other and learn from each other.

[ATL Kid]

It's a pleasure to see Rod and Keith always give each other their props.