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Interview: Jamie Foxx

Jamie Foxx on acting, singing, comedy, and controversy
"Until you get a chance to define another side of your career, people will always say, 'You're doing it as a hobby.' "
By BEN WESTHOFF | August 11, 2009

The Gates case isn't about race

Doesn't Matter If You're Black or White Dept.
The weeks-long hubbub over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. by the Cambridge Police Department has centered on race, understandably, for two reasons: 1) the African-American population has suffered inequitably in its relations with law enforcement across this country, and 2) a race story is easier for the media to tell — and to sell.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE | August 05, 2009

The 12th Annual Muzzle Awards

A look at the dishonorable enemies of free speech and personal liberty in New England.
With the era of repression and secrecy fostered by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney finally over, this should be the best of times for freedom of expression, open government, and civil liberties. Yet change comes slowly.
By DAN KENNEDY | July 10, 2009

Review: Bad Cop

Life as one of NYPD's not-so-finest
Title a book Bad Cop and brain-basher types like Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta spring to mind.
By AMY FINCH | June 05, 2009

Return of the Criminoles

Florida State's wide-receiving corps goes deep. Plus, a Miami big man and his even bigger truck.
Nothing warms the heart like the return of the Florida State football team to national criminal prominence.
By MATT TAIBBI | June 03, 2009

Death by handgun

A public-health crisis; plus, gay marriage advances
A couple of weeks ago, David S. Bernstein wrote about the growing "state sovereignty" movement backed by anti-government conspiracy theorists and gun-rights extremists, and touted on the syndicated radio show and Web site of deranged agitator Alex Jones.
By EDITORIAL | April 08, 2009

96. Sean Delonas

POST RACIAL
You tell us which is worse: this New York Post editorial cartoonist caricaturing America’s first African-American president as a monkey, or failing to man up about it — offering a lame “Gee, I never thought they’d interpret it that way” excuse instead. Here’s an idea for Delonas’s next cartoon: two NYPD officers riddling a hack artist with bullets, with one saying to the other: “The New York Post will have to find someone else to illustrate the next unfunny Obama parody.”
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

A living history

Twilight revists the King riots
Since Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is set in a specific place and time, some theatergoers will want to relegate its incidents and attitudes — which surround the Rodney King riots — to history.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Is black the new black?

Was new Portland police chief picked because he is black?
Was new Portland police chief picked because he is black?
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | March 04, 2009

Self-discovery

What the Wall 7 learned in Minnesota
What the Wall 7 learned in Minnesota
By JEFF INGLIS | February 04, 2009

Question 2 backlash heats up

Rolling the Genie Back in the Bag
Since Question 2 was activated on January 2, it's been difficult to walk the streets of Massachusetts without encountering red-eyed hordes of marijuana-blazing vagrants.
By CHRIS FARAONE | January 28, 2009

Review: Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Ready for the Flood (New West)

Return of the Hawks
Some of us sat idly by while the Stooges, the Pixies, the Police, and the New Kids were busy plotting their improbable reunions, our arms crossed, feigning indifference.
By ZETH LUNDY | January 20, 2009

Higher ground

The Refugees are strangers in a strange land
Cindy Bullens, who has done a lot of things in the music business, recently wondered: "What? You have to get old to have success?"
By SAM PFEIFLE | January 14, 2009

Graffiti wars

Cops and taggers play a high-stakes game of cat and mouse
Even though he’s headed to prison, SPEK will still be visible in Massachusetts.
By CHRIS FARAONE | December 12, 2008

Forward thinking

Letters to the Boston editor, November 14, 2008
Letters to the Boston editor, November 14, 2008
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | November 12, 2008

Almost Famous: Joe Bernstein

Retired former senior special agent for the US Immigration and Naturalization Service
I’ve been all over the country, and I have to say, the quality of the State Police department here — they’re the best.
By FRANK MULLIN | September 10, 2008

Pot Edward Island

Canada's most picturesque province is surprisingly also the fertile center of an underground marijuana explosion
It seems modern-day islanders have discovered another way to smile through the summer and avoid the blues during the bleak local winters.
By ALAN R. EARLS | August 19, 2008

Trying out an anti-demonstration ‘sonic cannon’

Non-lethal weapons
The Maine Marine Patrol is considering purchasing a “sonic cannon” capable of broadcasting earsplitting, “disorienting” sounds, like those that have been used to break up peaceful demonstrations in public spaces in Iraq and the country of Georgia.
By JEFF INGLIS | July 16, 2008

Does Boston hate the BPD?

A secret survey shows just how low the Boston Police Department’s reputation had sunk two years ago. Is the mayor listening?
When Kathleen O’Toole served as Boston police commissioner, from early 2004 through mid 2006, she and Mayor Thomas Menino seemed in constant denial of the spiraling violence and shocking police scandals that were roiling the city.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | July 18, 2008

Muzzle mania

Letters to the Boston editor, July 11, 2008
Giving a Muzzle Award to the Boston Police Department for its handling of Veterans Day protesters is in keeping with widespread media complicity that allows lower ranks to be court-martialed while war criminals in the White House escape accountability for Abu Ghraib.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | July 09, 2008

Beat Generation

Ed Lin’s second novel is an authentic portrait of Chinatown in 1976
Set in New York City’s Chinatown during America’s bicentennial and the pessimistic aftermath of the Vietnam War, Ed Lin’s second novel, This is a Bust, is ripe with political, institutional, and racial turmoil.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 09, 2008

The friends of Jack Kelly

In the end, the adventure killed him
This article originally appeared in the July 4, 1978 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By DAVE O'BRIAN AND TOM SHEEHAN | July 08, 2008

The 11th Annual Muzzle Awards

Silencing free speech
Freedom of expression may be guaranteed by the Constitution. But it’s an idea we have to fight for every day.
By DAN KENNEDY | July 05, 2008

You’re fired! Or not . . .

More naughty cops
This past summer, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis was outraged by the actions of four officers, including three lieutenants, accused of manipulating the detail system to defraud the department.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | May 14, 2008

State of hock

If the MBTA wasn't in debt, these items would be at the top of its new wish list.
Kenmore Station looks as if it has just survived an act of God, the Orange Line hasn’t seen a new car since the Reagan administration, and the head of the Transit Police union says there are only five cops riding the rails at any given time.
By JASON NOTTE | April 30, 2008

We got next

Sports blotter: "Title IX edition"
Two members of the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team were arrested for offenses that seem worthy of the best that men’s collegiate basketball has to offer.
By MATT TAIBBI | April 16, 2008

Totalitarian ploy defeated

Free speech trumps Boston cops
For performance artist Milan Kohout, freedom of speech has prevailed.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND JAN WOLFE | March 12, 2008

Iraq: Five years later and time to go

Plus, updates on the Cowans case, performance artist Milan Kohout, and the BPL
March 19 will mark the fifth anniversary of America’s war in Iraq.
By EDITORIAL | March 12, 2008

More than a few loose ends

BPD to review Cowans evidence
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis has ordered a review of evidence in the wrongful conviction of Stephan Cowans, following a report in the Phoenix that raised questions about possible police misconduct .
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 05, 2008

Echoes of Rodney King

A do-gooder who recorded abusive Boston police officers was himself arrested under a controversial ‘wiretapping’ law
When Simon Glik used his cell phone to record Boston police officers making what he thought was an overly forceful arrest on Tremont Street, he didn’t think he would be the one who ended up in the back of a police cruiser.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND JAMES TIERNEY | February 21, 2008

Best Music Poll 2009 winners

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[FILM] Films at the Gate 2009

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