I read yet another book synopsis where a character's "gypsy blood" is supposed to imbue them with mysterious magical powers.

Try this: read that as "heebie blood," or "injun blood," or any such thing.

The "magical negro" is an offensive plot device or character construct, even if the the character is some other ethnicity.

Just quit it, okay?  And ( Read more... )

I get news feeds from Reuters and BBC.  They like to repost certain stories over and over without much change in the content, I don't know why: maybe to keep them from falling off the front page.

This weekend they're all for giving free publicity to the latest venomous lies spewing from that heroine of free enterprise Angela Merkel.  Angela Merkel ( Read more... )

Frank sends me snippets of news from time to time, usually about the US and not about Czech Republic. But he sent me links about this thing.

Briefly, about 600 people joined a demonstration by the "Worker's Party" which is a right-wing nativist outfit to march into a housing area populated by Roma. They carried signs, rocks, and "petrol bombs" ( ( Read more... )

We went to see "Gypsy Caravan" and now I urge you to do the same. It's a concert tour movie, but it's also a lot more. And the music and the dancing are wonderful.

Something I found out: the song, "Djelem, djelem," which I had scooped up from somewhere long forgotten and put on my playlist and assumed was Middle Eastern or klezmer, turns out to ( Read more... )