Free Republic

Bare-faced and clad in jeans, clutching a rather uncertain-looking black toddler on her hip, Stacey Dooley stands beaming in the dust of a parched African landscape. At first glance you could mistake it for a gap year snapshot, destined to be pinned up somewhere in a student bedroom. Dooley is, of course, one of the breakout stars of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, and the picture was taken in Uganda, where she is making a film for the upcoming Comic Relief...(snip) Which is perhaps why the Labour MP David Lammy touched such a nerve when he responded to the image...

Students at the embattled Evergreen State College, which made national headlines last year after it hosted an event that asked white people not to come on campus for a “Day of Absence,” have organized a new iteration of the controversial event despite administrators’ efforts to shift gears. Students at the Olympia, Washington-based public school have organized a three-day “Day of Absence” observance that includes a mix of events on and off campus. Some gatherings are advertised as open to all skin colors and others ask that only POC, or People of Color, attend. A poster hung at the school obtained...

A theatre agent has apologised for a comment she made in a private forum that criticised a casting call for only black, Asian or minority ethnic actors and claiming the decision put “talented white performers out of work”. Gemma Hamilton, who runs Lowy Hamilton Artists, made the remarks in a forum on Facebook, in which she said she was “bored of breakdowns asking for BAME actors” because it “adds that va-va-voom to the cast list”. “And now I see a breakdown for BAME-only that are actor/musos. It’s putting talented ‘white’ performers out of work. I think it stinks,” she wrote....

OUR COLD WELCOME October 24, 2010: We’ve arrived – or I have. Half my film crew have been arrested and deported. Everything is going fine at Seattle airport until they find out we are doing a film about Sarah Palin. The authorities go mad. They search our bags and detain my two researchers. Sarah, 22, is subjected to a urine test against her wishes – just in case she is pregnant and tries to get citizenship by giving birth on US soil. Her colleague Mark is spreadeagled against the wall and given a rectal search before being handcuffed. The 25-year-old...

When call of nature comes, it cannot always be denied. Few have answered it in such an unfortunate fashion as Alois Mabhunu. While on duty at a trade fair, the Zimbabwean police sergeant could not hold on and allegedly dashed to the nearest toilet – disastrously, it transpired, as it was reserved for President Robert Mugabe. He was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of invading the presidential privy. The incident happened at the annual Zimbabwe Int'l. Trade Fair (ZITF) in the western city of Bulawayo, according to local radio station VOP. Under the headline "Never Use Toilet Reserved For President!"...

In an excerpt from former Chicago White Sox player Ron Kittle’s book, Ron Kittle's Tales from the White Sox Dugout, that appeared in yesterday’s Southtown News newspaper from suburban Chicago, Kittle quotes Bonds as saying, "I don't sign for white people." The setting was the visitors’ clubhouse at the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field, in 1993. Kittle, by then retired from the game, had asked Bonds to sign two jerseys he’d worn in games, so that Kittle could auction the jerseys for his charity helping kids with cancer, Indiana Sports Charities. "I paid about $110 of my own money for them,...