IN RECENT YEARS, Thanksgiving week has become one of the most stressful times of the year. Not because of turkey. The tryptophan makes us too sleepy to be stressed. No, the pressure we experience during this week is because of our rush to take advantage of Black Friday sales. Well, wait, it’s not really just…

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St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced Monday night that Ferguson (Mo.) Police Officer Darren Wilson has not been indicted in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. With that, the long and agonizing wait that began shortly after the clock struck noon on Aug. 9 ended. That afternoon, the lives of Darren Wilson…

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LAST WEEK, when there were no more New Jersey Nets to divorce, no more sex tapes to leak, and no more rappers to marry, Kim Kardashian did what any self-respecting reality star would do. She got naked. And this wasn’t ordinary nakedness. No, this was the kind of naked that requires a misspelling of the…

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“We’re coming at you with music and fun… And if you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done… So let’s get ready, okay? Hey, Hey Hey!” That is how Bill Cosby sent us into episodes of “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” one of the traditions of my childhood. I used to watch that…

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The Bill Cosby I know is a generous man who advised me as I sought to write a book of family humor, introduced me to an editor at a national magazine, and did similar things for many others. But that’s not the only reason I’ve had mixed emotions as I’ve watched the media train wreck…

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It was the day after Christmas 2012, and Robert Long was out of options. The New Jersey native had seen his share of misery. From a childhood he describes as tough, to an adulthood marred by depression, substance abuse and divorce, he’d experienced more than enough to land him on Philadelphia’s streets. Still, for Long,…

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The outcry triggered by the killings of unarmed men by police officers — from Michael Brown’s shooting death in Ferguson, Mo., to the choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY — has largely focused on the victims’ skin color. But little has been said about the fact that the men killed by police…

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I TOLD HER not to go outside dressed like that. If she did, she was not only inviting ridicule. She was asking to be verbally abused or, worse, attacked by some maniac on the street. Of course she didn’t listen, not even when I tried to deliver the message through her fellow females. In fact,…

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TODAY IS Election Day, or as I like to call it – Tom and Tom Tuesday. That’s right, my fellow Pennsylvanians. You have a choice in today’s gubernatorial election. You can vote for Tom . . . or you can vote for Tom. This is not to say that the candidates are alike. They’re not.…

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