Raina Kelley

In the wake of more horrific allegations of rape and murder coming out of the sports pages, I've decided to stop asking why we glorify and coddle athletes and instead go back a step or two and ask why we give men in general a pass when it comes to sexual malfeasance.

Athletes make my head hurt. Honestly, I want nothing more than to forget they exist until football season starts. Maybe by then, they'll be using robots and the world will be safer.

With the right spin doctor, Gordon Brown could seem an easy politician to admire. This was the smart, serious-minded Scot who took prudence as his watchword in his successful management of the British economy; the man who oversaw the country's longest period of economic growth and averted global catastrophe through his handling of the financial crisis. He was the clergyman's son who thrived on hard work and liked to talk of the "moral compass" offered by his parents' example.

Five lessons we can learn from Sandra Bullock's secret adoption

I'm warning you now: do not read this post if you've just eaten or you may lose your meal. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveals the truly vile (in my opinion) actions of the police on the evening Ben Roethlisberger allegedly raped a young woman. (No charges have been filed, and Roethlisberger has said he is innocent of any allegations.) Basing its story on the official report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the paper says: After hearing the young woman's story, Blash quickly...

USA Today is reporting that the state of Arizona will need the federal government's help in order to enforce its newly passed and very controversial immigration law.  According to the paper, "Lyle Mann, executive director of the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, says federal assistance is 'critical' to what he describes as an unprecedented effort to prepare officers as soon as this summer to enforce the law, which gives local police authority to identify and arrest illegal...

How the Material Girl makes it easier to turn 40.

Is it possible that Michael Steele has been suffering from Stockholm syndrome and is now coming out of it? How else to explain what he told students at DePaul University earlier this week?"The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship.

Fellow Yalies: Yesterday's article in The New York Observer headlined THE YALIENS AMONG US has a number of vividly accurate descriptions of what  it means to be a Yalie.

Eight ways my son is torturing me.

Maybe Tiger's return is more than just a PR stunt.

Hardly. How the media got the story wrong.

Why the nation still needs your dollars—and your clicks.

Why we should stop worshiping athletes—unless they're on the field.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is in (alleged) trouble again.  For the second time in two years, he's being investigated for sexual assault, though at this point the facts are still unclear and no charges have been filed. (In 2009 a hotel employee sued the football star for sexual assault and battery, false imprisonment, and infliction of emotional distress over an alleged 2008 encounter.

Feminism is stronger than Glenn Beck's slurs.

What we can learn from the Harlem Children's Zone.

The name has a bad rap, but we still need employment equity.

Why everything you think about Valentine's Day is wrong.

Skip Gates talks about Black History Month--and what it means to be black today.

Why I'm not ready to ditch it—yet.

Last night, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews had this to say in response to President Obama's State of the Union speech: I was trying to think about who he was tonight.

Earlier this week, Raina Kelley blogged about her frustration with Lisa Taddeo's Esquire profile of Jay-Z. Yesterday, Esquire features editor Tyler Cabot responded: Dear Raina,   As Lisa Taddeo's editor at Esquire, I read your post on her recent Jay-Z profile with great interest.

But the media actually did a good job of covering the Reid race gaffe.

Perhaps writer Lisa Taddeo, thinks that if she shoves enough purple prose into her Jay-Z story in Esquire that we won't be able to deduce that she thinks Jay-Z is a pandering, Uncle Tom sellout who'll do anything for a buck.

I'm sorry, but if I have to use Senator Reid's private remarks describing Obama as "light-skinned" and praising his lack of a "Negro dialect" as a teachable moment for America, then this country is in an even greater state of denial (when it comes to race relations) than I even thought possible.

How to break the cycle of failed New Year's vows.

In the 24 hours since the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Washington's law barring felons from voting violated the Federal Voters Rights Act, the story has been widely broadcast as allowing felons to vote in prison.  But the issue of prisoners participating in our democracy buries the real news in the decision.  The court threw out Washington's law because its criminal-justice system is biased against minorities.  The problem isn't with disenfranchising prisoners,...

My season's greetings to the biggest news—and newsmakers—of the past year.

A couple of months ago I wrote a column about the deepening schism between Obama and his progressive supporters. I said:"This is why progressives of this stripe irritate me as much as those flag-waving tea-party activists with guns strapped to every available muscle group.