Author Archive | Sonny Liston

Rich Benjamin: Between 2007 and 2009, I packed my bags and embarked on a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America — some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation.

A prediction that made headlines across the United States ten years ago is fast becoming a reality: By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. A related, less reported trend is that as people of color, especially immigrant populations, increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are living in small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white.

Call these places White Meccas. Or White Wonderlands. Or Caucasian Arcadias. Or Blanched Bunker Communities. Or White Archipelagos.

I call them Whitopia.

GO TO FULL STORY… Read the rest

TIME: The dog days of summer have hit Italy hard this year. During my family’s beach holiday on the enchanting island of Sardinia, the surprise star was Totò, a pint-size, black-and-white, eight-month-old mixed-breed from Naples whom our friends brought along to a house we shared near the southern town of Pula.

Totò — named for the famed Neapolitan comedian, not Dorothy’s pooch — has exactly one trick in his repertoire: misbehaving. He swiped everything from pasta al pesto to a half-pound of butter off the kitchen table, ran around the yard with a neighbor’s flip-flop between his teeth, and even left a summer-holiday gift on another neighbor’s driveway. My attempts to get him to retrieve a Frisbee failed as soon as he realized it wasn’t a pork chop.

And Totò’s disobedience seemed downright spiteful when compared to that of some of the other dogs that can be found on Italy’s shorelines this summer.… Read the rest

AP: The remains of a former model whose killing set off an international manhunt for a reality television star were so badly mutilated that investigators had to use the serial numbers on her breast implants to identify her.

The man charged with Jasmine Fiore’s murder, reality TV show contestant Ryan Alexander Jenkins, has been on the run since reporting her missing the evening of Aug. 15. Her nude body had been found that morning, stuffed in a bloodstained suitcase in a trash bin in Buena Park, an Orange County city about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles, but authorities wouldn’t be able to identify her for a few more days.

Detectives tracked the serial number on the implants because they could not use fingerprints or dental records, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Authorities believe Jenkins, a contestant on VH1′s “Megan Wants a Millionaire,” may have fled more than 1,000 miles to reach his native Canada.… Read the rest

David Begnaud, CBS: A local teacher accidentally put pornography into a DVD that was meant to be filled with school memories from the past year, and nobody caught the error until after it was sent home, shocking parents and students alike.

Parents of students who attend Isabelle Jackson Elementary said that the woman is a good teacher, but just made a mistake that may become the most embarrassing moment of their life.

The offending DVD starts with a menu screen that displays various school trips and functions, and when you click on one of them, you see kids in a classroom sharing stories. They start clapping, then the video suddenly cuts to sex.

“It goes from my son, straight to her on the couch,” said ‘Joe,’ who saw the video along with his son and did not wish to be identified. “My son’s reaction was, ‘Dad, is that Ms. Defanti?’”

“We were up till midnight doing the ‘birds and the bees,’” he added.… Read the rest