Hasta La Gadget!

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Former “Saturday Night Live” star Tracy Morgan has been released from a rehabilitation facility as he heals from serious injuries he suffered in a car crash that left a fellow comedian dead, his spokesman said Saturday.

Morgan will continue his recovery at home with an “aggressive outpatient program,” spokesman Lewis Kay said.

The former “30 Rock” star suffered a broken leg and broken ribs when the limousine van he was riding in was hit from behind June 7 by a Wal-Mart truck on the New Jersey Turnpike.

The wreck killed 62-year-old comedian James McNair, who went by the name Jimmy Mack. Comedian Ardley Fuqua and another passenger, Jeffrey Millea, were injured.

On Thursday, lawyers for Morgan filed a lawsuit against Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, claiming the retailer was negligent when a driver of one of its tractor-trailers rammed into Morgan’s limousine van.

The complaint claims the retail giant should have known that its driver had been awake for over 24 hours and that his commute of 700 miles from his home in Georgia to work in Delaware was “unreasonable.” It also alleges the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

“As a result of Wal-Mart’s gross, reckless, willful, wanton, and intentional conduct, it should be appropriately punished with the imposition of punitive damages,” according to the complaint.

Morgan’s lawsuit seeks a jury trial and punitive and compensatory damages.

In a statement issued Saturday, Wal-Mart reiterated that it was “cooperating fully” in the ongoing investigation.

“We know it will take some time to resolve all of the remaining issues as a result of the accident, but we’re committed to doing the right thing for all involved,” Wal-Mart said.

Truck driver Kevin Roper, 35, of Jonesboro, Georgia, has pleaded not guilty to death by auto and assault by auto charges. A criminal complaint also accuses him of not sleeping for more than 24 hours before the crash, a violation of New Jersey law.

A report by federal transportation safety investigators said Roper was driving 65 mph in the 60 seconds before he slammed into the limo van. The speed limit on that stretch of the turnpike is 55 mph and was lowered to 45 mph that night because of construction.

Roper had been on the job about 13 1/2 hours at the time of the crash, the report concluded. Federal rules permit truck drivers to work up to 14 hours a day, with a maximum of 11 hours behind the wheel.

Morgan, a New York City native, was returning from a standup performance at Dover Downs Hotel & Casino in Delaware when the crash occurred.

You maniacs! You made Dawn of the Planet of the Apes the most popular movie in America! Ah, damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!

Taylor Swift’s style might be best described by A-line skirts and oxford shirts, so when the superstar singer stepped out in an all-black ensemble it made for a surprising — and sultry — new look.

Swift stepped out Friday, July 11, in New York City wearing a black strapless top, black pants, stiletto heels and red lipstick. The 24-year-old looked glamorous as she walked beside her parents, Scott and Andrea.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Swift about the future of the music business. She announced that she is already working on a new album, which will follow 2012’s chart-topper, “Red.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military says it is ordering Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate the area “for their own safety.”

In a statement Saturday, the military said it would send messages to residents overnight to leave the area. Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the chief military spokesman, said Israel planned to hit the area with heavy force in the next 24 hours as it steps up an offensive against Gaza militants.

Officials say the area has been used to fire rockets at Tel Aviv.

I’m reading The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s, by Mary Helen Washington with special interest because of the work I did back in the early 1980s on a study of the artist, Charles White, who gets a significant chapter in the book. Mine was a two-year project, supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and it whirled me right out of my comfort zone into a world about which I had known absolutely nothing until that time. I had always thought of myself as a nice, left-leaning, transplanted Englishman, entirely without racial prejudice. I made two important discoveries in the course of that work: first, that the art world, as I knew it, was fraught with systemic prejudice against African American artists and the work they produced; and second, that I unknowingly–and shamefully–shared that prejudice.

My work, then, was not only to research my subject, but to develop a whole new mind-set about values, traditions and aesthetic conventions I had never previously questioned. And not only that, I very soon came to realize that I’d need a new approach to the work I had set myself. As a well-schooled academic, I had learned that the first place to go, when embarking on a research project, is the library. Not much use there, in Charles White’s case. The published material was surprisingly scant. I discovered that there were only two ways to get the information that I needed. One was to go to the ultimate source himself. I did this in a series of extended interviews with both Charlie and his wife. And the second was to go directly to every other living source I could find, which meant a great deal of travel, from New York to Seattle, Washington, from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi.

It was quite a journey. To be embarrassingly honest, it was often a difficult, even a scary one. Laugh at me if you will, but such was my prejudice and ignorance that the prospect of a trip north of Central Park into the depths of Harlem or down to the South Side of Chicago left this nice white guy fearful for life and limb! Until I ventured forth, that is, and encountered nothing but goodwill, generosity and warm welcome. I met with artists and scholars, writers and curators, and began to tap into a vital, genuinely American culture virtually unknown–except for its music and perhaps, by that time, a handful of writers–to the vast majority of American intelligentsia.

Mary Helen Washington’s book offers a similar enlightenment. She argues, cogently and persuasively, that the socialist thinking embraced in the 1930s not only by African American cultural leaders, but also by a significant number (most?) of their white counterparts, led to a kind of impasse in the 1950s. The famous Hollywood blacklist of that era was but the tip of an iceberg of communist phobia that gripped America at the time; it was paralleled, Washington argues, by that “other blacklist”–the black blacklist–that resulted in the suppression or mis-hearing of many African American voices, Charles White’s among them. In the rush to avoid tarring with the brush of Communism, some leading black writers and critics were overly eager to pronounce the demise of racism and the need for a new, post-racial, assimilated culture, devoid of the passionate socialist commitment that had vitalized much African American art and literature until that time. As a result, many of those who chose the route of commitment to avowedly black values, black themes and social protest were marginalized.

Washington’s task is to bring them back center stage. Her thesis fits right in with voices that I hear today, more than a half century later–voices that seek to remind America that social injustice and, yes, racism, continue to spread their toxins in our social and political infrastructures. We need look no further, in my opinion, than the irrational, fanatical obstructionism that greets every initiative by our first African American President to know that racism remains a powerful, if poorly fig-leafed force in our country’s life. Quite aside from her introduction to forgotten or sidelined cultural heroes, Washington’s book reminds us that we still have work to do if we are to achieve the American ideal that “all men are created equal.”

And finally, in the spirit of disclosure, I’m more than gratified to note that “The Other Blacklist” makes liberal citations from, and references to the work I did so many years ago on Charles White. The book I wrote was never released to the public. The manuscript came back from publishers with properly favorable comments, but regrets: they could see “no market” for a book on an African American artist at the time. Rightly or wrongly, I read their comments as a thinly veiled code. In retrospect, I can only say that it’s a huge satisfaction to see the results of my efforts put to the service of a worthy cause. For which, my thanks go out to the author of this well-thought, highly readable and timely book.