President Donald Trump has signed a bill to create a national historic park in Atlanta honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

The new law expands an existing historic site commemorating King to include the Prince Hall Masonic Temple. The temple served as the headquarters of an organization once headed by King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The site currently includes King’s childhood home and a church where he was a pastor, Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Trump signed the legislation aboard Air Force One on Monday after arriving in Georgia to attend the college football championship game. He is being joined by King’s niece Alveda King.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley says King made America “more just and free.”

Next Monday is the federal holiday honoring King.
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Pink is heading to the Super Bowl to sing the national anthem.

The NFL announced Monday that the pop star will perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the game on Feb. 4 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Justin Timberlake is set to headline the halftime show. The Super Bowl will air live on NBC.

Pink released her seventh studio album, “Beautiful Trauma,” in October. Its lead single, “What About Us,” is nominated for a Grammy this month.

The Grammy- and Emmy-winning singer’s hits include “So What,” “Get the Party Started” and “Just Give Me a Reason.”
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The BBC’s China editor has resigned her position in Beijing in protest over what she called a failure to sufficiently address a gap in compensation between men and women at the public broadcaster.

Carrie Gracie’s departure is the latest aftershock from the BBC’s forced publication last year of pay levels for its top earners that showed two-thirds of those in the top bracket were men.

A 30-year veteran of the BBC, Gracie said in a statement on her website addressed to BBC viewers that she could no longer perform her job at a high level while battling with bosses over pay equality.

Gracie said she learned that two of the BBC’s four international editors – both men – made at least 50 percent more than their two female counterparts. She said she was not seeking more money for herself, but only demanding that the BBC observe British law requiring equal pay for equal work.

Gracie said she would stay with the BBC and “return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.”

“The BBC must admit the problem, apologize and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure,” Gracie wrote.

Rather than waste money on an “unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases,” she wrote.

The BBC on Monday quoted a spokeswoman as reaffirming its commitment to equal pay and saying a separate report on pay for on-air staff would be issued in the “not too distant future.”

“A significant number of organizations have now published their gender pay figures showing that we are performing considerably better than many and are well below the national average.

“Alongside that, we have already conducted an independent judge-led audit of pay for rank and file staff which showed ‘no systemic discrimination against women,'” the statement said.

Gracie, who took on the newly created job of China editor four years ago, said women at the BBC were running out of “patience and good will” in the face of what she called a “divide and rule” approach and a continuing refusal by the corporation to admit to discriminatory policies. She said those who complained faced the threat of retaliation and even dismissal, while others were either bogged down in arbitration talks or offered new pay packages on condition the terms remained secret.

“Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women’s work was worth much less than men’s,” she wrote.

Gracie’s move received voluble praise online from her colleagues, with veteran BBC journalist Lyse Doucet tweeting, “Brilliant Brave.”

The list published last year showed that two-thirds of the BBC’s highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs.
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Oprah Winfrey’s moving speech at the Golden Globes has some fans and fellow celebrities calling for her presidential run.

The actress accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at Sunday’s ceremony, and it didn’t take long for Twitter to start lighting up with the hashtag #Oprah2020.

Comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted  “Oprah/Michelle 2020.” 

Leslie Odom, Jr., who played Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical “Hamilton” tweeted “She’s running. A new day is on the way.”

Winfrey brought the typically rowdy crowd to silence and tears with her speech.

She spoke of seeing Sidney Poitier win an Academy Award when she was a girl, and weaved it into the #MeToo movement.

She says “speaking your truth is the most powerful tool you all have.”

 
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What president?

A year after politics – and the newly elected occupant of the White House – dominated the conversation and tone of the Golden Globes, there was barely a mention of such things at Sunday’s ceremony. This year, it was all gender politics, and of course the (hash)MeToo movement that has engulfed Hollywood and spread into the culture at large with astonishing speed. From the sea of glittering black gowns worn in solidarity on the usually multi-colored red carpet, to sly references to unequal pay and recognition for women, to Frances McDormand’s salute to “a tectonic shift” in the Hollywood power structure, it was a night for reckoning – crowned by Oprah Winfrey’s barn-raiser of a speech proclaiming “Their time is UP!”

Some key moments:

Serious carpet talk:

Usually, red carpet interviews focus on the provenance of designer gowns and jewelry. This year, there was talk of working conditions for farmers and janitors, and demands for equal pay across society. Several actresses, including Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams and Emma Watson, brought social activists with them, to focus on real-life solutions to gritty problems far from Hollywood. “We feel emboldened in this particular moment,” Streep said, “to stand together in a thick black line dividing then from now.”

Laura Dern’s North star:

It was a night of unusually powerful speeches, whether long or short, that touched eloquently on the (hash)MeToo moment. One came from Laura Dern, who won supporting actress for “Big Little Lies,” a TV series that, aptly, depicts not only sexual abuse, but a group of women who only fully discover their power when they unite. Using her character to describe a past culture in which people were afraid to speak out, Dern urged Hollywood to support and employ survivors brave enough to come forward. And she went further: “May we teach our children,” she said, “that speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture’s new North Star.”

A sly nod to a glaring omission:

One of the most glaring snubs in this year’s movie nominations came in the best director category, where Greta Gerwig was passed over for her much-loved “Lady Bird.” Natalie Portman, presenting the director prize, was not about to let that go unnoticed. “And here are the all MALE nominees,” she quipped, to knowing laughter. (Guillermo del Toro won for “The Shape of Water.”) Barbra Streisand also took a jab at the Globes, noting that she’d been the only woman to have won best director – in 1984. “That was 34 years ago, folks. Time’s up!” she said.

A ‘tectonic’ shift:

A big winner was “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” in which Frances McDormand plays a mother taunting police to solve the rape and murder of her daughter. Winning for best actress, McDormand noted to the crowd that “I keep my politics private. But it was really great to be in this room and to be part of a tectonic shift in our industry power structure.” And she added: “Trust me: The women in this room tonight are not here for the food. We’re here for the work.”

Oprah rules the room:

But with all the eloquent speeches, none roused the room like Winfrey’s, who had the crowd giving her repeated ovations as she issued a warning – not once, but three times – to powerful men who abuse women: “Their time is up!” She ended her barn-storming speech, in which she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, with a call to young girls. “I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon!” she said. “And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women … and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too,’ again.” Director Ava DuVernay later wrote on Twitter that the room was “still vibrating like electricity from that speech.”

Sterling K. Brown makes history:

While most of the talk was about progress in the sphere of gender, actor Sterling K. Brown of TV’s “This Is Us” addressed progress of a different kind: he was the first black actor to win the Globe for best actor in a TV drama. He thanked the show’s creator, Dan Fogelman, for writing a role “for a black man that can only be played by a black man.” What he was grateful for, Brown said, is that “I’m being seen for who I am and being appreciated for who I am, and it makes it that much more difficult to dismiss me or dismiss anybody who looks like me.”

Calling out a network, on equal pay:

There’s been much talk about equal pay lately, but Debra Messing and Eva Longoria got very specific, calling out E! Entertainment Television on the issue while doing interviews with them on the red carpet.

Messing referenced the recent departure from E! of host Catt Sadler, who has said she was making about half the pay of her male counterpart, Jason Kennedy.

“I was so shocked to hear that E! doesn’t believe in paying their female co-hosts the same as their male co-hosts,” she said. “I miss Catt Sadler.”

Longoria also made the point, to Ryan Seacrest. “We support gender equity and equal pay and we hope that E! follows that lead with Catt as well,” she said.

Thelma and Louise return:

On an evening recognizing women in Hollywood, it was certainly apt to have Thelma and Louise, aka Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, present an award. Davis – who is a longtime advocate for gender equality in film – joked cynically that the two had already “fixed everything.” She also noted that the men in the category they were presenting had agreed to give half their salary back “so the women can make more than them.”

She was joking there, too.
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Talk-show host, actress, producer and humanitarian Oprah Winfrey earned multiple standing ovations at Sunday’s Golden Globes as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award with a moving speech referencing civil rights and Me Too.

Winfrey became the first black woman to be given the award, which was presented in Beverly Hills, California. She spoke about the feelings she had as a young girl watching Sidney Poitier win the best-actor Oscar in 1964 and likened the pride she felt watching Poitier, the first black man to win the best-actor Oscar, to the impact she hoped she could have on young women.

“His tie was white and of course his skin was black and I had never seen a black man being celebrated like that,” Winfrey said.

As her longtime partner Stedman Graham watched from the audience, she told the story of an Alabama woman named Recy Taylor, who died at the age of 97 on Dec. 28, 2017, and her fight for justice after her rape by six white men in 1944.

She expressed gratitude for Taylor and all the women who were silenced when they spoke out about powerful men, the women who worked in factories, farms, as domestic workers and in academia, whose names will never be known.

“For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men,” Winfrey said.

“But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up,” she said to a standing ovation.

Winfrey said while there was no justice for Taylor, whose attackers were never prosecuted, her truth lived on in the work of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, an ACLU investigator on Taylor’s case.

“It was somewhere in Rosa Parks’ heart almost 11 years later when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery,” Winfrey said. “And it’s here with every woman who chooses to say, ‘Me too’ and every man, every man who chooses to listen.”

Winfrey, who got her start in television journalism, also thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the Golden Globes.

“We all know that the press is under siege these days, but we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice, to tyrants and victims and secrets and lies,” Winfrey said.

She ended on a hopeful note saying “a new day was on the horizon” because of people, some of whom were in the Golden Globes audience, who will “take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again.”

On Twitter the celebrity reaction was swift and in full support:

“Oprah cometh,” tweeted actress Amber Tamblyn, while musician Pharrell Williams called her the greatest of all time.

“Let me tell you this room is still vibrating like electricity from that speech,” Ava DuVernay tweeted.
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