"Nelson Mandela Once Told Me, 'Coming to America Is So Important to Black People in Africa. It Is Like the Fairy Tale. It's Like Cinderella'"

"As the film's sequel, Coming 2 America, comes to Amazon Prime on Friday, the writers, singers, and actors behind the fake commercial—plus the NBA star who inspired it, musicians who cover it, celebrities who love it, and more—reveal the story behind a 35-second pop-culture masterpiece and its lasting impact on the world."

Jason Newman at Rolling Stone presents "The Definitive Oral History of 'Soul Glo.'"

"I Am Not Being Alarmist, I Am Simply Stating the Facts"

"Because of the actions taken by governments during and after that crisis, including, I should add, by aggressive steps by my administration, the global economy has now returned to healthy growth. But the credibility of the international system, the faith in experts in places like Washington or Brussels, all that had taken a blow.
"And a politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move. It's on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago."

The Guardian publishes a transcript of Barack Obama's speech in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Shoes Too Small to Fit His Feet

"It didn't exactly spring Mandela from jail single-handed, but it raised awareness of his plight like nothing else and helped to make apartheid one of the defining causes of the 1980s, something the man himself acknowledged after his release in 1990. And Dammers went further by founding the lobby group Artists Against Apartheid. In its broad outline it is an uplifting tale, but the full story is a turbulent affair, involving mental illness, creative paralysis, crippling debt, and a damaging musical row during which Dammers found himself on the opposing side to two black South African musicians who had been fighting apartheid decades before he paid that life-changing visit to Alexandra Palace: Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba."

Spin runs an excerpt from Dorian Lynskey's 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day about the Special A.K.A.'s "Free Nelson Mandela."

Twenty-[Seven] Years in Captivity

"Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace."

Bill Keller in The New York Times writes an obituary for Nelson Mandela.

Obama-Rama III

In light of today's New Hampshire primary, and after a weekend of overdosing on political websites, here is another roundup of Barack Obama-related articles:

In The Washington Post, E. J. Dionne, Jr. compares Obama to John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Demosthenes.

Jake Tapper on ABC News' Political Punch reports Bill Clinton comparing Hilary to Nelson Mandela.

Ben Smith at Politico prints Hillary Clinton's comparison of herself to Margaret Thatcher and to Lyndon Johnson.

Tina Daunt in the Los Angeles Times watches Hollywood fundraisers jump from Hillary Clinton to Obama.

Richard Wolffe in Newsweek visits Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau (not the actor/director).

Isabelle Duriez in Liberation gives a French take on this week's phenomenon.

And Reuters reports that Dixville Notch goes for Obama.