Oh no! They'll change the complexion!
PROBLEM: Nearly 60 percent of African-American children cannot swim, almost twice the figure for white children, according to a first-of-its-kind survey which USA Swimming hopes will strengthen its efforts to lower minority drowning rates and draw more blacks into the sport.
Stark statistics underlie the initiative by the national governing body for swimming. Black children drown at a rate almost three times the overall rate. And less than 2 percent of USA Swimming’s nearly 252,000 members who swim competitively year-round are black.
The solution seems obvious. Teach Black kids how to swim.
BIGGER PROBLEM: More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.
“I heard this lady, she was like, ‘Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?’ She’s like, ‘I’m scared they might do something to my child,’” said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers’ first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
“I said, ‘The parents don’t want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,’” camp director Aetha Wright said.
Campers remain unsure why they’re no longer welcome.
“They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything,” said camper Simer Burwell.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” said John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement. link
Keeping the coloreds out of the water for over 50 years.
65 Black kids might “change the complexion” of the club?
Oops. Looks like somebody didn’t get the memo. Black people do so swim too! Maybe the folks at The Valley Club would just as well let them drown.
You can’t make this stuff up. But you should have to.
Philly.com followed up on how some of the kids were taking the rudely racist rejection.
Alce got worked up when he talked about what happened at the swim club.
“We have that paper – what’s it called? That paper called the Declaration of Independence. That says they can’t do that to us,” said Alce.
Gerard Bird, 14, nodded emphatically.
“Who gave them the right to judge us by our race?” he said. “It’s ignorance.”
Shuron Davis, 11, said she heard the comments, too.
“They said, ‘There’s too many black people at the pool.’ They were afraid we would hurt their children,” Shuron said.
The children were welcomed by a Jewish community center to swim in their pools. A mixed-race group of protestors have picked The Valley Club facility with some carrying signs reading, “Jim Crow swims here.”
Where’s the brotherly love in the City of Brotherly Love?
Well, at least the kids learned a valuable lesson about life here in post-racial America. THERE’S NO SUCH PLACE!
The Voice was known for it's interesting (and controversial) covers...
The flies were lazily buzzing around as I poked through a box my son had chucked in the garbage can. I batted them away as I thumbed through a 1996 edition of the Village Voice. When all the old issues I had saved were banished from the basement to the garage, it was part of the process of putting them out of sight if not completely out of mind.
One thing about growing older is you watch things that meant something to you at a point in your life grow old too. I haven’t read the Voice since the last time I was in NYC (ten years ago) and the paper itself isn’t available west of Manhattan anymore. The few remaining newsstands no longer carry it and libraries can’t get it. Then again, why would a library in Ohio even want to carry a left-wing, artsy-fartsy New York rag?
The Voice was how I stayed in touch with New York City when I wasn’t able to be there. More than that though it was the one publication that featured more talented writers, especially Black writers, than any other magazine or paper.
More than just giving me an ear to the ground in NYC, the Voice gave me direction for my own previously unfocused writing.
...and here's another.
In The Voice I found my own voice and it gave me the confidence to try my hand first at writing for alternative newspapers where there wasn’t the spirit-dulling adherence to the inverted pyramid of Journalism 101 reporting (who, what, when, how and sometimes why) and far more freedom to dig deeper, writer more expansively and go off on the occasional mad tangent. Had there been no Village Voice to give my creative energies a much needed goose, I never would have had considered writing for alternative newsweeklies.
Even more importantly for me The Voice was a bastion of Black talent. Names such as Nelson George, Stanley Crouch, Harry Allen, Joan Morgan, Peter Noel, N’Gal Croel, Lisa Jones, Joe Ward, Greg Tate and Lisa Kennedy mean little to the non-journalists out there, but for an aspring writer they were invaluable inspriational role models just as much as Michael Jordan is to a kid dribbling a ball between his legs on the court. Once I established some bona fides as a journalists there was nothing I wanted more than to get an article published in the Voice.
I met Joe Wood in 1995 at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Philadelphia. I was a hardcore fan of the Voice and it’s impressive array of talented Black writers including Joe who wrote the “Local Color” column. He kindly listened to me when I cornered him trying badly to be cool, but babbling on about how much I dug his writing. He gave me his card and invited me to pitch him a story. I did and Joe ran it up to the higher ups before it got shot down. But he encourged me to try again and I never forgot it.
Joe would move on to other pursuits. I still remember an excellent story he wrote for Esquire about director John Singleton. I had planned to attend the 1999 UNITY convention, but couldn’t swing the cash to fly to Seattle. Wood went missing following a hike in Mount Rainier National Park. Despite an exhaustive search his body was never found.
I was stunned to hear about Joe’s disappearance. I wrote a letter to the Voice about his death. I felt like I had lost a brother. To this day I know both his writing and small act of kindness helped shape me as a writer.
July 9 marked ten years gone since Joe vanished in thin air.
The late, great Joe Wood. Gone too soon.
I left the Voice behind after it wnt through one too many editorial changes and purges of talent. Writers like the late Jack Newfield wrote briliant investigative pieces and was one of the best to expose the seedy side of boxing. Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway collaborated on scatching pieces about Washington, political hypocriscy and the new face of White supremacy. Michael Musto’s gossip was hilarious. Andrew Sarris and David Edelstein’s film reviews entertained and enlightened me. C. Carr and Ellen Wills expanded my consciousness to both performance art and women’s issues. Robert Christgau’s record reviews turned me on to bands I would have never known about and Gary Giddins brought jazz criticism to different realms.
I didn’t always read everything in the Voice, but what I did read put me in a different head space than any other publication I’ve ever read before, after or since.
In a very late bit of spring cleaning, I didn’t feel the need to hold on to 13 year old issues of a paper I no longer think about. Now I hope I can dig those issues back out of the trash. I very much want to read some Joe Wood one more time.
Somewhere Bill O' Reilly is banging his fat head against a wall.
Senator Al Franken.
If I’m trying to wrap my brain around the concept of Al Franken as a U.S. Senator imagine how those douchebags at Faux News like Bill O’ Reilly are taking it.
Not well. Not well at all.
O’Reilly whined it was “a sad day for America: Al Franken is now a U.S. Senator. He is a blatantly dishonest individual, a far-left zealot who is not qualified to hold any office.” Bill-O then plugged one of his crappy books, Culture Warrior, and referred viewers to page 96 to read more of his Franken bashing.
But O’Reilly had plenty of company at Rupert Murdoch’s toy shop drinking the haterade.
Glenn Beck: “It shows how crazy our country has gone. You don’t want me as a Senator. You don’t want Al Franken as a Senator.”
Sean Hannity: “Al Franken…he’s not all there, folks.”
Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends: “But straight ahead, let’s talk about who’s safe now that Al Franken’s going to be in the Senate. He’s a senator from Minnesota — yes, I said it out loud, and it hurts, but I said it.”
I got three words for the fine folks at the “fair and balanced” network: SUCK ON IT!
They can all spend the next six years living in denial and whining about Senator Franken, but they can’t change it. Unlike a Rush Limbaugh or O’Reilly, Franken has taken on the challenge of not just sitting behind a microphone or camera and pontificating about the problems of the nation; he’s actually going to try and do something about it.
I look forward to Franken being a lion of liberalism in the Senate and keeping both the Obama Administration and Republicans honest. God knows there are enough timid Democrats already in the Senate. Hopefully, Franken will follow in the footsteps of another great Minnesota liberal, the late Paul Wellstone who also looked kind of nerdy, but stood up for and wouldn’t back away from his liberal principles.
Franken has said he loved Senator Wellstone. The best way for Franken to honor Wellstone would be to follow his observation, “I dare to imagine a country where every child I hold in my hands, are all God’s children, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of whether they’re boy or girl, regardless of religion, regardless of rich or poor, that every child I hold in my hands, will have the same chance to reach her full potential or his full potential. That is the goodness of our country. That is the essence of the American dream.”
Go get ‘em, Al. Kick ass.
"Thanks for the 60th vote, Al." "No problem, Harry."
Water is taken for granted. Right up to the time when you don't have any.
Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.
~ Aldous Huxley
I know I read Brave New World but I don’t remember any of it. It doesn’t seem to me we’re living in a brave new world at all. There’s so many evils still plaguing this scared old world we’re scuffling through day-by-day.
If writing about crime, war, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance and repression could end them, better writers than I would have rid of us these scourges a long, long time ago.
Just as I don’t have any solutions or suggestions as to what to do about the situation the picture at the top illustrates.
I can’t make it rain in Ethiopia. I can try to educate myself better on what can be done to alleviate the world’s thirst for water and what I can do not to waste this resource more valuable than gold, diamonds or even oil.
The above photo is from Foreign Policy’s impressive and depressing photo essay, “Portraits of Instability.” There’s a lot of bad places in the world where bad things are happening to good people. The power in these photographs is a strong reminder of how lucky we have it here in America.
Which isn’t to say we don’t have our own homegrown kinds of hell.
America is a violent country and no city had more murders last year than Detroit. 339 citizens of the Motor City were killed making Detroit bloodier than Iraq where 314 American soldiers died in 2008.
Two gunmen attack students at a Detroit bus stop.
In the above photograph taken from a video surveillance camera, two gunmen with their shirts pulled over their heads sprayed bullets upon a group of summer school gathered at a bus stop. Seven teenagers were wounded with three in critical condition. All are expected to recover.
Police released their only suspect due to lack of evidence. As it typically goes these days, the shootings are being called “gang related.” A neat catch-all phrase and just as familiar a cop-out as the equally lazy, “drug related.”Wayne County prosecutor Kim Worthy said, “I hope … that when there is a lull in the gunfire that we don’t forget we still have a huge problem. It is, as I said long ago, going to take a long time to change the culture of violence.”
There’s another cliched phrase that needs to be tossed out like yesterday’s garbage. Culture of violence? There’s nothing cultured about violence.
By now I’ve written several thousand words about Black-on-Black crime. Not one of those words has ever stopped someone from picking up a gun and settling a petty beef by spilling blood Something may one day bring about a change, but it’s not going to be by any angry or hand-wringing words I write. Words are powerful but they don’t stop bullets and they don’t change the hearts and mind of those too angry to read them.
Then there’s the story of Jada Justice.
Jada Justice
Every so often—too damned often—you come across these astonishing cases of both barbaric brutality, incredible degrees of cruelty and sadism and appalling stupidity all crashing together in a chaotic mess that leaves somebody dead.
And that’s what happened to Jada Justice.
On June 13, the two-year-old was left by her mother in the “care” of her cousin, Engilica Castillo and her boyfriend, Tim Tkachik. Castillo spanked and beat Jada repeatedly over a potty-training accident. Tkachik said he tried to get Castillo to stop but gave up and watched television instead. Later that night while on their way to buy heroin, they realized Jada was dead.
The coupe returned home and put the child’s body in a garbage bag. They drove out to a swamp near LaPourte County, Indiana and tried to set the garbage bag on fire. This caused a explosion that burned Tkachik’s face requiring treatment at a hospital. He would claim it occurred from a propane tank explosion. Driving back to their home, Tkachik put the body in a tub and poured concrete over it. They drove to another swamp and dumped the concrete slab.
Castillo and Tkachik returned home, took some heroin and reported the next day that Jada had been abducted from their car. Following a ten day search for the toddler, police arrested the two addicts.
After their arrest Tkachik led the FBI to the area where Jada had been entombed and dumped. An autopsy revealed she had suffered numerous skull fractures.
Castillo and Tkachik face between 45 and 60 years in jail for the murder.
Jada receives a proper funeral.
Jada was laid to rest on July 3. One mourner at her funeral said the lesson leaned was, “You can’t really trust your kids with anybody.”
Her killers have shown nothing remotely resembling remorse. Tkachik was tasered in court on June 29 when he climbed on top of a table and refused to get down despite warnings he would be shocked if he did not.
During an interview with police before her arrest, Castillo became agitated when an officer showed a picture of Jada. Castillo tried to hit the officer saying, “God is taking care of her. God is watching over her.”
Got that much right.
It’s a hell of a thing in a country that prides itself on its quality of life, its system of justice and its love for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there is so little outrage and outcry when children are beaten toa grisly death by two-legged pieces of fecal material like Castillo and Tkachik.
Maybe when every child is born they should be supplied with diapers, formula and a Facebook page and Twitter account. That way when one of them suffers a miserable end like Jada Justice, somebody other than her family will notice her death.
Where is the justice for the Jadas of the world?
Aldous Huxley was a gloomy bastard, but not totally without hope. As I opened with a fatalistic quote from the author of Brave New World, I’ll close with a somewhat more upbeat one.
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
~ Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
I wonder would Mr. Douglass be proud of America today?
I wonder would he believe a Black man named Barack Obama sits in the White House this July 4 as the Most Powerful Man in the World?
Douglass challenged the nation to live up to its promise and fulfill its destiny to be the bastion of liberty and justice that it so proudly proclaimed. He would not turn a blind eye to America’s hypocrisy toward the slave. One wonders what was the reaction of the White Americans to this angry Black man who with such eloquence tore away the veil of racism and exclusion that shrouded the vision of so many of his countrymen.
Here in the United States we are cursed by our short attention spans and remarkable ability to delude ourselves that everybody in the world wants to be just like us. By “us” I mean like White America. Certainly not Black America. To be Black in America is to be a problem to be solved.
Maybe now Douglass might let America off the hook?
I don’t know how far over the hump President Obama gets us. A damn sight further than we’ve ever been before, but not quite there yet. Some of our “friends” on the Right and on the Left of the political sides of the aisle have prematurely proclaimed with Obama’s victory comes a “post-racial” America.
Even Obama knows better than to believe that. When he was forced to speak out about race following the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama himself made it clear that his personal odyssey did not mean all African-Americans were soon to arrive at The Promised Land.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
This Fourth of July feels just a little bit different than any of the others I’ve experienced in my 53 years of life. I have no illusions that President Obama can cure all or most of the nation’s ills in four or eight years. All he can do is the same thing any of us can do; try to leave things a little bit better than the way we found them.
The day will come when a Latino woman on the Supreme Court is no big thing. Further on down the road children will read history books detailing the furor gay marriage stirred up and shake their heads on how things were “back then.” Sooner, not later, a woman will raise her right hand and take the Oath of Office of the President of the United States.
It’s not a bad thing to be an American. Nowhere else has a country gone from the ignorance and evil of slavery to the possibility of redemption by overcoming its notorious past and elevating the son of a White woman from Kansas and a Black man from Kenya to its highest elected office.
Blacks have always loved America. They were among the first ones to lay down their lives for its independence. But that love has been one-sided and not returned from the country. The Fourth of July wasn’t a day to be fully celebrated because there were still too many wrongs not made right, too many dreams deferred, too many promises made that were not kept.
This is a different Fourth of July than any others preceding it. I’m a lot prouder of my country than I ever have been in the past. It’s a sentiment I would wager is shared by many other Black Americans today. A feeling of belonging. A sense of finally being fully vested in the American Dream.
This is not because of Barack Obama. He is merely part of a result brought about by the labors of a Frederick Douglass and millions of Black, White, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, agnostics and atheists, Northerners and Southerns, gay and straight, men, women and children who gave their body, mind and soul to the forging of a more perfect union.
We’re not there yet. But we’re closer today than we were when Douglass made his anguished lament in 1852.
We can only go forward. There is no going back.
It's okay to wave a flag this July 4.
The Artist and The Producer: Genius Loves Company
These are my last words on Michael Jackson. Honest.
At least for a week or two.
Some people have told me in no uncertain terms I’ve been hating on Jackson. Someone even told me I need to apologize for all the mean things I’ve written about Jackson over the years.
Please. I don’t owe anyone any apologies. Truth hurts and there were a lot of unpleasant truths about the way Michael Jackson lived his life. To the sensitive individuals who have taken offense about what I’ve said or written about Jackson allow me to explain something for you . It’s unfortunate if pointing out Mr. Jackson was a imperfect human being hurts your feelings, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Everybody I’ve ever admired from Martin Luther King to Richard Pryor to Muhammad Ali had their shortcomings. Everybody comes up short somewhere. My heroes were fallible. So are yours. That doesn’t make them any less of a genius or an artist. It just makes them human and humans fail.
Sometimes spectacularly. Like Michael Jackson.
My suggestion is if you’re looking for nothing but sugar-coating sweet nothings whispered about Michael Jackson, look elsewhere because you’re not going to find it here.
The truth is spoken here and the truth about Michael Jackson is he spent a good part of his life trying to erase his Blackness. The man was so uncomfortable in his skin he tried his best to crawl out of it.
That’s not what I think. That’s what someone who knew Jackson and could only stand by and watch as a handsome young Black man gave way to a racially neutrual cartoon. Jackson warned he wasn’t going to live his life being a color and he wasn’t kidding around.
Q: You were there to witness the strange evolution in Michael’s appearance. Did you ever step in and saying anything about it?
A: Oh, we talked about it all the time. But he’d come up with, “Man, I promise you I have this disease,” and so forth, and “I have a blister on my lungs,” and all that kind of b.s. It’s hard, because Michael’s a Virgo, man—he’s very set in his ways. You can’t talk him out of it. Chemical peels and all that stuff.
Q: Did you believe him about the disease?
A: I don’t believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I’ve been around junkies and stuff all my life. I’ve heard every excuse. It’s like smokers—”I only smoke when I drink” and all that stuff. But it’s bullshit. You’re justifying something that’s destructive to your existence. It’s crazy. I mean, I came up with Ray Charles, man. You know, nobody gonna pull no wool over my eyes. He did heroin 20 years! Come on. And black coffee and gin for 40 years. But when he called me to come over to see him when he was in the hospital on his way out, man, he had emphysema, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, and five malignant tumors. Please, man! I’ve been around this all my life. So it’s hard for somebody to pull the wool over my eyes. But when somebody’s hell-bent on it, you can’t stop ‘em.
Q: But it must’ve been so disturbing to see Michael’s face turn into what it turned into.
A: It’s ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don’t understand it. But he obviously didn’t want to be black.
Q: Is that what it was?
A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?
Q: Did you ever discuss it? Did you ever ask, “Michael, don’t you want to be a black man?”
A: No, no, no, please. That’s not the way you do it.
Q: But he was beautiful before?
A: Man, he was the most gorgeous guy.
Q: But he seemed to have some deep-seated issue with how he looked?
A: Well, that comes about a certain way. I’m not sure how it happens. I’m just a musician and a record producer. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t understand all that stuff. We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.
Another friend gone too soon for "Q".
Sex sells. Just not enough for VIBE magazine.
Yesterday, VIBE magazine called it quits. I had quit VIBE years earler.
Magazines on the whole are an endangered species. Just as much as newspapers if not even. Lack of advertising revenue, the Internet, short attention spans and the fact people hate to read anything longer than….oh…anything much longer than blog length all conspired to make magazines redundant, irrelevant or both.
As someone who grew up as a teenager reading rock magazines such as Crawdaddy, Fusion, CREEM and Rolling Stone before they all either disappeared or became unreadable, I not only read VIBE, I subscribed to make certain I’d never miss an issue.
But like so many other relationships I had outgrown VIBE. My first interest in a music magazine is the music and as rap and hip-hop became less prominent on my playlist, I found myself uninterested in feature stories about the likes Lil’ Wayne and Keyshia Cole.
Like Rolling Stone, VIBE started out when Quincy Jones owned it as a magazine that covered fashion, news and other subjects, but never lost sight that is was a music magazine first and foremost. But when mags like VIBE become better known for how close-to-naked they can get a pop star to pose and stunts like that become the only reason to read the rag, it just becomes easier to switch over to Black Tail or Players and cut out the “almost” naked crap.
Toni gets naked and VIBE starts playing the old skin game.
Don’t get me wrong. I like a nice piece of eye candy too. But there’s plenty of skin available online for free. Why am I going to pull out five bucks every month to see a suggestive pose from Beyonce or Janet Jackson when the real deal is a URL or two away?
The problem for magazines like VIBE is once they go the route of showing a little bit o’ skin is there’s nowhere to go except showing more and more while never being able to go as far as adult magazines. They know a sexy girl sells but how long can they can put a discreetly naked Toni Braxton with her arms and a towel discreetly covering up her naughty bits and still be sold over the counter at the Wal-Mart magazine rack?
With the emergence of the so-called “lad mags” such as Maxim, FHM and KING with even more nearly-nude girls, the target audience for VIBE had other alternatives. The Source was always more hardcore about rap music and KING had more pics of a bootylicious babe than VIBE could begin to match.
Soft porn works as a marketing tool right up to the point until your audience can get their hands on the hard stuff. After that they’re gone and they aren’t coming back to be teased any more.
Unlike rock and jazz, 16 years is a long time to feel the same love for a rap and hip-hop act at 36 that you dug when you were 20.
VIBE stopped being about music long before its readership “greyed out” and moved on to other publications that reflected their changed tastes. So sad in a way, but totally predictable.
Blender had the intention of being a bratty younger brother to the cranky, pot-bellied old fart that Rolling Stone had become. For a time, Blender was cooler and hipper in a way Rolling Stone couldn’t be even if wanted to try. But by the time it was croaked in March 2009, I had canceled my subscription and put the magazine out of my mind. It took me another three months before I found out it was dead and gone.
Part of the same publisher that cranked out Maxim and FHM, Blender was the rock n’ roll bad seed of its more popular cousins, but like Maxim pretty girls who had forgotten to put on much clothing before posing for the cover were a staple of the magazine. At least until the end Blender seemed to actually like the music they covered.
Do half-naked women really sell magazines? You're looking, aren't you?
Blender had no pretension of producing “journalism.” Exposes and in-depth interviews were not part of the DNA of a magazine that featured such material as “D’oh! The 20 Stoopidest Music Blunders” and “Heidi Montag: The Hills’ Superhot Supervillian.”
There were the occasional trend-breaking articles such as a in-depth feature about the shooting of hard rock guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott by a crazed fan at a Columbus night club and some revealing interviews where the artists answered questions posed by the fans.
From a purely music perspective, Blender’s CD reviews were top-rate and even forced Rolling Stone to redesign their own reviews to a similar format. I particularly enjoyed the critique of all the original recordings by such bands as The Rolling Stones, Beatles and the dearly departed Michael Jackson.
But like a good party that goes on just a little too long, Blender made changes in its editorial staff and the sagging ad revenues, reduction in pages and content and too many issues that could be skimmed through in less than 10 minutes without remembering a thing about it all led me to call up and cancel my subscription with another six months to go.
Rolling Stone chugs along while all its would-be competitors have fallen off the few remaining magazine racks. I still listen to rock n’ roll and hip-hop every now and then but as my tastes have evolved so have my choice of magazines. I’d rather read about sports, politics or jazz than this month’s hot rap act or semi-nude pop star some magazine writer believes I’m dying to know about.
It’s not so much a matter of growing old or even growing up. It’s more like I’ve outgrown what magazines like VIBE and Blender had to offer.
BET (Butts Every Time) has been in the Hall of Shame of Suck for so long now that it’s not even worth bangin’ on them anymore.
But they’re such a big, fat target I can’t pass up a chance to do it one mo’ time.
Fortunately I was at work the other night when the BET Awards show was on so I missed out on how horrible it was. Strictly amateur night, but what would anyone expect from a network with a budget of $100 and a coupon for a bucket of extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken?
I’m all for supporting Black businesses, but I’m not supporting anyone or anybody that serves up garbage, the worst of stereotypes and just general buffoons and coons as entertainment. When BET was just a shuck and jive piece of crap owned by Bob “Bobcat” Johnson, I could just hate on it for him being too cheap to invest in decent programming. But BET is part of the Viacom empire and if anything it sucks even harder than it did when it was Black-owned.
When Bob Johnson launched his feces factory of a network his formula was to program a lot of videos because they were cheap and canceled television shows like Benson because they were almost as cheap. BET soon became the place to go to see ugly, mush-mouthed rappers wearing chains big enough to tow trucks pouring “champagne” in slow motion over some video ho’s ass. Every now and then they might mix in a news show or some public affairs program like the critically acclaimed “Teen Summit,” but Johnson’s heart and soul was always in the gyrating butts and bump n’ grind of bad rap videos.
Activist, writer and unsuccessful Congressional candidate Kevin Powell told the New York Times in 2006, “I’m on the college circuit a hundred times a year, and people always ask me what is wrong with BET. We have to stop participating in the one-dimensional portrayals of ourselves. And BET as the premier television network for black people has to take the lead on that.”
There were some vague hopes when Johnson took his billion dollars from Viacom and shuffled off to show he knew as little about putting together a good NBA franchise (Charlotte BOBcats) as he did programming a television network, his right-hand woman, Debra Lee might be an improvement.
Meet the new jigaboo. Same as the old jigaboo.
That was three years ago. Ain’t a damn thing changed. Except that BET became even more unwatchable.
The line-up for Tuesday, June 30, 2009 features such fine television as the following:
- Two hours of Smart Guy, a sitcom starring Tahj Mowry that ran two seasons and was cancelled ten years ago.
- Two hours of The Game, a sitcom starring Tia Mowry Hardict, Taj’s sister. The show was canceled by the CW network and BET picked it up.
- An hour of Judge Hatchett, a reality “law” show. One episode is entitled, “Your Orgy Party Made a Mess of My Home.”
- The BlackBuster Movie: Beauty Shop. Miss it at 8:00 pm and you can catch it again at 11:30 pm.
- 106th and Park. A video clip show. I say “clips” because even though the show is 90 minuts long you don’t expect them to show complete videos do you? The show also features the singer Ashanti to talk about her Broadway show, “The Wiz.” Immediately followed by…
- Access Granted: “Tune in for a BET all-access behind the scenes look at Ashanti and her role as Dorothy in the Broadway musical, “The Wiz.”
The rest of the day’s programming consists of lousy reality shows, another Black-themed flick, and two hours of religious programs from 4:00 to 6:00 in the morning.
That’s all you get from BET. No news. No sports. No public affairs. No health, business, politics or lifestyle programs. Just 24 hours of the same old numb, dumb bullshit EVERY DAMN DAY. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Just how raggedy do you have to be in 2009 when there’s a Black president not to offer one minute of news or politics?
I got a reality show for Debra Lee’s tired ass. Hey D.L. check this out:
Barack knows bling.
What do you think my chances of getting “Big Pimpin’ with Barack” on BET?
All props to Professor Melisssa Harris Lacewell for posting “The Boondocks” video on Facebook and settting it off.
