We have whittled away our core values to the point that we cannot even see how desperate our situation has become. Even still, some of us tend to lash out at the few people who will actually tell the truth. Bill Cosby went from being a really funny guy to the guy who called us out. People would walk out of auditoriums when the truth came out of Bill Cosby’s mouth. They called him names and said he was too hard on "us." Said he was "hatin!" Really?
Personally, I don’t think he went far enough. I mean, are our faults supposed to be kept confidential? Must we be quiet about all of our dirty little secrets so that others don’t find out how fucked up we are? Too late, they already know.
This brings me to the 2009 BET (Black Entertainment Television) Awards show debauchery. Oh, but first there are some words that we need to memorize, hold close and retain for the future.
· Class
· Dignity
· Pride
· Self-Respect
· Protocol
The BET Awards failed to exhibit any of these, which is all the more important reason that I must feed these words into the mouths of the hungry and unsustained.
The biggest star/icon/personality/entertainer the world has ever seen and probably ever will see, died on Thursday, June 25, 2009. His name: Michael Jackson. No need for me to delve into his achievements, I can do that in another piece. Let’s just say for now that the world has never seen any person larger in status than Michael Jackson. Which is why, BET felt that they should pay tribute to the fallen performer by revamping their award show to capture this sad and historic moment in time.
BET said that they tried really hard to produce a quality show. Granted, they only had three days to completely overhaul the show from whatever it was initially supposed to be to whatever that was it ended up being. Maybe they really did try, I’m not sure. But, when you have Soulja Boy (Tell them ni66as something or whatever his name is) on the same stage as people trying to pay tribute to the King of Pop, all of your efforts should be immediately given the side eye. Yes, Soulja Boy! The purveyor of songs such as “Kiss Me Through The Phone” and “Booty Meat.” He shouldn't have been been allowed in the parking lot - at least not until he learned English.
Then you have Beyonce - wearing a wedding dress slash wedding night hotel housecoat. How was that a tribute to Mike? In that outfit, I might have understood had she snatched off all that brick-a-brack and performed a cover of “Shake Your Body Down.” Her singing was good, but I just didn’t get how that related to Michael Jackson.
The night was supposed to be filled with tributes to Michael, but the sad fact is, many performers sounded like they were singing underwater. Was Gloria Allred the soundman? So what you ended up with was a tragic event in history being chronicled by tragedy. BET President, Debra Lee claimed to CNN before the show began that so many celebrities had contacted BET regarding participating in the Michael Jackson tribute. Clearly BET didn’t pick up the phone when they called.
Was Jill Scott busy? Ya’ll couldn’t find my girl India.Arie? I had her number if you needed it. Brian McKnight was out of town? Boyz II Men couldn’t sing “Its So Hard To Say Goodbye?” Yes, I love New Edition, but Bobby Brown beat up Whitney Houston and you let him huff and puff on the stage, yet you let Jay-Z punk you into rescinding your invitation to Chris Brown. Michael Jackson tribute you say? You mean Wyclef didn’t have a banjo or a ukulele in the trunk of his car? T-Pain had a Michael Jackson t-shirt on – under his “BIG A$$ CHAIN.” I’m thinking we should all pitch in and buy him a big IGNORANT A$$ BELT.
So now is the time to start building with those words I listed earlier. Its time to start looking at the got-damn Man In The Mirror. Clearly, the BET Awards had no CLASS “a’tall.” Was the fact that the rapper Drake had half naked pre-pubescent little girls dancing around him like sex slaves supposed to be part of Mike’s tribute? Have we lost our entire parcel of God given SELF-RESPECT?
CNN found themselves on the red carpet reporting live before the show began. I know right? If you had asked somebody a month ago what it would take for CNN to actually broadcast from the BET Awards, that person would have laughed, bent their wrist forward and said, “Chile, Michael Jackson would have to die for that to happen.” DAMN! But, it’s true and I’m sad. Initially I was excited to see CNN there, but only until they started to venture into the crowd to interview people. I yelled out at my TV, “Nooooooooooo,” but they found Kackalisha anyway. She had 10-inch fingernails. Her weave was crooked. Even worse, she was 22-years-old and had not mastered the English language. She spoke like she had a mouth full of Thunderbird and two bushels of chewin’ tobacco. Yeah, kind of similar to Tiny when she accepted the best rap something or other award for T.I. Now don’t you worry about Tiny though because BET has bestowed her with her very own show. Have some of us just no remaining DIGNITY? Don’t bother to answer. Refer to paragraph one. But I'm just 'hatin' right?
Tip: When CNN puts their microphone in front of you, and you know you’re not “worldly,” just decline to be interviewed. Tell that reporter - no matter how much you yearn to be seen by the people in the nail shop and the halfway house - no matter how bad you know that reporter wants all the white people watching to find out “our” secrets that I thought you wanted to hide, please tell him that you are just too sad to comment. And then, just walk away.
Michael Jackson may have been a lot of things. However, his accomplishments and the barriers he broke down for Black people are immeasurable. Yet, all some of “us” could focus on in the wake of his death, were unproven allegations. The people who called him horrible names just moments after he was pronounced dead could make jokes, but they didn’t care to mention that he gave away more than three hundred and fifty million dollars to charity. No proof of harming children, but there’s plenty proof of his humanitarianism. Nevertheless, the ignorant tend to focus on what they know best – more ignorance. Has every drop of our PRIDE evaporated? I’m mystified and troubled. When I saw the line up of new shows premiering on BET (Tiny plus that other girl and Keisha Cole’s mama’nem) I truly contemplated seceding from the union.
And what about the President of the United States – Barack Obama? What the fu*k was that *****’s excuse? Yeah, I said it. The most famous person in the entire world died and he couldn’t even utter two words about it. Meanwhile, people cried rivers of tears throughout the world.
“Mr. President, you couldn’t recognize an American treasure? I thought you were the leader of the free world? He’s not coming back either dude, it was a now or never moment and you blew billions of us off. Whether you like him or you don’t is irrelevant. The relevancy lies in the fact that so many people cared about him and his contributions to the world. The fact that a multitude of other world leaders publicly recognized Michael Jackson’s passing; while you let your Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, parrot some rather unflattering commentary that you made under what seemed like duress is an outrage. Not only did you fail to follow the most basic rule of PROTOCOL, you managed to break the whole code. Please turn in your badge at the front desk because you’re feeling real BET to me right now. Your Black is wack. Michael Jackson was my civil rights movement, but clearly you don't get it. Maybe you’re waiting for somebody more famous than Michael Jackson to die before you address your subjects, followers and constituency? Oh wait, there is no one more famous than Michael Jackson.” --WASET
For those who believe Obama didn’t have 10 or 20 seconds in his busy day to address the world in regards to the King of Pop, he was on CNN for 34 minutes the day after Mike died.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062602257.html
I could write for hours about the President's disrespectful actions in the wake of Michael Jackson's untimely demise, but I was thinking of leaving room in cyberspace for all the people who are going to argue that he had better things to do than provide a 25 second blurb about the death of the most famous person in the world. On second thought, surely it would be Black people who would try to attack me for calling Obama out on his egregious faux pas. Yet, we all know that many of “us” don’t read articles with this many words in them anyway. Just in case though, if you made it this far and you know somebody who's gonna have beef here, you can Soulja Boy tell them that they don't have to read about Obama doing Mike wrong, I added pictures for their ease.
Off to watch the Cosby show…
WASET © 2009
