Happy Labor Day! Stay away from the swine today, tomorrow and always.

I’ve been looking forward to Reggie Rock Bythewood’s new documentary One Night In Vegas.The film premiers tomorrow as part of ESPN’s “30 for 30″ documentary series and takes a look at the friendship between Tupac and Mike Tyson, as well as the events of that night that saw the boxer’s final championship win and the iconic rapper’s slaying.:

On the evening of Sept. 7, 1996, Mike Tyson attempted to take Bruce Seldon’s WBA title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. At this point in his career, Tyson’s fights had become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, where the ever present hype of the professional boxing scene would come face to face with the worlds of big business, Hollywood, and hip hop. Sitting ringside was controversial rapper Tupac Shakur. Shakur and Tyson were friends, a feeling of kinship linked them as each rose to stardom from poverty only to be thrown in prison. Following Tyson’s victory, Shakur and “Iron Mike” were to celebrate at an after party, but the rap star never arrived. Shakur was brutally gunned down later that night, and the scene in Las Vegas quickly turned from would-be celebratory revelry to ill fated and inopportune tragedy. Director Reggie Bythewood, with the full cooperation of Mike Tyson, tells not only the story of that infamous night but of the remarkable friendship between Tyson and Tupac.

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Bythewood about the film and the controversial icons:

One night, Mike was going in to the Palladium (night club) in Hollywood. And he sees this little skinny guy fighting with the bouncers, who don’t want to let him in because of how he was dressed. He tells them “Hey, let the little guy in” and it was ’Pac. That’s where their friendship started. The night before the big fight, ‘Pac was in the studio recording a song for Mike’s entrance in to the ring.

There’s always been a relationship between athletes and entertainers. Look at Joe Louis and Frank Sinatra, they were buddies. The interesting thing about Mike was that rappers seemed to look up to him. He seemed to embody Hip-Hop, more than any other boxer prior to that.  I don’t remember anyone else coming in to the ring to Hip-Hop before him.

My goal is to honestly reflect (Tyson and Tupac’s) worlds. I make no attempt to paint them as choir boys. One sister, Joan Morgan, makes some really interesting comments about these issues. Sonja Steptoe speaks about that. You had a lot of Black women who supported Mike. There was a day in the courtroom in his trial where you had a row of White men who were holding up signs that say “No means no” and on the other side, a group of Black women who had “Free Mike” signs. Sonja received a lot of letters from Black women after doing an article about the case where people called her a ‘sellout’.

Not every intelligent woman thinks that ‘Pac was guilty. There were a lot of women who don’t think he was and others who think he was and that (his actions) were unforgiveable. It is indeed complicated (but) this isn’t what the film is all about. Going back to the trial, there was a lot of racism coming not from Desiree (Washington)’s lawyers, but from Mike’s. They basically said he wasn’t smart enough to be accountable for his actions. Even people who felt he was guilty took issue with this. A lot of people identify with Mike as a guy who came from the gutter. He was the Hip-Hop champion. He was the people’s hero and a lot of people can’t let their heroes go.

When talking about that night (in the film), Mike says that he wishes that ‘Pac had stayed home and watched the fight on television. It happens that this is the last night that Mike walks in the ring and walks out a champion. If Pac hadn’t gotten killed, would Tyson have won against Holyfield? Who knows? It’s not for me to say.

People looked at Mike and ‘Pac like superheroes. The reality is they were mortals. (In the film) we see that side of them. You’ll see a few different things about their worlds. For example, Maya Angelou visiting Mike in jail, ‘Pac’s relationship with Maya. It’s like a character study. Mike is the most dynamic boxer post (Muhuammad) Ali, but that night was the last time he walked out of the ring a champion. People will discover the really strong friendship between these two men.

One Night In Vegas airs Tuesday, September 7th at 8pm on ESPN. It will re-air on the following dates and times:

Tuesday Sep 7: 11pm ESPN 2

Thursday Sep 9: 10pm ESPN Classic

Thursday Sep 30: 9pm ESPN 2

Sunday Oct 24: 10pm ESPN

Sunday Nov 28: 3:30pm ESPN Classic

**Tonight is the night! My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop airs on BET at 10pm EST! I’m telling you…this is a film not to be missed. Support, support, support! **

I have a confession to make: I may just be a little bit complexion obsessed. I tend to be to hyper-aware of color at times (not race, you know I’m a lot more fascinated about what’s going on with us as opposed to how we interact outside).

How did this happen? I think it started early for me. Color was always there. My mother is  my twin in a rich milk chocolate shade (PS- Do we have any other way of describing our skin other than dessert flavors and wood?).  While I see some of my father (and his mother’s) features on my face now, as a child, I looked even more like Mom. Yet, when people saw she and I together, they almost always asked “Does she look like her father?” Because, of course, I would have to resemble the light skinned parent, right? This drove my mother up the wall.  Growing up, she wasn’t so different than her own mom complexion-wise, but subject to a different, ignorant remark: “You’re so pretty for a darker girl.” A member of a prominent Chicago Creole family told her that her eyes were her “saving grace” in spite of the stain of such brown skin.

Then we have my father: fair skinned, mixed race, Black Panther alum. His entire life, as I have heard my entire life,  his Blackness has been challenged. Not by people of other races, of course. By our folk. By other activists and by brothers and sisters who may be able to best him in a melanin race, but who would never have spent the past 30 years armed and ready to defend the lives of Black people as he has. Growing up, I dealt with many inquiries and occasional taunts about my “White daddy”. My neighborhood, Hyde Park, had a large concentration of mixed-race couples and children and people quite often took for granted that I was a part of that number.

So while I’ve known a few people claim  that color didn’t come up a lot when they were growing up, that wasn’t the case for me. Like most children, I adopted some of my parents’ insecurities and issues and I developed a few of my own.  More about those to come soon. I don’t think my obsession is a bad thing; it’s forced me to be critical and vocal about some things that I think deserve that sort of attention (i.e. the disproportionate number of light-skinned women in certain media spaces).  Talking about skin color is something we really don’t do enough of in Negronia. It’s a difficult and painful subject and we’ve only really allowed darker-complexioned persons (usually women) to speak freely about the matter.  And it’s a double edged sword for them: allowed to represent “authentic Blackness”, but then described as bitter or delusional for speaking up. The color complex may not be what it once was…but it’s still in effect, even in 2010.

Dear readers, what have been YOUR experiences with color? When were you first made aware of the concept? Have you been hurt or challenged by matters of skin tone and if so, how? Unpack your bags and let’s rap. This is the first in what will be a few posts about the matter and I am going to be unchained, just so you know. Black as the ace of spades and high yellow as I always have been. As a wise brother was once prompted with a point to say, “Black is Black”…not that it’s ever been that easy for us.

A couple weeks ago, I attended a screening for BET’s first ever original music documentary, “My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop“. Directed by Ava DuVernay, the film takes a loving, yet critical look at the history of sisters in Rap music. It is equal parts celebration of pioneers and those carrying the torch and lamentation over the lack of estrongen in today’s Hip-Hop spaces.

Take a peek at the trailer:

Commentary is provided primarily by woman rappers, including MC Lyte, YoYo, Trina, Salt n’ Pepa, The Lady of Rage, Diamond, Eve, Missy, etc. Other heads weighing in include Kevin Lyles, Joan Morgan, Questlove, Glennisha Morgan of The Fembassy and Russell Simmons. I was really excited to hear the thoughts Jean Grae, Tiye Phoenix and a few other female rappers who aren’t as familiar to the BET audience (there is a great independent artist roll-call at the end as well).

The film itself is visually stunning. The colors are rich and lush and warm. The women themselves look beautiful and they were shot in a way that feels very intimate, personal. I got tears in my eyes about 15 minutes in. I felt like I was watching a family reunion or something. So many of the special names, faces and (most importantly) sounds of my youth were present in this piece.

The filmmaker and her subjects took no shorts and take on some tough questions: why are so many female rappers hypersexualized? Why do women seem to need a crew of men around them to be taken seriously? How is it that the absence of one person had such a tremendous impact on an entire genre of music (and it’s listeners)? Why is it still so hard for women to make it in this game? Make sure you pay particular attention to Trina’s thoughts on her own success at the end of the film. Her astuteness was both remarkable and incredibly depressing.

I had been a while since I had really sat down and thought about the role of sistren in Hip-Hop and the film inspired me to finally take on the topic of Lauryn. My conversation with the fabulous Esther Armah after the film a was the spark for this piece as well.  Even if you are as cynical and jaded as I about what mainstream Rap has become (particularly as it relates to women)…if you have love in your heart for Hip-Hop,  you are gonna love this movie. 

It is important that people know we are interested in seeing work like this not just in small, independent spaces, but on major networks like BET. We’ve been asking to see work like My Mic Sounds Nice for years and we have to make sure that we support it if we want to see more. If you are on Twitter, check out the official page for the film. “Like” it on Facebook. Tell friends to tune in and MOST IMPORTANTLY….watch!

My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop will premiere on August 30th at 10:00 PM EDT on BET.

It was announced today that Shirley Sherrod has declined an offer to return to the USDA, bringing this international embarrassment to a unique close. Typically, when a Black person is subject to obvious or probable racism in the public eye, she will accept the apologies of the guilty party. See: Gates, Henry Louis and the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team. While Sherrod stated very clearly from the get go* that she was not trying to hear any apologies from Andrew Breitbart  AND that she was considering legal action against the conservative blogger, today’s announcement is even more powerful. And while the ‘Dr. Laura/poor, misguided sister who we want to ask why she called her in the first place’ saga was far less significant, it is worth nothing that the caller has also declined the apology offered her way.

Blatant racism forgiven with the simple words “I’m sorry” brings to mind the phenomenon commonly referred to as Battered Woman’s Syndrome. The victims are unable to walk away from their abuser and continue to return time and time again, without instituting any true demands for an improvement in how they are treated or rehabilitation for their abuser. I have said it once and I will say it again: Black folks will gladly take the moral high road all the way to Hell. Saying “It’s okay” doesn’t always make you the bigger person.

The path to this fabled “Post-Racial America” will not be paved with empty apologies and forgiveness that comes with no requirements. We must not continue telling White folks that it’s okay to treat P.O.C. like second class citizens because they don’t know any better. We must TEACH those who lack understanding of institutionalized racism/oppression and White privilege how those institutions work and we must continue to push back against them whenever we can. Hat tip to Mrs. Sherrod for doing just that.

Sherrod’s actions send a very clear message: if you do not treat me with the  appropriate dignity and respect, then there is no place for me working to serve you and there is certainly no need for me to accept an apology. We can’t allow certain people to make fair treatment of ‘minorities’ to be a matter of being politically correct…its being CORRECT. Period. This isn’t about “us” vs “them”; this is a matter of all of us living together in something resembling peace and harmony.

If we (people of color, women, LGBT folks and/or allies of these groups) do not effectively require that members of majority groups respect us, we will continue to battle racism, sexism and all the other isms so long as this country exists. So long as Black folks’ forgiveness comes cheaper than the Extra Value Menu, I don’t have the ‘audacity’ to hope for otherwise.

*I am fluent in Ebony Phonics. Do you think the DEA will hire me?

PS: I was very surprised to see that I ranked on Black Web 2.0′s list of “Most Powerful Black Women on Twitter” (not to be confused with a list of the most powerful Black women who happen to be on Twitter- two VERY different things). Surprised, excited and humbled. Thanks to everyone who follows me there, has RT’d something I said because they found it valueable and worth sharing and/or placed me on one of their Twitter lists. If the sprit so moves you to vote, my Twitter page was nominated for a Black Weblog Award as well!

I think now is a great time for me to acknowledge that I have learned a lot from the people I have connected from on this site, the others and Twitter. Namely, how to be respectful when I disagree with someone and not to take criticism of my work as a criticism of me. Have I mastered this? No. And there will still be times when reading someone the riot act will be approrpiatye. But I am working on it and I think you, dear readers, should know that you have had a profound effect on how I express and conduct myself. I’m learning patience and how to be more gentle and effective with my words. Online and otherwise. So for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! If I could buy each and every one of you a download of El DeBarge’s smash (in my heart) new single “Second Chance”, I would. But I’m poor. So…here’s a link to the video.

Hip-Hop went mainstream in the early 90′s. As much as I love me some Will Smith, when Fresh Prince of Bel-Air hit television, we all should have known where this Rap thing was headed. This was 20 years ago and Hip-Hop exists now in so many diverse and multi-faceted spaces and forms. For all my disgust at the success of a Soulja Boy, there is an Immortal Technique or Lupe Fiasco for me to rock to. I don’t have to listen to Rap music that I hate to say that I listen to rap, I have options. On mainstream radio? Not so much, but thanks to the internet (shameless plus: visit Blind-I for the freshest music around) and the iPod , I don’t have to suffer bad music unless I choose to. The biggest annoyance would be at the club, but what are you gonna do when so many of your peers like the nonsense, right?

This pic amazingly captures about 43% of what I hate about America.

Last week, Sir Fabulous and I watched an episode of America’s Got Talent for the first time ever. If you asked me to explain to you what the purpose of this show is and what they are looking for in the contestants…I would fail you. It should be called “America Has Very Low Standards When It Comes To Things They Will Watch On TV”.  But that’s neither here, nor there.

One of the performers was a 11 year old White rapper named…wait for it…CJ Dippa. In general, I’m not one of those adults who really enjoys hearing children rap, unless they are just out-the-box amazing. Young Dippa was terrible. Not by adult standards, but by what ever standards may exist for some one to be a 10 year old White rapper. Poor little guy had a completely affected “Urban” dialect and was dressed like Jamie Kennedy in Malibu’s Most Wanted. What was worse than hearing him perform was hearing Sharon Osbourne and Howie Mandel interpret his performance and give him notes based on how they view the aesthetics of Hip-Hop. My skin crawled.

Even with all the great Hip-Hop still out there and all the things that Hip-Hop has meant to my generation and the two ahead of us…even with the fact that the mainstream embrace of pieces and shades of the culutre is almost as old as I am…I don’t want to see little suburban ‘tweens on TV rapping, dressed like fake trap boys circa 1999. I’m tired of listening to news reporters and critics and all sorts of people who are so far removed from the culture as it was intended to be speaking on something that I still consider to be deeply personal and Black/Brown and ours.

It isn’t just ours anymore. And I know this and I have known this for sometime. Black spaces are always integrated, either forcefully or by us needing economic support from The Other to continue or because our belief that the White Man’s ice is colder and his interest in what we do is always a compliment.  And a lot of White folks have had some damn great contributions to to Rap music, so please don’t think this is all about race. What is killing me is that Hip-Hop is starting to become a part of Americana.  It’s middle-America friendly. That’s lame and y’all know how I feel about lame shit. Soccer moms in high-waisted jeans and I should only really share an affinity for Oprah, 100-calorie snacks and sneaking booze in to our coffee. That’s about it.

To be completely transparent, I am very Northern and cityfied by birth. There are other Black cultural institutions that are still very much protected or limited to our folks that I find to be wholly unappealing.  I wouldn’t dare suggest that most sister girls in their mid-20s grew up taping Black Moon off the radio.  And a lot of White dudes did. They aren’t the ones I’m blaming for the lameifying of Rap culture. I don’t even quite know that there is one group that can be targeted as the reason, but I know that money is at the root of most things edgy becoming corny. And I am happy that a lot of good people of all races have managed to eat off of Hip-Hop, which was not the case for nearly enough Black artists and pioneers of other musical genres.

My generation didn’t create Hip-Hop; in fact, we may be the first ones to embrace the complete and utter BS forms of it en masse, despite being the last group old enough to recall having A Tribe Called Quest getting airplay on MTV. My people have created a lot of things which have become a part of American culture. That’s not a bad thing.  But seeing rapping Keebler Elves or seeing the phrase “Keep it real” in a Woman’s Day magazine from 2005 will always be marked with discomfort and annoyance for me. The kid who grew up post-Rap City may not feel the same way. Perhaps I can create some art form of my own. Rhythmic pot and pan drumming that speaks to the Black feminist experience. And by the time it ends up in a Kraft Deluxe commercial, I will be long dead and unable to resent sharing.

Speaking of Hip-Hop…you know I am UBER excited for BET’s first ever music documentary “My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop“, which is airing on August 30th. Check out the Facebook and Twitter pages for the film ASAP!

Fam-a-lam! No entirely new content here today, but if I may, I want to call your attention to something I am *really* excited about. I had the opportunity to screen BET’s first ever music documentary “My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women In Hip-Hop” last week and it literally brought me to tears. I really think you guys are gonna enjoy this film. I am saving my review and full on gushing until next week, as it airs on August 30th, but I do encourage you to check out the Facebook and Twitter pages for the film in the meantime!

After seeing the film, I was inspired to take on a subject I had pretty much avoided in my writing: Lauryn Hill.  If you are interested, an essay about my conflicted feelings about the singer and her fans appears at Clutch this week. Click here to read “Notes On Lauryn”.

Also, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on the ongoing controversy over both California’s Proposition 8 and the soon to be built Corodoba Cultural Center and Mosque (aka “The 9/11 Mosque”) over at Essence Online today. Click here to check that out.

Talk to you soon!

In old news today, a fella named Farhad Manjoo who writes for Slate did a piece called “How Black People Use Twitter“. He came to the facinating conclusion that Negroes use the social networking site to network socially. It was the equivalent of the time that White folks discovered that sweet potato pie is our de facto brown-veggie based custard pie at the holidays, as opposed to pumpkin. Not exactly earth shattering, but fascinating to some. What REALLY set people to cutting up was the accompanying illustration: a rendering of the Twitter bird logo wearing a fitted hat with a hashtag on it. A “fail whale” draped with the Pan-African flag may have been more fitting.

A lot of other bloggers hit the nail on the head about the whole ‘Black people are not monkeys in an online cage. We just would like to continue living, loving and laughing without being othered by random strangers’ thing, so I didn’t feel the need to take it on (though I do want to raise a public eyebrow to the fact that the dude who wrote the article is non-White and yet he seems to see the world in terms of ‘White as normative’, which is bizarre).  And some SPECTACULARLY IGNANT BROWN TWITTER BIRDS were created. It was funny beyond measure. If you want to read more, check out this, this, this and this.

Now, Afro-Twitter IS already using the site as a resource to pass along information about important stories that don’t get enough run from the mainstream media. Much like the blogosphere, the #browntwitterbird kept us informed about the Oscar Grant case, the death of Mitrece Richardson, the Black August events taking place this month…along with some pop culture and social commentary stuff that may not be as weighty, but is specific to *us* and how we do.  And you have people like me who use the site as part of these agressive low-budget marketing campaigns to push their writing, music, films, etc. This didn’t make the Slate story and that’s fine, because that’s why we have Afro-Twitter anyway, right?

On my end, I’m thinking…we got White folks-and people who perhaps think they are White folks- real fascinated by what we are doing online…maybe we need to kick it up a notch. ‘Invisible man’ tweets and got the whole world watching…perhaps we need to do some tricks. We are a creative and crafty people.  This has inspired me to dust off the whole “Five For Friday” format and pitch a few ideas that will help us take Afro-Twitter to the next level.  Let’s get get tweet it!

1) Twitter Families: Black folks are notorious for having lots of cousins, play cousins and the proverbial ’auntie’s best friend’s daughter’s neighbor who is just like a sister to us’. Perhaps we can form extended families on the Twitter, which will lead to Twincest, Twanksgiving dinner, Big Mama speeches and fabulous family reunion shirt-avatars each summer. And for those of us who don’t have big Madea-esque families (*sob*), it may give us something to hold on to. This Twitter family has got to be that fist!

2) A Twitter Numbers Runner: We can bring it back to the days of the policy wheel, which made a lot of your aunties and cousins real fancy on the block. People can play their number each week and pay the number runner via PayPal. Um…this is as good a time as any to remind y’all about making those monthly donations to The Beautiful Struggler fund, right? If we get the Twitter policy wheel going, y’all get to play your first book free.

3) Twitter Record Labels:Because all Black people must be involved in the creation of a record label at some point in their lives (hell, people send ME demos like I’m an A&R and like I ain’t been listening to the same damn Albert Brown records since 1993, but okay…), we can just get this out of the way while we on Twitter. My label is gonna be called “No Limit Toldja Records”. Ughhhhhh….na, na, na, na.

4) Twitter Car Clubs: Now, where I’m from (C-H-I-C-A-G-O), membership in a car club is based upon ownership of a particular make and/or model of whip. For example, the Renegade Cavalier Club. Where I live right now (Planet Brooklyn), the clubs are simply for people who are owners of cars. That’s all it takes. There is a fella around my place of work that pushes an Astro-Van that is not only branded with his club’s logo, but also features a permanent tribute to Michael Jackson (of which I am NOT mad at). As a non-driver of anything, I don’t have a vote on which sort of car club Twitter picks. I will just player hate from the sidelines bus stop.  Just make sure you put your @-sign on the window very clearly, so I can tweet my hate.

5) Twitter Adoption:This may fall under the ‘family’ suggestion, but I think it deserves it’s own category. You know how our grandmothers are for scooping somebodies fast-tail daughter or knucklehead son off the block? Well, perhaps we can use this online. I see some people on my own timeline I’d like to re-raise myself. Take their tweets in and mold them with some good old-fashioned. This Twitter family has got to be that fist!

What other suggestions do you all have for using the Twitter to bring our Blacks’ Magic to our legions of adoring fans and pesky reporters?

Friday, Friday, glorious Friday!

I had a weightier topic in mind for today, but I have already emotionally shifted gears to weekend-mode. So iCan’t and iWon’t go there until Monday. However, I do have something bearing heavy on my heart and I need to share. Has anybody seen my childhood? Oh, there it is on YouTube, rolling through the hood and smoking trees:

ARE YOU SERIOUS? “Mr. Calvin from 227″?  Gain Green Records??? And really, Christopher Williams riding shotgun in Ed Hardy Couture? What did I do to deserve this? Some people should make a comeback, but others need to stay gone so that I might preserve the image I had of them in my heart.  That said, can we get Bumper Robinson into a safe house? I just can’t bear the thought of Clarence ending up on a Smack DVD doing hoodrat things with Tevin Campbell. Christopher still looks good though.

If you’d like to catch up on my latest work, here’s a recap. I’m grinding hard in these internets:

A Modest Proposal+ The Second Worst I Ever Had: Support the Struggler, so that she may continue to provide wicked social commentary…and tragic date stories such as this one (appears right here at home, baby)

Bottom Heavy- What if you’re a Black woman, but don’t have a “Black woman’s body”? (via Clutch)

Can Sex Really Be Casual?- My take on the age old debate for my new ”Girl On Top” sex column ( via Madame Noire)

Cease and Desist: Flo Rida- Flo Rida makes Bryant Gumble look like Jay-Z. I want him gone. (via Blind I)

Over Concious- ‘Concious’ is a silly word for rappers, let’s let it go. (via Soul Train)

Support Kevin Powell for Congress- I have a lot of respect for this brother and I urge you to take a look at his campaign and get involved (again, right here at The Struggler)

Thanks to everyone for their support this week and always! Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Monday for a discussion of the fallacy of “reverse racism”. #nosuchthing

June 25th, 2009: I sat at my desk at work in front of my computer for two hours, switching back and forth between Twitter and CNN upon hearing the news that Michael Jackson was in cardiac arrest. About an hour in to the drama, this little gossip site called TMZ switched the story from “Michael’s in the hospital” to “Michael Jackson R.I.P: 1958-2009″.  Who is this little raggedy stepchild of real news and how dare they go spreading rumors like that at a time like this? I e-fussed at people who Tweeted their sorrow; Micheal wasn’t dead and how dare they be so quick to believe he was and shame on them for believing something that wasn’t even on CNN. Now, when did people start believign that CNN was the most credible go-to for news, I can’t tell you. But I do know that Michael was alive to me until that network said otherwise.

ABC was the second to go along with TMZ (Man, forget ABC! Y’all stopped being relevant when Jaleel White’s voice changed). Then it was the LA Times ( I don’t live in LA and thus, I don’t know y’all like that. Stop playing with real news!) and then a whole bunch of similarly wrong and insignificant news outlets. Meanwhile, I was calling my closest family and friends, frustrated that so many of them were busy working. Who could work when Michael Jackson was fighting TMZ for his life? I’ve been working since I was 12 and I haven’t yet had a job that meant as much to me as this man. I needed everyone everywhere to put everything on hold and send their good vibrations to the King of Pop.

Finally, Cable News Network confirmed what I had known for at least 60 minutes and refused to believe. Michael Jackson, dead at 50. I cried at my desk and watched his videos until it was time to go home. Then I put on a black dress, went out and cried some more.

I mourned Michael in a way not so differently than I have real life friends and family who’ve passed on. Like a lot of us, I knew I loved the man, but I didn’t realize how much until he was gone. No other celebrity’s passing had set any sort of precedent for how I was supposed to process and proceed. I’d imagine that B.I.G and especially 2Pac’s deaths had touched folks in their age brackets in a similiar way. But as they were both gifted with such brief visits to this planet, those same fans would have had Michael’s presense their entire lives, versus about 6 years with ‘Pac and 4 with Biggie. No death could be like Michael’s, because no life had been like Michael’s.

There is so much interesting cultural commentary that can be culled from Michael’s life, his death and his legacy. However, I’m not the one who’s gonna make those observations. At least not right now. My views on Michael are very much emotional. I’m too focused on my attachment to him as one of my first crushes and one of my favoritest people I ever did see to have an intellectual interest in him yet.  I just wanna love him.

All the bad, hurtful and outright odd stuff to emerge in the news in the months to come was of no consequence to the shrine to MJ I’ve erected inside. I won’t pretend that he was perfect or healthy or even completely sane. But I’ll always focus on the Michael who was a peerless genius of song and dance and a friend to both humanity and the planet, instead of the Michael who did some weird stuff that keep his name in the tabloids. We’ve seen how fame on a far smaller scale has damaged the psyches of many a celebrity; who could possibly emerge unscathed from the circus that was this man’s life from the moment his daddy realized he could sing and dance?

(The line that has always stuck out for me: “I began to take the long way home/just so I could be alone…” Do you realize this man lived 50 years on this earth and probably never once had the opportunity to do that?)

I think it’s odd that the week leading up to this dark anniversary has become the time to celebrate Michael’s life. However, this is only our first year without his earthly presence. I hope that the time surrounding his birthday in August is just as full with MJ programming and partying. Shoot, we should go on and mark March 25th on the calendar and celebrate the first time the world saw this:

I can look at Michael now and smile (though I did have a weepy “F*ck, Michael Jackson really is dead” moment on the bus just two months ago, but I’m pretty sure PMS played a part). I can even again admit that I hate “Ben” and “Gone Too Soon” (both have always been too sad for me to enjoy anyway and the latter is now associated with a friend’s funeral, so I really never want to hear it again). There’s a part of me that will continue to mourn MJ for quite some time, but the feeling of joy I get at remembering his life has finally overtaken the sadness that accompanied his death. And while I know for some of you, the intensity of either feeling probably sounds batsh!t crazy. And perhaps it is.  But I don’t care. This is Michael Jackson we’re talking about here.

Folks under 40 don’t know a world without Michael Jackson’s presence. His music has always been there for us and the beauty of recorded media is that it will continue to be there for generations of people who will never know the excitement of seeing a new MJ video or live performance. I don’t think there have been many days in my adult life in which I didn’t hear at least one of his tunes and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. What’s your favorite image of Michael? I like to remember the smile he had here:

(BTW-This video came out in 1980. A lot of you new cats need to step your video game all the way up.)

My initial post about Michael’s passing was rather pithy (though I think I did a slightly better job capturing my feelings a few days later). I stayed out the night that he passed drinking and trying to laugh with Sir Fabulous at the fact that I was actually crying and wearing a black dress for someone who I didn’t know in real life. I do, however, feel I summed up my feelings in the closing to that piece and I will repeat them again today:

We are mournful, but we celebrate. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim! With the glory of the creator, Michael, you lived and breathed beautiful music. And so we will love you forever and always.

I got hip to The Boondocks comic strip when I was in high school. You know that feeling Roberta Flack described in “Killing Me Softly”, the whole “singing my life with his words” thing? Yeah, Aaron McGruder gave me alla that. I’d read the strip online daily, print it out and share it with my parents, hang it up in my locker. I bought every collection of strips that came out and totally obsessed over all things Boondocks. I was extremely hyped about the animated series…until it aired. It’s funny, where the strip was hilarious and smart, where the print comic was brilliant. I have some other complaints too, but overall, I just find the show to be decent.

But then you have this week’s episode, “Pause” (CLICK HERE TO WATCH). McGruder takes on both Tyler Perry and the “pause”/”no homo” phenomenon in one fell swoop. Brilliant. Hilarious. And, most of all, courageous. The writer isn’t hardly the first one to criticize Mr. Perry’s work publicly; Spike Lee has done it and lesser known writers go at him all the time. But McGruder goes in quite differently than anything I’ve seen or read thus far.

The plot: Granddad decides to audition for a “Winston Jerome” play. We learn through Huey’s narration that Jerome’s plays typically feature an educated, successful and virtuous Black woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to an abusive dark complexioned man, until she is saved by Jesus and the love of a light-skinned blue collar man.  Granddad is chosen as the “light-skinned, good haired” leading man in “Ma’ Finds Herself A Man” because he’s Jerome’s type. He then finds himself forced to join the playwright’s “homo-erotic Christian theatre cult” (I TOLD YOU HE WENT IN!) and temporarily abandons his family for the chance at stardom.

McGruder nails the likely reason a lot of actors reduce themselves to the Perry factory via a brief appearance by Kadeem Hardison as himself. Sitting next to Grandpa at the audition, he quips “What, I’m supposed to wait for the next Akeelah And The Bee to pay my mortgage?” He also lampoons the way in which Perry seems to use his relationship with Jesus as his line of defense for any criticism of his work:” …(I) would never ever kiss a man. That would be homosexual and against my Christian faith. But Jesus wants us to be actors first and heterosexuals second…but when I go on stage, Jesus wants me to become (Ma’Dukes)…“, quoth Jerome in his attempt to convince Grandpa to kiss him on stage.

Mark Anthony Neal, one of my favorite writers, wasn’t so impressed with the episode. He found there to be a strain of homophobia running through McGruder’s depiction of Perry, who he paints as an impossibly effeminate tyrant who finally confesses at the end that he “made up the cross dressing Christian cult” to sleep with men. I disagree. I didn’t see it as “look at this silly gay man” so much as “look at the irony of this *allegedly* gay and somewhat effeminate man, dressing up as a woman and telling the world that Jesus wants him to help women by dressing up as one“. Now, I do acknowledge that by taking Tyler’s mannerisms and cross-dressing as evidence that he’s gay is an act of heteronormalizing, which is counterproductive to fighting homophobia. But I don’t see hateful homophobia in McGruder ‘s “it looks like a duck, talks like a duck, the blogs say they’ve seen him out with other ducks…it’s a duck” presumptions about Perry’s sexuality. Furthermore, I abandon any sympathy I would have held for Perry in wake of McGruder loudly rapping on his closet door due to the awkward gay jokes and a big homophobic OMG moment in WDIGM2.

Was it a cheap shot? Perhaps. Mean-spirited? Quite possibly. But when you have a figure as ridiculous as Perry is in the eyes of those who aren’t drinking his “Kool-Aid”, it’s not hardly surprising that someone like McGruder (the counter-cultural militant Afro-nerd) took it there. He doesn’t need a few phone calls from Perry’s people to get him on any blacklist. The domination of Perry is an automatic roadblock for someone making the sort of snarky, intelligent work that is the McGruder brand. And while Perry himself is not to blame as much as his millions of loyal consumers, I don’t see the problem in the comic tossing a few sharp rocks at the figurehead that represents all that he hates.

From Neal’s essay:

“….In the end we are left with a brilliantly funny episode, that offers little with regards to meaningful cultural criticism. To go hard at Tyler Perry, is not to present him as some freak—as suggested in the camp nod to The Rocky Horror Picture Show midway through the episode—that is marginal to the mainstream of Black America. The reality is Perry’s success and influence is buttressed by a nation of millions, who buy upscale cars, beach-front time shares, worship in mega-churches and dutifully believe in heterosexual desire (at the very least the performance of it) or, perhaps most importantly, aspire to those things. To go hard at Perry is to go hard at us—and in that regard, McGruder didn’t even live up to his own reputation. Perhaps that might explain, why this is the last season of The Boondocks.”

I will agree to some extent that the more important criticism regarding Tyler Perry’s work is that which engages Tyler Perry’s audience. For all the times we’ve tossed around the words “cooning” and “low-brow” in regards to his brand, he does have a large number of class mobile, educated Black patrons .  I think that by skwereing Perry’s constant assertation that he has Jesus ‘on the mainline’ (literally: in the episode, we see a number of “phone conversations” between Jerome and Christ), he identifies one of the biggest reasons that Perry fans are so loyal and so willing to overlook inadequacies in scriptwriting, plot, direction, etc. There is also the demand from many Black audience members for “positive” entertainment, which McGruder subtly nods to this via local buppie Tom DuBois’ gushing over Ma’Dukes plays for not using the N-word.  The irony in that is that Perry’s reliance on hackneyed stereotypes and his troubling portrayal of gender dynamics aren’t “positive” at all. They aren’t innoctuous, either. For all the protheltyizing and self-agrandization in regards to his calling to tell Black (women’s) stories, Perry’s work reinforces a lot of complete BS about Black folks.

McGruder didn’t explore or engage the Perry audience on any truly in-depth level, but I definitely found it to be “meaningful cultural criticism”. By pointing out some of the glaring absurdities of that which “Tyler Perry Presents”, he has given the audience the option to examine think criticially about these ‘positive’ works of art media. As far as Perry criticism goes, if Hilton Als’ “Mama’s Gun” is the honors thesis, then “Pause” is the snarky video the kids in the A/V club. The cartoon medium frees McGruder up to be more silly and sardonic and it doesn’t quite lend itself to the sort of dissection Als’ was able to accomplish in print. Both are valid and worthy of the conversation about this man and his homo-erotic Christian empire. This is the Aaron McGruder I grew to love in print and I hope that he either changes his mind about ending the series or chooses a new method for getting his biting criticism to the masses.

Next on deck- Perry, McGruder and this whole Jesus thing…who’s really wrong: the guy lampooning the Christian filmmaker or the one cross-dressing for the Lord? Stay tuned.