IT'S A DONALD THING

My Exclusive Interview with Miss Silawett The Latina Empress

2011-08-06T02:51:00.001-04:00

I am back on a new edition of IT'S A DONALD THING. I haven't been on a while. Now, with unforeseen circumstances taking place within the next couple of months, this blog will come back to life in a new direction.

Couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by DC Coles, a music veteran, video director, and film producer, who wanted me to profile an artist of his. I was flattered because I profiled Kay'Vion Sire on IT'S A DONALD THING around the same time. When I read the story behind Miss Silawett The Latina Empress, something told me not to pass the opportunity up. I am glad I did not. I contacted DC to see if Miss Silawett was still interested in being profiled for the blog. When he replied that she was, I knew I had to research her by listening to her music and learning a little more about her. I saw her music videos, listened to her songs, and read a few online bios and articles about her. She gained a new fan in me. When I read how Latina Magazine considered her an up-and-coming Latina indie filmmaker in the March 2009 issue, I was more in awe of her. She is definitely one to look out for in the not-too-distant future.

Below is my exclusive interview with Miss Silawett The Latina Empress:

How did you get started in music?

My 1st real attempt at music was during early high school. During that time I met another artist whom was the 1st person ever that I told my dreams to. I always kept it a big secret because I never wanted anyone to crush them so we formed a duet. He already had his own style. I was still developing mine and it was a blend of hip hop, soul and rock. Things didn't go quite the way we dreamed of so we decided we would just pursue solo careers and here I am years later "MISS SILAWETT" (still in effect- with my style intact and moving forward in a direction which best fits Me).. It wasn't at all easy but God placed people in my life that believed in me and during that time I was still focused on my acting career. Music was always on my mind. However, deep inside I knew that I needed guidance. By happenstance I met DC Coles, a music veteran, video director, and film producer, who is now my manager and who continues to be a major influence on my career.

Was the name Miss Silawett The Latina Empress of your own creation or was it chosen for you?

When I was part of the duet I was "SILAWETT". The name was created during that period. After so many different names, I chose to keep that one. I felt back then that name suited me. I knew one day I would make it a household name. The name "Silawett" comes from the original word "SILHOUETTE" which means a representation of an outline, usually filled in with black, but I spell it differently and the name just took on a whole different meaning for me. One of mystery and simply that I'm that outline but I'm filled with so many different colors. The name "MISS" made me feel more empowered and my manager always called me the Empress which represents what I am, which is: I am the woman ruler of my empire, a woman with great power and influence. This is the woman who I am building and who I aspire to become. You just can't be great overnight. You have to work really hard for it. I'm still working very hard and will continue to do so daily and every second of the day and night.

What is your cultural background and how it has helped you to become the person you are today?

I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, but I have no memories and know very little of my birthplace.  Both my parents are from Bolivia and I was raised both in New York and La Paz, Bolivia. I have to say that both cultures have really influenced me and who I am today. Matter of fact, I'm beginning to incorporate more folkloric music and dance which are part of the traditional Bolivian culture, combined with my New York energy, spunk and style! A combination of both worlds continues to shape who I am.

Latina Magazine had selected you in its March 2009 issue as an up-an-coming Latina indie filmmaker. What film or films do you hold under your credit?

Yes! That was definitely the highlight of that year. I feel so proud and so grateful for that opportunity. That was around the time that I produced, starred in and co-funded my 1st Latino indie feature film "KNUCKLEZ" (originally called "BARE KNUCKLEZ" ). I learned so much from that project and the amount of work that goes into production and behind the scenes. This film is in its final stages of post production. I can't wait to share it with the world. You can also YouTube "BARE KNUCKLEZ" to see the trailer. I also served as producer on other indie feature films , i.e., "IN MY FATHER'S EYE", "THE WAX SEAL" (another Latin feature film of which we are seeking funding), and I just wrapped up a Latin film short titled "A TORTURED LIFE", which is based on a true story and I produced and starred in it as well.

What influenced you to become a filmmaker?

I honestly never thought of becoming a filmmaker but my manager "DC", a Video Director in his own right, taught me the importance of working behind the scenes. He encourages me to take my career and destiny under my control and constantly tells me how important it is to empower yourself and having more control of your projects and career choices. He invited me to come on a film set he was working on and let me tell you that I really fell in love with that. I am one of those people that love working under pressure and I was fascinated by the process of filmmaking. I also fell in love with the idea that I can create films and tell stories not only through my music but also through films. I'm now developing a film script called "HER-STORY" which I'm co-writing. This is a female action-drama film.

What are your perspectives on the images of Latinos in film? How are you changing or adding to the images?

Well, my interest is to work on projects that really hold truth in them, to showcase how Latinos and how our parents and ancestors struggled to come to America chasing their dreams. What each individual went through, how it affected them, and what drove them here. We see a lot of that in indie films, but we don't really see that in Hollywood. Latinos are not just sexy but we are talented , we are smart, we are strong, and we are who we are.

Your song "Bounce" is a hit on iTunes and YouTube. How does it make you feel?

I am overwhelmed by the response I have received from my new single "Bounce". This song was produced and mixed in Sweden and to know that my music is reaching other countries is the greatest feeling. This just makes me want to work even harder.  It makes me not want to give up on my dreams and it makes me want to pack my bags up and head to Europe and start performing out there. Let the world know that "MISS SILAWETT" is in town. LOL.

Who are your musical influences?

Music overall has influenced me, different genres as well, but to name a few I would have to say Madonna, Lady Gaga, Tupac, Gwen Stefani, Selena, and Tina Turner to name the ones that stand out for me.

Given that you are seen with your trademark blue wig, are you compared with Lady GaGa or Rihanna?

Yes I get compared to Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Kesha. We all are pop artists so it makes sense. However, I feel that soon people will begin to see me as an individual and see what I'm bringing to the music scene. About the blue wig, well, the blue wig is the new look I created because of my new songs, so my fans see a new side of me. Hence, my next album will be titled "SCHIZOPHRENIA".

Your songs "Bounce", "Effect On Me", "Funky Diva" and "Rockstar" are very innovative, entertaining, empowering, and excellent. Do these songs represent the strength of women?

It sure does. I love powerful women, look up to strong women, and think it is important that women empower each other and to be a great influence on other women as well. As Beyonce said, girls rule the world. LOL! Females ROCK!! It's paramount that we as women dig deep and embrace our strengths we all have within us.

It seems that Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, and Selena Gomez seem to be the only Latinas making mainstream music. What are your thoughts of the current state of Latinas in the music industry?

I feel that we need more Latinas in the industry.  That is what I'm working on because I want to use my films and what I'm doing as a recording artist as a global outlet to expose other talented people as well. I also feel that there has not been a Latina from Bolivia (South America) making mainstream music and thats why I'm here to change that .

Do you have a gay and lesbian fan base yet? If so, how are you received in the LGBT community?

I do and I'm really grateful in how they have accepted my music. I was invited to perform at a lesbian party at the club Bar 13 (NYC) on July 4th and it was awesome! I also was invited to be a part of the gay pride event and was happy to come out and support the LGBT community! Hopefully next year, I'll be invited to perform!

Which artists are you listening to now on your iPod?

Lately I've been listening to Amy Winehouse, Adele, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Tupac, and Nneka. It all depends what mood I'm in.

What do you see Miss Silawett doing in the next five years?

Making more music, more films, performing out of New York and overseas, writing more, and exposing my art form to the world through my expanding empire (clothing line, makeup, etc.) Like I mentioned before,"MISS SILAWETT" will be a household name!

In order for people who would love to hear your music, where can they go?

FACEBOOK/MISS SILAWETT
TWITTER/MISS_SILAWETT
ITUNES/REVERBNATION/MYSPACE
GOOGLE "MISS SILAWETT"

The interview was fun, insightful and interesting. I want to thank Miss Silawett for sharing with IT'S A DONALD THING. I enjoyed getting to know her as an artist, filmmaker, visionary, and a person. She is definitely a force to be reckoned with. She knows who she is and what she wants out of her life and career. Miss Silawett The Latina Empress is someone to look out for in 2011 and 2012. She is not to be slept on.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, August 6, 2011
2:49 AM

New York Legalizes Same Sex Marriage Bill

2011-06-25T07:53:00.001-04:00

The streak has been finally broken. The next state to legalize same-sex marriage is ... NEW YORK!!!

The New York Senate voted last night on Friday, June 24, 2011 to legazlize Governor Andrew Cuomo's Same-Sex Marriage Bill. It was a long-awaited victory for LGBT people and a historic one at that. I watched it on "The Anderson Cooper 360 Show" on CNN while on the phone with Ra Shawn. We were happy and ecstatic.

I can imagine everyone celebrating in Greenwich Village (The Village or the Vill), Chelsea, and other gay or gay-friendly sections of New York last night. I can imagine a crowd of people partaying in front of the Stonewall Bar, the origin of the Gay Liberation Movement 42 years ago in June 1969. I predict the partaying will continue past the Heritage of Pride Parade in Manhattan tomorrow.

I am proud to be an African-American gay man living in New York. I do not feel I can live freely anywhere else. I was thinking about relocating like many other African-Americans out of New York. I would not move to the Deep South because that is the Bible Belt and gayness is not really celebrated in many small Southern towns. I want to live in a state where I can still be unapologetically Black, gay, and proud and able to marry that special brotha. I am staying right here in New York for now. I don't know what God has in store for me. I thank Governor Andrew Cuomo and the grass-roots activists who fought for the passage of the Same-Sex Marriage Bill in New York. I can tell Governor Cuomo is getting that special real good lovin' from his lady, Sandra Lee of The Food Network fame. He looks happy unlike those other stale politicians. You go, Governor Cuomo!

I know there are many LGBT couples, young and old, who cannot wait to have their civil unions made legal 30 days from now in New York. I want to get married in New York so I am happy and glad as a lark. I was thinking about two associates of mine, Richard Spencer-Riley and Dynell Riley-Spencer, who just got married in a civil union. They can have their union legalized 30 days from now. I am so happy for all of the couples, whose years of love and commitment can finally be recognized as legitimate and legal.

New York is the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage, joining the ranks of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the District of Washington.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 25, 2011
7:51 AM

Days Of Our Lives Gay Storyline

2011-06-24T02:04:00.001-04:00

Oh chile!! As a lifelong soap opera fan who just happens to be African-American AND gay, I gagged when I saw the instant attraction Will Horton (Chandler Massey) had towards Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith), who came to the fictional town to surprise his parents, Justin (Wally Kurth) and Adrienne (Judi Evans Luciano). Will thought Sonny was one of the boyfriends of Abigail Deveraux (Kate Mansi), who revealed Sonny was her paternal cousin. Adrienne is the sister of her father, Jack (Matthew Ashford). Will and Abigail are cousins too since his dad, Lucas Horton, and her mother, Jennifer Deveraux (Melissa Reeves), are half-siblings. It looks like Will and Sonny are distantly related since Will's great-uncle Bo Brady (Peter Reckell) is the first cousin of Justin.

The Salem genealogies are so intertwined but it looks like Will and Sonny are going to be kissing cousins after all. It looks like Will is going to be revealed as gay. It was hinted on the soap opera and gay popular culture blogs and websites. I assumed Will was going to fall for Chad Peterson-Woods (Casey Deidrick) but when Chad became the new boyfriend of Abigail, it was like nah! Well, Will is going to have a gay ol' summer and it will be with Sonny. Unfortunately, Will's girlfriend, Gabi Hernandez (Camilla Banus), is going to be shocked and stunned. I don't know if surprised since she confided to his great-grandmother, Caroline Brady (Peggy McCay), that maybe he is not into her. That's right, Girlfriend! He's just not into you!! He's into guys!

This may be the first gay storyline for DAYS OF OUR LIVES but it is not the first time the soap has dealt with LGBT issues. From 1976 to 1977, the popular heroine Julie Williams (Susan Seaford Hayes) was dealt with bisexuality when it was revealed that she was pursued by a man named Karl Duval (Alejandro Rey) and his WIFE, Sharon Duval (Sally Stark). It was insinuated that a threesome was going to happen but that was very risque for daytime television. Bisexuality was too, so Sharon's attraction to Julie was re-written as a crazed fascination she had for her. The viewers were not ready for it, so Karl and Sharon were written out. There was backstage problems between head writer Pat Falken Smith and the NBC top brass. Julie was free to live married life with soulmate Doug Williams (real-life hubby Bill Hayes). By the way, Julie is Will's second cousin. Lucas's father, Dr. Bill Horton, and Julie's mother, the late Addie Horton Olson Williams, were siblings, so Lucas and Julie are first cousins. It would be interesting to have Julie tell Will about her old friend, Sharon Duval, as her way of accepting him for who and what he is. I doubt it though! I can wish, can't I?

Freddie played gay on the CW teen drama 90210 prior to his new role as Sonny Kiriakis.

IT'S A DONALD THING

Friday, June 24, 2011

2:00 PM

Clarence Clemons Passes On

2011-06-24T00:53:00.000-04:00

I was saddened to hear that sax man Clarence Clemons passed away from complications of a stroke he had a week or two ago. He knew that he was the "Big Man" of rocker Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band in New Jersey. I remember watching a music tribute to Dick Clark with Grandma and Grandpa a few years back when they recognized Clarence and his sax. See, they were knowledgeable about Black celebrities and musicians, especially Grandpa. I just found out from Ra Shawn that he worked on Aretha Franklin's 1980s hit song "Freeway Of Love". I did not know that. I read Monday's edition of METRO where Bruce Springsteen really gave Clarence top billing for contributing to the legacy of the E Street Band. I can imagine Bruce really and totally grieving for his friend. I can also sense that Bruce did not look at Clarence like he was inferior because he was Black. They truly had a true friendship beyond race and color. I also remember listening to Bruce's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" during the Christmas season on CD 106.7 FM from November to December. On it, Bruce asks Clarence if he had been nice or naughty all year long to determine if he deserved gifts from Santa. Aaaah!

RIP: Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons,
1942-2011

IT'S A DONALD THING
Friday, June 24, 2011
12:51 AM

Tupac Shakur's 1994 Shooter Revealed

2011-06-21T01:24:00.000-04:00

It is interesting how Tupac Shakur's name comes back into the media during the 40th anniversary of his birth and nearly the 15th anniversary of his death. I couldn't believe it when I heard that the person who shot and robbed him in New York in 1994 was revealed to have been a prison inmate named Dexter Isaac, who is serving life for murder, robbery and other offenses. He confessed to robbing and shooting Tupac on the orders of James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, a rap mogul and former CEO of Czar Entertainment. James Rosemond is currently on the run for heavy drug charges at the present. His lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, accused Dexter Isaac of lying on his client so in order to get out of his prison sentence by cooperating with federal authorities. James claims he had nothing to do with Tupac's shooting. Dexter claims he is sorry for the pain he caused on Afeni Shakur and Violetta Wallace, the mothers of Tupac and Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.). His shooting became the pivotal point of the East Coast and West Coast rap factions warring against each other. It was Bad Boy Records vs. Death Row Records. Tupac vs. Biggie. Suge vs. Sean Combs. More on that later.

I don't know but it seems like Dexter wants to make money on Tupac like everyone else besides Tupac's own mom Afeni. He would be considered a snitch in the hood for telling on James Rosemond for being the ringleader. Somehow I do not think the two of them were the real culprits. They are just the figure heads in this equation. It is useless to convinct him since he is already imprisoned. It is like Tupac is not going to get justice for his 1994 shooting anyway since he is dead from another shooting which was fatal. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to profit by writing his tell-all about his life as it relates to Tupac very soon or be offered a book deal if anyone really cares. He better hope he makes it that long.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
1:22 AM

Former Football Hero Foresees America's Same-Sex Anarchy

2011-06-19T02:50:00.000-04:00

Some of these homophobic Black men are so funny! I had to laugh when David Tyree, former Super Bowl hero from the New York Giants, claims that if same-sex marriage becomes legalized in New York and the rest of the United States of America, it will cause the country to become an anarchy. He let people know he is not for the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York when doing his Christian-stance PSA for the National Organization for Marriage. The anti-gay organization has played their radio ads on Black radio stations like 107.5 WBLS-FM and 1190 WLIB-AM.

He did his spot right after former teammate Michael Strahan and Nicole Murphy supported marriage equality for the Human Rights Campaign. He kills me because he calls himself a Christian. As far as I am concerned, many Christians in these churches are the former pimps, hos, rejects and criminals who found God. He cannot fully talk about gay folk because he was a crackhead and an alcoholic. I wonder how many dicks he tried to suck or actually sucked while begging for his crack. It is known that many crack addicts suck dick, fuck other dudes, and get fucked by dudes to get their crack.

I don't understand if David Tyree is so straight with his wife and children, then why does he care about LGBT people wanting to get married in New York? He is supposed to be a MAN with a wife and children. He is supposed to be benefiting from the American Dream with its heterosexual family values.

He was in the NFL where athletes fuck hookers, call girls, models, strippers, and groupies of all races and colors. They do orgies, threesomes, gang-bangs, double penetrations, and other kinds of kinky sex. I bet he participated in kinky sex sessions as a footballer. They all get down like that while talking bad about gay folk. I can imagine him, Eli Manning, and Michael Strahan fucking a whole bunch of slut puppies amid odors of ass, dicks, pussies, juices, and cum and used condoms and spills of lube all over the place.

He needs to stop becuz he knows there is a lot of down-low sex and closeted gayness in the NFL. He is aware of former athletes like David Kopay, Roy Simmons and Esera Tuaolo who came out of the closet after retiring from the NFL. Although there are no openly gay athletes at this time, there is a lot of homoeroticism on and off the court.

I wonder why he is such a Christian. I am not knocking Christians but many of them become born again for various reasons and not all of them good. What I am saying is that David Tyree smoked crack and drank lots of alcohol for a reason he is not telling. Is he one of these down-low brothers who talk shit about gay people yet gets his rocks off with other dudes??? Hmmm... It wouldn't surprise me. If he is so straight, then why does he care so much and what is the big deal???

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 19, 2011
2:48 AM

Michael Strahan and Nicole Murphy Supports Marriage Equality

2011-06-19T01:47:00.000-04:00

I guess not all Black people are homophobic after all. I was surprised to hear and see former New York Giants football player Michael Strahan and his fiancee, model Nicole Mitchell Murphy, support marriage equality in New York in a PSA (public service announcement) for the Human Rights Campaign. I will never declare that all Blacks are homophobic ever again.

I am really surprised at them for doing this, considering how they had been linked with media's negative slant on homosexuality in their own personal lives. Michael's second wife, Jean Strahan, lied about him having a gay affair with good friend Dr. Ian Smith. As for Nicole, oh honey! Her ex-husband, the famous comic/actor/singer Eddie Murphy, has made much of his fortune making fun of gay people in his stand-up comedy routines. Yet he was arrested by the police with pre-op transsexual prostitute Shalimar (nee Atisome Kenneth Seiuli) in his car in 1997. Shalimar received death threats from many of his fans. She was found dead a year later. Eddie was also linked in gay affairs with Arsenio Hall and Johnny Gill. He was recently outed in a tell-all by former tranny prostitute Toni Newman, who stated that Eddie was a fixture on Tranny Row on 14th Street in Manhattan and how he desired transgender prostitutes with the biggest dicks (chicks with dicks). His one-time fiancee, Melanie Brown (Mel B.), kinda alluded to the gay rumors in an interview she gave to ESSENCE in 2007.

Despite that, Michael and Nicole supports marriage equality in New York.

Thank You!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 19, 2011
1:45 AM

Tracy Morgan's Sudden Change Of Heart

2011-06-19T01:02:00.000-04:00

I know that as a spiritual person and a child of the God of my understanding, people can change! I am wondering if Tracy Morgan is really sorry for his homophobic rant about stabbing and killing his son if he ever came out as gay during a comedy stint in Nashville, Tennessee early this month. I am aware of his apology to the media and the LGBT community due to pressure from GLAAD. He knew he would have been fired from his hit NBC sitcom "30 Rock" if he didn't apologize and had his career dimmed like Isisah Washington, who got fired from hit ABC medical comedy-drama "Grey's Anatomy" for calling then-co-star T.R. Knight a faggot. Isisah never really bounced back from that although he just wrote a memoir about his newfound African roots. Tracy knew he had to be on his best behavior.

I gagged last week when he reached out to music, fashion, and television mogul Russell Simmons for a second chance. He wanted him to take him to the next gay rally in New York. I told Ra Shawn this and we were just surprised yet suspicious about Tracy's motives.

Ra Shawn told me how Tracy is telling a sob story about his father dying of AIDS. No, Dad was not on the down-low nor he was gay. Dad died from intravenous heroin usage of dirty needles with tainted HIV/AIDS blood. HIV/AIDS is NOT a gay disease!

I read about Tracy visiting homeless gay teens and victims of anti-gay violence at the Ali Forney Center in New York. The Ali Forney Center is named after Ali Forney, an African-American gay and transgender teen who advocated for homeless LGBT youth. He was killed on the streets of Harlem in 1997. It is headed by Carl Siciliano, who named it after Ali's memory. I looked at the photo and tears slowly came out of my eyes. Two of the homeless teens looked at Tracy as if they were skeptical of his agenda. They told their stories and experiences as did relatives of anti-gay hate crime victims at a meeting sponsored by GLAAD.

I do hope Tracy Morgan is sincere about reaching out to the LGBT community despite being pressured by GLAAD, NBC, and Tina Fey. I do hope this teaches him a valuable lesson in tolerance and acceptance. It would be interesting if he marches down the Heritage of Pride Parade in Manhattan next Sunday on June 26, 2011.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 19, 2011
1:01 AM

Will New York Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?

2011-06-19T00:10:00.000-04:00

Since this is Gay Pride Month, there is a cliffhanger this weekend and it is to see if the New York Republican-run Senate will give a YES to legalizing same-sex marriage. I know this is a hot issue and has been for a long time. I am glad the State Assembly approved Governor Andrew Cuomo's Same-Sex Marriage Bill, much to the dismay of many Catholics, Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., and former Giants receiver David Tyree. New York ought to be the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage because of the rich history of LGBT culture and society in New York and the significance of the Gay Liberation Movement, spinning off from the gay revolt at Stonewall Bar in June 1969. While many straights and some gays dismiss marriage as a sacred institution but as a piece of paper, same-sex marriage is important to the LGBT community as were the struggles of African-Americans and interracial couples to marry in this country. Many may not agree with this, but marriage was always seen as a sacred institution for White heterosexual couples - really an ecomonic advantage for White hetero males who benefited the most since women could not inherit anything at all back in the day. If a White hetero male married a rich White woman and something happened to him, she was not getting crap from his estate. Marriage was always tied in with Western inheritance law. The mindfuck to many when it comes to marriage equality is that gays and lesbians would rebel against the old Western hetero patriarchal notion of marriage. I had a conversation with my uncle, Larry McDaniel, who feels that marriage is not a big deal for gays to fight for. I disagree with him because I have heard sad stories when something happened to one of the partners in LGBT relationships and domestic partnerships. I watched the segment of the HBO film "If These Walls Could Talk 2" with actresses Vanessa Redgrave and Marian Seldes. They played a lifetime lesbian couple during the 1960s. Marian's character died and her distant nephew, his wife, and their daughter, who were not in touch with her because of her lesbianism, suddenly came to claim his aunt's home she shared with her partner. Meanwhile, Vanessa's character was told that she could take some things with her but it was made clear she was not getting the house. I felt that was fucked up so this is why I am voting for same-sex marriage for all LGBT couples who deserve long-awaited honeymoons. I do not want my partner's family to tell me I cannot have what me and him worked so hard for together, especially if they disowned him for being gay. Fuck dat!
I want New York to legalize same-sex marriage so I can marry my boo whoever he will be in my own state, God willing I am still here in New York. I don't care what Uncle Larry says but marriage is important to the LGBT community. I am for same-sex marriage equality. Yes, I, an African-American gay man, is for marriage for everyone, straight, LGBT, Black, White, rich, poor, what have you. Love Is Love!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 19, 2011
12:08 AM

Like Assholes, We All Got One!

2011-06-18T23:12:00.002-04:00

I don't have time to debate Roland S. Martin at all. I heard he likes to debate other people over their opinions. I simply stated that he is homophobic but he claims he is not. As a result, he called me an ignorant lying fool because I called him on his homophobia. He knew that he defended Tracy Morgan because he felt no sympathy for gays. He did state that Tracy was entitled to his freedom of speech under the First Amendment. Again, he denied that. When it came to him and his wife Jacquie conducting conversion therapy to those conflicted with their sexuality, he denied that by dismissing Max Blumenthal's claims.

As the blogger for IT'S A DONALD THING, I have a responsibility for putting out entries which will interest, intrigue, entertain, and educate my readers and fans. I am not a hack writer who gets thrills from slander and libel. I am not that crazy nor stupid. I research my sources before I type all of my entries. IT'S A DONALD THING has been a blog which puts a spin on whatever is on my mind in the news and popular culture. I would never claim nor lie on someone just to do it. That is so tacky and classless. Roland feels otherwise and that is his opinion. I will continue to have IT'S A DONALD THING as a blog which will hopefully make my readers and fans look at events and people in a different light than having mainstream opinions thrown down their throats. IT'S A DONALD THING will be a part of my life until whenever. Roland is entitled to his opinion. Like assholes, we all have one!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 18, 2011
11:11 PM

Anthony Weiner Resigns

2011-06-18T00:16:00.000-04:00

Like I suspected, Anthony Weiner resigned from his seat in Congress as Representative for New York's Congressional 9th District. He was pressured by his own Democratic Party, especially from President Barack Obama, to step down. He did it yesterday on Thursday, June 16, 2011.

Porn stars suddenly came out of the woodwork to publicly embarrass Weiner. It is just so ironic that they pop up in the midst of sex scandals involving celebrities and politicians.

I just believe that Weiner was singled out because he was always for gay rights and same sex marriage and would've gave his vote a yay in New York becoming the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage. I know this doesn't excuse him from sending explicit photos of his erect dick and other body parts to those six women on Twitter and other social networks, but it just seems so strange that President Bill Clinton got his dick sucked by Monica Lewinsky and was not called to resign. While most people feel Weiner shouldn't have resigned, he did to the pressure of the Democrats. I think some of the pleasure in getting him out was due to his overwhelming support of gay rights and same-sex marriage.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 18, 2011
12:14 AM

Cheyenne Jackson Tears Into Tracy's Homophobic Asshole

2011-06-13T00:17:00.000-04:00

I am glad that actor and singer Cheyenne Jackson spoke out against Tracy Morgan's homophobic rant of threatening to stab and kill his son if he ever came out as gay. It must have been disappointing to hear that his own co-star from their hit NBC sitcom "30 Rock" made such a comment like that and it was intended towards gays. Cheyenne is an out actor and very well known in the LGBT community as a LGBT rights supporter, ambassador for amFAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research), and the national ambassdor for the Hetrick-Martin Institute. I don't blame Cheyenne for standing up to Tracy's homophobia as did Wanda Sykes. He is a new hero to me. Good for him!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Monday, June 13, 2011
12:16 AM

Roland Martin's Homophobic Defense of Tracy

2011-06-13T00:02:00.001-04:00

I knew I smelled a rat when CNN and TVOne commentator, analyst, columnist and journalist Roland S. Martin seemed like he was for Proposition 8 in California a year or two ago. I had a sense of homophobia from him. I lost a lot of respect for him. I thought he was a breath of Black fresh air at CNN but I guess he is not after all.

Roland defends Tracy Morgan's homophobic rant of killing his son if he ever came out as gay. His reason is because Tracy is protected under his First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech as a comic. What Tracy said was not comedy but his own hatred tinged with violence. That is not comedy at all! Like Wanda Sykes told him, that is a bunch of shit. So Roland Martin defends Tracy's right to free speech, huh? He is a typical straight Black man who hates gays and women with his fat ass. Roland knows he is probably one of those undercover Black men on the down low. He defends homophobia tinged with violence. How special! I bet if a White comedian stated that he could kill his child for bringing a Black boy-or-girlfriend home, Roland would protest that.

Roland Martin needs to get off his fat ass and tell real stories on CNN and TVOne about how gays are raped and killed in Jamaica.

Roland Martin needs to get off his fat ass and tell real stories on CNN and TVOne about homophobia in hip-hop and Black popular culture.

Guess what? He and his wife Jacquie Hood Martin had a nerve to conduct "conversion therapy" for the LGBT community to walk away from the so-called gay lifestyle.

Instead of focusing on hating on gays and defending homophobic assholes like Tracy and Bishop Eddie Long, he needs to work on his funky diet.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 12, 2011
11:56 PM

Chris Rock's Second Thought On Tracy

2011-06-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

After being told off by Wanda Sykes and many irate bloggers, Tweeters, and Facebookers about defending his pal Tracy Morgan's right to free speech, Chris Rock suddenly had a change of heart. He did not realize the full violent extent of Tracy's rant. Tracy meant it when he threatened to stab his son if he ever came out to be gay. Chris must have had a flashback because he remembered his father threatening to kill him if he ever brought a White girl to meet the Rock family. We do know how Chris loves to fuck White women behind Malaak's back and end up being questioned as to if he fathered biracial children. Yall remember his trysts with Monika Zsibrita and Kali-Mari Bowyer? There you go! Suddenly, he understood what the big deal about Tracy's homophobic rant was. Chris should've analyzed the situation before rallying and defending his dumb-ass, alcoholic, and homophobic friend.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 12, 2011
11:28 PM

Is John Leguizamo Passing For Boricua???

2011-06-12T23:14:00.000-04:00

I heard on 98.7 KISS-FM yesterday that Latino comic/actor John Leguizamo has been allegedly passing for Puerto Rican. According to his father, Albert, John is 100 percent Colombian! John has been known in the industry as Puerto Rican and Colombian. John is being badgered by this because he was selected as the Global Ambassador for the Arts for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade today in New York City. Alberto accused him of lying to the Puerto Rican people about his heritage. John insists that Alberto was born in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, but his estranged dad claims he never been there! Oh baby!

Is John really 100% Colombian passing for a Boricua? I don't know him like that but for what I have heard about him throughout the years, he was a mixed person of Puerto Rican and Colombian heritage. His mother, Luz, hailed from Colombia. John was born in Bogota, Colombia himself. I am going to say this and be real about it. I feel that if John is passing for being half-Puerto Rican, it is because he had to make a name for himself in the entertainment industry as an actor, playwright, and comic. I believe that since many people back in the day consider all Hispanics/Latinos under the Puerto Rican umbrella, he probably went with that. Puerto Rican was the en vogue Latin culture in New York for many years so of course if John was really 100 percent Colombian, he decided to claim he was half Puerto Rican to be on the "winning" team. There have been African-Americans and Whites who wanted to be Puerto Rican and I knew several of them during my high-school days at John Bowne High School. Some of them did pass for Puerto Rican and I know names but I will not dish. In John's case, I believe that if he was 100 percent Colombian, he did not want to get into the industry with the stigma of coming from a nation which received the reputation of being one of the most inflential illegal drug cartel nations in the world, especially with the cultivation of the coca plant, which was made into cocaine. The United States has had her love-hate relationship with Colombia, although she waged the so-called War on Drugs on Colombia. Plus, Pablo Escobar was still alive at that time and was idolized by many in the underworld and the hood. Being Colombian in the 1980s and 1990s was not en vogue as far as the arts were concerned so if John passed, he was going to most likely claim half-Puerto Rican because it was safe and he can easily get into the arts and entertainment. His father, Alberto, did not have a problem getting benefits from his son's fame and fortune from the Puerto Rican community, but now suddenly he has a problem. How can John be 100 Colombian since he claimed Alberto's father was Italian and Luz's father was Lebanese??? I am not touching that but you know when one gets famous, he or she is suddenly multiracial and multicultural. When he or she is broke, he or she is simply known as being one race or culture. It seemed like when John got started out in the entertainment industry, he was just Puerto Rican and Colombian. Nearly 30 years later and richer, he is Puerto Rican, Colombian (Incan), Italian, Lebanese, and Mestizo.

Does it matter to the Latino community??? I don't think so because he is descended from their favorite Spanish and Native/Amerindian forebears, no matter what his nationality is, real or imagined. He has the stereotypical all Latin look: black hair, light skin, and European features, so he is fine. He will be forgiven by the Puerto Rican community. I don't know what Alberto's motives were with this. He is probably mad with John, who is not giving him any more money. Alberto did not have a problem being identified and listed as Puerto Rican until now. It sounds like a money issue.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 12, 2011
11:13 PM

Wanda Sykes Responds to Tracy Morgan's Homophobia

2011-06-12T22:14:00.000-04:00

I was glad that Black lesbian comic Wanda Sykes, who happens to share the same birthday as me (March 7), spoke out against Tracy Morgan's homophobic tirade in Nashville. She tweeted her response on Twitter and she blames the society on Tracy's behavior, especially the homophobic political climate in Nashville and other parts of the Bible Belt of the South. She noted that he wouldn't have been that stupid to make those homophobic rant in Los Angeles. She also got after Chris Rock and CNN anchor Roland Martin for defending Tracy's right to free speech. Although she agreed that Tracy had free speech, what she disagreed with was the violent threat to his son, whom he would stab if he came out to him as gay. It was not comedy because it went onto a whole other level. There are a lot of anti-gay crimes which are still happening in this country and for Tracy to say all of those things is unacceptable. Tracy's negative attitudes towards LGBT people would cause someone to commit suicide and have society to bully, torment, rape, and kill LGBT people. I am glad that Wanda spoke out and did it with class and eloquence. She is my new shero and I love her for sticking it to three African-American straight males who have issues with women and gays.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 12, 2011
10:13 PM

Bishop Eddie Long's Karma

2011-06-12T00:38:00.000-04:00

Bishop Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church is slowly but surely crumbling down. This is his karma for his anti-gay reputation and his molesting those four young brothers Maurice Franklin, Anthony Flagg, Jamal Parris, and Spencer LeGrande. He had no choice but to settle out of court. Everyone in his church, community, and the widespread African-American media knew he did it, but most wanted it under the rug like they do to incest and sexual abuse victims. I am glad they got their money but they have to still deal with the sexual abuse and molestation for the rest of their lives.

Bishop Eddie Long's wife, Vanessa, left him although she knew what her husband was capable of. She was publicly embarrassed as First Lady.

Reverend Bernice King left the church as a member as well. The homophobic daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King had to eat humble pie and crow.

Many of the congregants departed and revoked their memberships.

He has to realize that when he is preaching hate, karma comes back to bite him in the butt.

What Comes Around Goes Around!

God Does Not Like Ugly and Is Not Too Fond Of Pretty!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 12, 2011
12:37 AM

Chris Rock Defends Tracy's Homophobia

2011-06-11T23:44:00.000-04:00

Chris Rock defended fellow SNL alum and friend Tracy Morgan's right to threaten to kill his son if the son revealed he was gay. Chris Rock had the nerve to say on Twitter: "I dont know about you, but I dont want to live in world where Tracy Morgan cant say foul inappropriate shit."

Censorship of comedians is one thing but to threaten to stab and kill one's own child (infanticide) is sick and on a different level altogether. It is also sicker when Tracy justified doing it if his son came out of the closet. That is anti-gay and homophobic tinged with violence. One of my good friends, whose name I will not mention, told me how her mother tried to beat the gayness out of her when she was younger. Homophobic violence towards children and young adults happen daily in all countries. This is one of the reasons why many young LGBT people leave home: to escape homophobic parents, guardians, and relatives. I bet Chris would beat or kill his daughters Lola and Zahra if they came out as lesbians. Some people are just so ignorant.

Chris cannot talk about gay folks because he cheated on his wife, humanitarian Malaak Compton-Rock, with two White women named Monika Zsibrita, who was rumored in the tabloids to have been pregnant with Chris's child but it turned out false, and Kali-Mari Bowyer, a celebrity journalist and founder of anti-gossip website GOSSIP AIN'T SWEET who claimed he fathered her child. Straight men always talk foul about gay folk yet they are always fucking something in a skirt outside of their relationships and marriages.

Chris needs to mind his business and shut the fuck up because he needs to recognize that his career was kept alive on HBO by a certain Hollywood Black lesbian who goes by the name of Wanda Sykes, who was on the head writing team on "The Chris Rock Show".

Chris needs to keep in mind that Tichina Arnold, who played the matriarch Rochelle, on "Everybody Hates Chris", has been rumored to be a lesbian in the down-low female circles despite having her daughter and being publicly linked with men. She was rumored to have been dating both M.C. Lyte and Tisha Campbell-Martin, her longtime best friend from the film "The Little Shop of Horrors".

As I am finishing this blog, I am going to read what Wanda had to say or tweet about Tracy and Chris. I know she did it with fierceness and shade.

The Tracy Morgan homophobic rant and its response from Chris Rock continues into my blog about Wanda Sykes tomorrow.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 11, 2011
11:42 PM

Tracy Morgan's Homophobic Threat

2011-06-11T22:01:00.000-04:00

Here we go again: another homophobic asshole making anti-gay comments during Gay Pride Month and his name is Tracy Morgan. That's right! Tracy Morgan, the buffoon from NBC's hit sitcom "30 Rock" and alum from "Saturday Night Live". He stated that he would pull out a knife and stab his son if he ever came out of the closet as gay and he said this during a stand-up event in Nashville, Tennessee. Many of the audience was disgusted and turned off by his rant. He was reprimanded by the media watch-dog organization GLAAD, NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt, and co-star/producer Tina Fey to condemn his anti-gay comments. Tracy hurried and apologized because he was pressured to or his career would have been going down the toilet. Tina applauded his apology and stated that he was not a hateful man in his true nature. However, she did acknowledge the presence of LGBT cast and crew at "30 Rock" because if it weren't for them, Tracy would not be employed and that is so true. Tina instantly became a new straight ally in my eyes but I have a feeling that Tracy will not get fired from "30 Rock" as Tracy Jordan because the sitcom needs the Black male buffoon to keep the ratings afloat and racial stereotypes of Black men going.

This is interesting because Ra Shawn told me how Tracy was in the Notorious BIG music video "Notorious" and in one scene he engaged in S&M with Hollywood hip-hop slut Lil Kim. It looked like his character was going to get plunged up the butt maybe by Lil Kim's strap-on dick.

The above photo mimicks Janet Jackson's infamous 1993 Rolling Stone cover with her then-unknown-husband, Rene Elizondo Jr., cupping her breasts in his hands. He must have no idea of Janet's space in the LGBT community as an icon and straight ally.

Tracy kinda acted flamey on an episode of "Saturday Night Live" several years ago after he lost weight. I gagged when catching the last few minutes of an episode of "30 Rock", Tracy's character, Tracy Jordan, was being carried by another dude. Yes! Tracy was being carried by one of his homeboys, Dot Com (nee Walter Slattery). I believe Dot Com wore a fur coat. I imagined Dot Com carrying Tracy home, dropping him onto the couch and bed, and having hot down-low sex in the hood. The sight of a big Black man carrying another big Black man in his arms was very homoerotic.

I do believe Tracy's well-known alcoholism has somewhat to do with repressed homosexuality. He has issues and isms or else he would not be drinking all of that alcohol like it's water. It is known that the staunch homophobes secretly want to be LGBT but feel they cannot live in their truth for whatever reason.

I don't really watch "30 Rock" anyway so he will not be getting my support and viewership. Although he apologized, he is not sorry at all. He did it to save his ignorant diabetic ass so he is not terminated from "30 Rock".

He got support from fellow "Saturday Night Live" alum and comic friend Chris Rock. I will continue this in my blog on Chris's defense of Tracy's homophobic rant.

Tracy needs to stop hating on gay folk, focus on his diabetes, stop drinking, and improve his fucked-up health.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 11, 2011
10:00 PM

A Politician With His Dick Out

2011-06-11T21:06:00.000-04:00

Anthony Weiner, the United States Representative for New York's 9th Congressional District (Southern Brooklyn, South and Central Queens), is the scandalized politician of the month. He had the nerve to claim his Twitter account was hacked when a photo with an erect penis covered by briefs were leaked to a 21-year-old college student who followed him on Twitter. When it was revealed that she was an African-American woman named Gennette Cordova, I was like, another interracial sex scandal between a White male and a Black female. It was like the 2011 version of the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings scandal. America began tripping out not only because of the race thing but for the fact he was recently a newlywed. As the story unraveled, it was revealed that pictures of other body parts were sent to other women besides Gennette. Anthony Weiner had the nerve to get a lawyer instead of the NYPD and that was questionable since he claimed his Twitter account was hacked. He ended up confessing to sending the photos to the other women over three years. The media began making fun of his last name, which is slang for penis. The media also compared him to President Bill Clinton, who disgraced America for allowing his former intern, Monica Lewinsky, to give him a blow job in the Oval Office with her ugly fat ass. Bill even had the nerve to cum on her blouse. Dumb ass! I had no clue that Anthony's pregnant Indian-Pakistani wife, Huma Abedin, is the Deputy Chief of Staff and Aide to United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. There goes the Clinton association. I laughed when I read about Bill Clinton officiating over the wedding of Anthony and Huma. I had no idea he had the authority to marry people. Who knew! Although he refused to resign from his seat, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced that she had requested an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. A few days later, Pelosi and several other Democrats called for his resignation. He decided to take an absence from his position to get professional help in order to make his marriage to Huma work. Somehow, I suspect there is something deeper to this scandal than what the media is telling us. I don't believe everything the mainstream media says. We all know this is Gay Pride Month and he has been a straight ally to the LGBT community for years. New York is supposed to be one of the next contending states to make gay marriage legal. Anthony Weiner will sure vote for it and the right-wing Democrats and Republicans know it too. I always thought he was gay although he proclaimed he was straight. Anyway, I see this as a ways to get him out of the way because he is a proponent for gay rights. By the way, he was one of the politicians who fought for the defunct Black gay organization POCC (People of Color In Crisis) to have Pride in the City to be alloted space at Jacob Riis Beach in 2006 along with New York City Councilwoman Leticia James. The U.S. National Park Service originally denied POCC a permit to have the beach event until Anthony Weiner, Leticia James, and the LGBT communities fought that homophobic and racist bullshit. POCC was headed by Gary English at the time and the clients and participants were LGBT people of color (African-American, Caribbean, African, and Latino). Personally, I don't feel he should resign because he sent photos. It was not like he physically cheated on Huma, but I guess he emotionally cheated on her. He did lie and that was when things got complicated. He should have just been honest from the start. There are many women who feel that Huma should leave, but many women who get cheated on do not leave and that is a reality. I do not condone infidelity at all but it was not like he affected the nation financially and emotionally. Every American male politician have been fucking other women since the Thirteen Colonies and the foundation of the United States of America. This is not new at all so all of those politicians and public civilians who want him out cannot talk at all because the Founding Fathers cheated on their wives with all kinds of women from different races and socioeconomic levels. It is the American Way!

Harlem Pastors Moaning About Harlem Pride

2011-06-11T12:37:00.001-04:00

Harlem Pride 2011 will take place from Thursday, June 23, 2011 to Sunday, June 26, 2011 in the former Black mecca of Harlem in Upper Manhattan. The LGBT communities were expected to enjoy and celebrate Gay Pride Month in Harlem with no BS. It was no problem about obtaining the permit to have this. What the problem is that some local African-American pastors and imams do not want the LGBT presence to show up for Family Day in Marcus Garvey Park on Saturday, June 25, 2011. They referred to the LGBT community as an abomination or commented on God creating Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Let's not forget how they even referred to the community as pedophiles and child molesters. They even had the nerve to convince the Harlem community, whom they consider to be all 100 percent straight. They are very ignorant and arrogant for their own good because they need to realize and recognize that many residents of Harlem are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. Some of these pastors are a trip because some of them are in the closet anyway, living in Harlem, which has been a center for LGBT life and culture since the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. It is ironic that many of the landmarks are named after Black LGBT people like the Countee Cullen Branch on 136th St between Adam Clayton Powell and Lenox. Countee married Yolanda DuBois, the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, but had a longtime lover named Harold Jackman, a teacher with whom he spent time during his honeymoon. Countee had a crush on Langston Hughes, another Black gay man and supposed asexual. Yolande was rumored to have been a lesbian. Homophobic Harlemites need to stop their mess because Harlem is very Homo Harlem. Ask Michael Henry Adams. Michael Henry Adams is an expert on Harlem architecture and landmarks. He is also famous for his tours of Homo Harlem. Getting back to these pastors, they know that some of them be getting boy and man pussies in the Marcus Garvey and St. Nicholas parks. They know various down-low sex parties in the area. They know about the Mount Morris Baths Incorporated on Madison Avenue between 124th and 125th Streets. They know about the house balls. They need to stop with their mess. Meanwhile, many straight residents don't have a problem with Harlem Pride nor the planned Family Day festivities in Marcus Garvey Park. If many of them don't have a problem, so the pastors need to shut the hell up and let people live their lives. One pastor told the media that he and his family will not walk outside that day, thinking it will be a 2011 version of Sodom and Gomorrah in their twisted minds. These pastors need to clean up their own lives instead of condemning gay folk. They need to stop sleeping with married women. They need to stop seducing gay men. They need to stop taking the church money to glamourize their male and female mistresses. They need to stop ripping off poor, working-poor, working-class, and middle-class congregants in these churches. They need to stop showing off their limousines, private jets, and fancy cars. They need to stop living in those gala mansions in the suburbs. They need to stop casting stones before cleaning their own glass houses.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 11, 2011
12:35 PM

Tranny's Memoir Spooks Three Celebs

2011-06-11T01:50:00.001-04:00

I want to read I RISE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF TONI NEWMAN so bad because of the gossip. I read her profile cover story in HIP HOP WEEKLY in which she named three celebrities who sought the sexual services from transgenders, pre-op transsexuals, and post-op transsexuals. She named LL Cool J., Mister Cee, and Eddie Murphy. She took polygraph tests and passed with flying colors. How they doin'???

LL Cool J. has been the subject of many rumors, legends, and tall-tales in the gay community for years. He was said to have been a member of a prominent house and walked in some of the house balls back during the early-to-mid 1980s. No one is talking about which house LL Cool J. belonged to. He is one of the few rappers who never made homophobic and anti-gay comments. His late grandmother, Ellen Griffin, was said to have been very gay-friendly. According to MEDIA TAKE OUT, LL Cool J. told paparazzi that he would expand his options if gay men hit on him. He was supposedly spotted in a gay bar by someone who called HOT 97 with the gossip. Eight of his music videos were directed by Paris Barclay, an openly gay African-American television producer and director, back during the 1990s.

Eddie Murphy has made his fortune making fun of gays in his stand-up comedy routines during the 1980s, yet got arrested after soliciting a tranny hooker named Shalimar (nee Saoaumaga Atisone Kenneth Seiuli), who was in his car in 1997. She received death threats from Eddie Murphy fans. She was found murdered a year later in 1988. I have a feeling he had her killed because he was still married to Nicole at the time and did not want his fetish for tranny hookers to be revealed. He was later rumored to have been having a gay relationship with late-night talk Black king Arsenio Hall. He was also linked to another gay relationship with singer Johnny Gill. After all, they were seen walking out of a posh gay club one night. According to Toni, Eddie loves chicks with dicks, especially the ones with the biggest dicks.

Mister Cee already has a reputation with soliciting hookers after being arrested for having a male prostitute named Lawrence Campbell perform oral sex (blow job, sucking dick) on him in a car in the West Village (the Village, the Vill, Greenwich Village). The hip-hop community was shocked since he was a popular DJ at HOT 97, which station is located in the Village, and produced for the late Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls).

I will read this book for sure. I will support Toni Newman. I hope she will be at the Harlem Book Fair because that would be interesting. I wonder if she will make an appearance on The Wendy Williams Show. Chile, this is juicy!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 11, 2011
1:48 AM

Cher's Transphobia Hypocrisy

2011-06-11T00:42:00.000-04:00

I watched the documentary series "Becoming Chaz" on OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network) this past Tuesday. Since I am a gay African-American brother, I consider transgender and transsexual people my brothers, sisters, and bristas. I don't discriminate against them at all. They are human beings so I don't see what the motherfuckin' big deal is. Okay, some men feel like they have feminine spirits and some women feel like they have masculine spirits. Although most people would consider me more yin than yang, I would never change myself into a physical woman. I just could not see myself living life as Donna Peebles. Some people wonder why Chastity Bono, the daughter of pop culture icons Sonny Bono and Cher, transformed herself from a lesbian woman into a man named Chaz Bono. I am still educating myself about the transgender experience. Some people feel that people should not alter nor change what God gave all of us. If a man feels like he wants to live life as a woman and if a woman feels like she wants to live life as a man, so allow them to seek out their dreams and goals.

I have an issue with Cher regarding Chastity/Chaz. She had an issue with Chastity coming out of the closet as a lesbian during the lesbian chic 1990s but eventually came to terms with it. She even became an advocate for the LGBT community and a gay icon. Now, Cher has another issue accepting her daughter as her "son" and as a "he". She was on "The David Letterman Show" on which she broke her silence about her feelings to Chastity's transition into Chaz. Cher even acted like she did not want to be bothered with Chaz to the point when she was not sure when she would see him. Damn, that is like Cher disowning Chaz in her own way. Well, Cher cannot talk about anyone changing their body parts and physical features. She has had face lifts to destroy her original ethnic-looking face with her nose, which she inherited from her Armenian ancestors, via her father John Paul Sarkisian. Her mother, Georgia Holt, has European, Native American, and Melungeon (a triracial community of mixed African, European, and Native American ancestry), so that means Cher, her sister Georgianne LaPiere, Chaz, and her other son Elijah Blue are multiracial. Cher altered herself so much throughout the years to the fact she looks very White without the Armenian nose and Native American heritage. She acted as if she is Italian-American or something. This is why she cannot talk about Chastity's new identity as Chaz. She should practice what she preaches. I guess she'll come around eventually. We'll see what will happen. Stay tuned!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, June 11, 2011
12:41 AM

Don Lemon Comes Out in Memoir

2011-06-11T00:01:00.001-04:00

When I heard that CNN reporter Don Lemon came out in his memoir TRANSPARENT and how he was molested, I was like, oh boy, here comes a Black middle-class buppie associating homosexuality with pedophilia. I was glad he did not cite that his sexual abuse was the direct origin of his homosexuality. I was glad he came out of his closet to live in his truth. However, Cleo Manago, the founder of BMX (Black Men's XChange), had an issue of the media coverage of Don Lemon because of his revelation of his gayness. I wondered if Don's boyfriend, a CNN producer named Ben Tinker, was Black or White. When it was confirmed that Ben was White, I couldn't say that I wasn't surprised at all. Many Black gay men date outside of their race in the gay community in large numbers. There are Black gay/SGL (Same Gender Loving) men who love other Black gay/SGL men. Don Lemon just never seemed to be a Power To the People type of Black gay man like many Black gay men. In other words, he was never seen as a racial and sexual threat to White gay men. I am not knocking his choice for a mate. That is his life and he is living it.

His memoir, TRANSPARENT, is in bookstores now. I will buy it and support him. After all, Don Lemon is now a member of the Black LGBT community and family. This is Gay Pride Month too so yall better recognize!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Friday, June 10, 2011
11:59 PM

Geronimo "JiJaga" Pratt's Freedom Ended by Death

2011-06-08T01:12:00.000-04:00

I was really surprised to hear that Geronimo (nee Elmer) "JiJaga" Pratt made transition to the Ancestors in his adopted home of Tanzania, East Africa.

He was a high-ranking Black Panther who was unjustly imprisoned for twenty-seven years for a murder-robbery he did not commit. He was in Oakland, California at the time when Caroline Olsen, a White elementary school teacher, was kidnapped and murdered in Santa Monica in 1968. He was framed for the crime by Julius Butler, a Black Panther and police informant. He was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping in 1970. He always maintained his innocence. His conviction was vacated twenty seven years later in 1997 when his attorneys Johnnie Cochran, Stuart Hanlon, and William Paparian proved that the prosecution had concealed evidence that could exonerated Pratt and the government had not disclosed that Julius Butler was an informant for the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department. He was released and given a $4.5 million settlement for false imprisonment.

I heard about him when I was an undergraduate student at City College of CUNY as a History major and a wannabe Afrocentric activist. I called myself trying out Socialism with the International Socialist Organization (ISO). I went to Baruch College with another member named Joan Parkin to hear Geronimo "JiJaga" Pratt speak on one Friday night. I was glad I heard him as the venue was crowded. He was very angry and had every right to be. I didn't really get it back then but I do now. He spent most of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit for pete's sake. He was supported by Kathleen Cleaver, longtime friend and fellow former Black Panther. I know this may be out of color but I found him to be a fine Black man of a certain age who aged good like fine wine.

I did not even know he moved to Tanzania. I guess he got tired of the United States government with the racism, discrimination, injustice, prejudice, and the other issues and isms, so he left to live in the Motherland. I didn't blame him at all. After all, he was prosecuted and persecuted because he was African-American and a Black Panther. It is a shame that he lived fourteen years as a free man until his fatal heart attack.

He was the godfather of the late slain Tupac Amaru Shakur. He was close friends with Mutulu Shakur, a political prisoner who was a member of the Republic of New Afrika and the BLA (Black Liberation Army) and Tupac's stepfather via his marriage to Afeni Shakur.

I still want to read LAST MAN STANDING: THE TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH OF GERONIMO PRATT by Jack Olsen.

Rest In Peace
Elmer "Geronimo JiJaga" Pratt
1947-2011

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Anymore

2011-06-08T00:17:00.001-04:00

Gil Scott-Heron, who was considered the father of rap and hip-hop culture, made transition to the Ancestors at the age of 63 on May 27. He was a jazz and soul poet, musician, and author who was known for his work as a spoken word artist during the 1970s and the 1980s.

He was known for his poem and song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". It eventually became the title for one of his jazz albums. It has been used by various musicians, rappers, and spoken word artists within their own interpretation.
It was the subject of a Nike commercial which featured rapper/activist KRS-One's re-recording and appearances by NBA athletes like Jason Kidd and Kevin Garnett.

I remember finding his album "The Bottle" which he colloborated with Brian Jackson, a keyboardist, flautist, singer, composer, and producer, in my former home on 142nd Street in Jamaica, New York. I wonder if it belonged to my late Aunt Rogina, who bought albums all the time from The Wiz and other record stores back in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Rest In Peace
Gil Scott-Heron
1949-2011

IT'S A DONALD THING
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
12:16 AM

Afro-Brazilian Activist Makes Transition to Ancestors at 97

2011-06-07T23:51:00.000-04:00

Abdias do Nascimento, longtime Afro-Brazilian activist on the behalf of the community in Salvador da Bahia (Bahia), made transition to the Ancestors at the age of 97 last week.

My co-worker, Adenike Cumberland, shown me his obituary in The New York Times on her ITouch. We discussed him in the context of his recent appearance on the four-part PBS series "Black In Latin America" when Dr. Henry Louis Gates interviewed him at his home in Brazil. Abdias had a cane and was attended by a woman.

He was featured in the 1991 article "Blacks in Brazil" by Charles Whitaker in EBONY. He was a fierce Afro-Brazilian activist who admitted that Brazil was not a racial democracy where the majority of Black and biracial people were living in favelas in poor neighborhoods and racism was still alive. He had an issue with the influence of controversial White cultural icon Xuxa on the minds and hearts of young Black and Brown children in Brazil.

I even purchased one of his books, AFRICANS IN BRAZIL: A PAN-AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE, from a Black bookstore which was located in the basement of the former Gertz Plaza Mall in Jamaica, New York. I believe I still have it in my collection or I sold it to someone. I hope I didn't.

Rest In Peace
Abdias do Nascimento: 1914-2011

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
11:49 PM

Beyonce FINALLY Acknowledges LeToya and LaTavia

2011-06-07T19:44:00.001-04:00

I couldn't believe it when Beyonce finally acknowledged two of the original Destiny's Child members, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson, when accepting a special award at the 2011 Billboard Awards. I gagged so fast, I had to call Ra Shawn up but he was unable to pick up the phone. I thought it was about time. What was she waiting for?

I suspect that since she dropped her father, Matthew Knowles, as her manager, she is correcting many of his wrongs, one of which was getting rid of LeToya and LaTavia without telling them and replacing them with Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin. That created a rift between LeToya and LaTavia, the Knowles family (Matthew, Tina, Beyonce, and Solange), and Kelly Rowland to the point the issue was taken to court.

It all worked itself out as LeToya returned to the music industry as a platinum-album-selling soloist and became a force to be reckoned with in the R&B/hip-hop community. LeToya even became an acclaimed actress in the independent film "Preacher's Kid" and other films like "Killers" and "From the Rough". She is joining the cast of the hit HBO series "Treme". As for LaTavia, she is still making music but has yet to make a triumphant return as a solo artist. She was supposed to have been working on a book. People are wondering if she is going to write about Destiny's Child and the Knowles family. She appeared on Bravo's hit reality series "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" when she visited Attorney Phaedra Parks for consultation. I am waiting for LaTavia to make her motherfuckin' return with a bang.

I am going to say this and I don't care but Beyonce is mad at Matthew for cheating on Tina and producing her half-brother, Nixon Wright Knowles (via his affair with actress Alexsandra Wright). I said it and I am waiting for the Children to try to read me.

She did not mention Farrah Franklin, who was much prettier than her in my opinion and Matthew and Tina knew it. She was not supposed to have upstaged Beyonce's light-skinned Creole looks. Farrah was multiracial with African-American, Native American, and Italian-American roots. Farrah was forced to darken her skin at tanning salons as if to replicate a dark-skinned member. If that was the case, they could have just kept LeToya and LaTavia then. Farrah was then let go but she ended becoming an acclaimed actress in independent African-American film. Nevertheless, Beyonce was threatened by Farrah's looks and physical appearance. Let's be real about that shit!

Beyonce, if you really wanted to really acknowledge all of the members of Destiny's Child, you needed to mention Farrah too. Oh well!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
7:42 PM

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Another White Male Rapist of Black Women

2011-06-07T01:50:00.000-04:00

After watching The Celebrity Appentice one Sunday night, I couldn't believe what I heard about Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was arrested on a plane to France, fleeing from his hotel room at the Sofitel Hotel where he sexually attacked his hotel room maid. I was like damn! When the victim was revealed to have been a thirty-two-year-old African woman from Guinea, I already knew what the media was going to do. He was arrested, held on bail, released on bail, placed under house arrest, and plead not guilty at his arraignment yesterday. He feels that he will get off on the basis of his status as a White male, Frenchman, the managing director of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and possibly the next president of France that he will get off. Mostly, he will since he falls under the above categories.

Meanwhile, the victim here is the Guinean hotel maid but the racist tabloid The New York Post maligned her about living in an apartment reserved for people living with HIV/AIDS with her fifteen-year-old daughter. There is a question of whether she or her daughter has the virus. Regardless of that, she had no right to be sexually violated. The media labels her as the alleged victim. It is because she is an African woman so she cannot get raped. Women of African descent have been raped and sexually assaulted for centuries under slavery and accused of enticing their White male rapists to get hard and horny because of their so-called wanton nature. White males justified raping African, Native American, and other women of color globally by labelling them as tramps, wenches, bitches, whores, hoes, hos, sluts, Jezebels, tootsies, and other derogatory terms. Black women are supposed to be hot and able to fuck all night long. Black women are equated to the size of their Hottentot Venus asses inherited from Saartje "Sarah" Baartman, the sistah from South Africa who was kidnapped and taken to Britain and France as a freak show exhibit during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Music videos and rock and rap/hip-hop lyrics feature Black women under these racist-sexist stereotypes inherited from White male racist-sexist sexual fantasies of Black women during slavery. All I am saying is that the media feels the hotel maid could not have been raped or sexually attacked by a powerful White man like Dominique Strauss-Kahn because she is Black so therefore she must have wanted to fuck him or get fucked by him. It is the same media which claimed Tawana Brawley didn't get gang raped by those White men in Dutchess County during the late 1980s. It is the same media which claimed the Black woman was not raped by the White lacrosse team at St. John's University in 1990 or 1991. It is the same media which claimed the Black woman was not raped by the White male students at Duke University.

Whatever the outcome will be, I have a strange feeling that he is going to get off while the hotel maid has to retreat back into silence and seclusion. I have faith in God but I know how the system always let White male rapists off the hook especially when the victims and rape survivors are Black, Latina, Asian, Native American, biracial/multiracial, Pacific Islander, and other women of color.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
1:50 AM

Hasta La Vista, Arnold and Maria!

2011-06-07T00:43:00.000-04:00

I was surprised when I heard Arnold Schwartzenegger had a bastard child with his former maid/housekeeper (let's face it: the help) Mildred Patricia "Patty" Baena, who is of Guatemalan heritage. The son is named Joseph Baena, who was born a month after his half-brother, Christopher Schwartzenegger. Well, not really! As I have written in an early blog, history recorded male and female employers raping, fucking, sexing, sucking, licking, and humping their employees, slaves, serfs, servants, handmaidens, surrogate mothers, maids, au pairs, indentured servants, housekeepers, maids, butlers, chauffeurs, domestics, and other titles. History has also recorded the births of illegitimate, bastard, out-of-wedlock, secret, and love children from these unions, consensual or involuntary. Depending on the situation, some workers may have wanted to get fucked by certain employers for economic reasons. Whatever the situation, this has been going on since history's antiquity.

Arnold's soon-to-be ex-wife, Kennedy heiress and journalist Maria Shriver, moved out of their home after being humililated. I don't know what Arnold saw in Mildred because she is no beauty queen but I guess different strokes for different folks. Maria's face has been turning quite witchy like Kristian Alfonso (Hope Brady from NBC's soap "Days Of Our Lives") and Victoria Wyndham (Rachel Davis Matthews Frame Cory Hutchins from the classic soap "Another World"), so I guess Arnold got tired of waking up next to her. It is not he was always the best catch himself. Well, to some women and men, his muscular bodybuilding physique made him a sex symbol for over 40 years with his upper muscular chest and arms and fantasies of a big dick. Most bodybuilders got big massive chests and arms but possess small-ass dicks and nuts. Ill!

I don't feel sorry for him at all because he had been advocating for family values and morals against gay folks in their quest for marriage equality. Yet he had been fucking another woman outside of his marriage right in his home and in Maria's bed. What a scuzzbucket! I have always heard that politics make strange bedfellows anyway. I don't know why Maria is now bitching and complaining because when she first met Arnold in 1977, he was already messing with another woman named Sue Foray, a hairdresser's assistant. She knew what she got herself into but she wanted to be loved and felt since she was an overweight teen and young woman. I am tired of these girlfriends and wives claiming they had no clue of their men cheating on them or what they were capable of. I am sure Maria knew of his sexual history of groping on women's asses, his frequenting orgies and sex parties, and early participation in gay pornography. Arnold has always been a male ho or a manwhore. She came from a family history of uncles cheating on their wives with numerous mistresses so she knows the deal. She ain't that stupid nor naive so America should not feel so sorry for her. The writing was always on the wall for years but she chose not to leave back in the day. Many women stay with men for security and self-esteem issues, fully aware of their infidelities and other bullshit issues and isms. Maria only left because she got humililated in the American and global media as the jilted wife of the former governor of California, a famous journalist, and a Kennedy heiress.

I just read today that Arnold fucked behind Maria's back with Brigitte Nielsen, his one-time co-star from the 1986 movie "Red Sonja". I am not totally surprised. She was married to Sylvester "Sly" Stallone at the time but I feel it was a Hollywood union since she was in "Rocky IV". I can imagine Brigitte getting double penetrated by Arnold and Sly's muscular and possibly steroid dicks. I don't put anything past Hollywood at all. According to Jackie Stallone, Sly's mama, Brigitte had lesbian affairs too. I saw that on the short-lived Hollywood Babylon series with the late Tony Curtis. Brigitte suddenly admits she slept with Arnold because she still wants a career even after her interracial debacle with hip-hop reality show asshole Flavor Flav fizzled in the media as a joke. Oh please, Brigitte! Get a life and a hobby instead of living off being a media whore!

Arnold and Maria are now fighting each other in divorce court in California with high-profile attorneys. I have a feeling Maria is going to get a nice hefty divorce settlement, alimony, and child support since she is the soon-to-be ex-wife of California's right-wing Republican former governor. However, Arnold can show her how much a Terminator he can be by revealing some tawdry aspects of Maria's past. It is going to get ugly from this point. Well, it is already ugly as one of their children, Patrick, no longer wants to be known as a Schwartzenegger. He is going by his mother's surname Shriver on his Twitter page.

We'll see what will happen from this drama. Stay tuned!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
12:41 AM

Huxtable Grandma Makes Transition to Ancestors

2011-06-05T05:16:00.000-04:00

I was saddened to hear that Clarice Taylor, an African-American actress of theater, film, and television, made transition to the Ancestors at the age of 93. She was widely known to television fans as Harriet, the grandmother of David (Northern Calloway) on "Sesame Street" and as Anna Huxtable, the paternal matriarch of the Huxtable family on "The Cosby Show". Her portrayal of Anna garnered her an Emmy nomination in 1986. She also played Cousin Emma, the cousin of Grady (Whitman Mayo), on "Sanford and Son".

Grandma told me that she played in the film "Play Misty for Me" with Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, and Donna Mills forty years ago in 1971. Her character, Birdie, was the maid of radio disk jockey Dave Garver (Clint Eastwood). She is stabbed repeatedly by psychopath Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter), who is totally obsessed with Dave.

She was also in films like "Five on the Blackhand Side", "Sommersby" and "Smoke".

I read in a television book that she played a slave woman named Lovey in the controversial television miniseries "Beulah Land" (1981), which was based on the novel by Lonnie Coleman.

She got her start in theater with the American Negro Theater during the 1930s and 1940s when there were few opportunities for African-American actors. She was one of the founding members of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967. She performed in the original Broadway production of "The Wiz" as Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North. During that time, she roomed with Phylicia Rashad, her future television daughter-in-law Clair Hanks Huxtable on "The Cosby Show". She was known as Phylicia Ayers-Allen at the time. She had originally auditioned to play Clair's mother, Carrie Hanks, but did not get the part because she did not look old to play her mother. Actress Ethel Ayler got the part instead. Clarice performed in an off-Broadway play called "Moms" which was about the life and times of pioneering African-American comedienne Jackie "Moms" Mabley. She co-starred with S. Epatha Merkerson, who was recurring on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" as Reba the Mail Lady but became more famous as NYPD Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on "Law and Order" for a 17-season run. "Moms" later became a one-woman touring show. However, Clarice found herself embroiled in a lawsuit over the ownership rights to "Moms". "Moms" was originally billed based on a concept by Clarice, but it was really written by novelist/playwright Alice Childress, who wrote "A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich". Alice successfully sued when Clarice produced another version of "Moms" that did not credit her. Clarice wanted to do "Moms" to show the world who Moms Mabley before she was unsung and forgotten in history. I wonder if both Alice Childress and Clarice Taylor acknowledged Moms Mabley's role in Black lesbian history, society, and culture. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
I would have to read a biography of Moms Mabley to find out. Stay tuned!

She died of congenial heart failure at her home in Englewood, New Jersey.

She is survived by her two sons, James and William, and five grandchildren.

Rest In Peace: Clarice Taylor, 1917-2011

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, June 5, 2011
5:07 AM

Goodbye, The Oprah Winfrey Show

2011-05-26T02:50:00.001-04:00

After 25 years on air as the longest-running talk show by an African-American woman, The Oprah Winfrey Show concluded its own yesterday on Wednesday, May 25, 2011. There were no guests, surprises, nor giveaways. Oprah stood on the stage as she gave spiritual advice for the future and reflected on the 25 years of her show. I couldn't stop crying because I grew up throughout her entire run. It may be the end of her show, but she will move onto the production of OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network) as will her entire staff at Harpo, who will be working on different projects instead of losing their jobs and filing for unemployment. That is a good thing. I just hope they can bring up the dismal ratings of OWN and bring on some innovative programs.

As I watched the series finale, I reflected in my own way. I am watching Oprah and I am crying. The Oprah Winfrey Show defined a whole generation for all of us. I remember watching various episodes with Grandma and my aunt Rogina either at 4 PM on Channel 7, 7 PM on Channel 55, or on VHS tapes throughout elementary, junior high, high school, and college years. The Oprah Winfrey Show changed the world of talk shows and popular culture for 25 years. I will miss The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Oprah Winfrey Show demonstrated that she could be a powerful African-American woman who could bring different people together. The Oprah Winfrey Show influenced America and the world. The Oprah Winfrey Show saved millions of lives. The Oprah Winfrey Show helped many people who were marginalized prior to her arrival. The Oprah Winfrey Show donated to charities. The Oprah Winfrey Show started a book club. The Oprah Winfrey Show shown she was human like everyone else. I will miss The Oprah Winfrey Show. I will admit that I had my issues with her not having the Black gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender presence on her show fully with the exception of Jonathan Plummer, JL King, Stacey Ann Chin and John Amaechi, but she did what she could. In 2011, the Black LGBT communities are doing it for ourselves with or without The Oprah Winfrey Show. Regardless of what many of us feel or think about Oprah, she represented and defined 25 years of popular culture, change, evolution, empowerment, strength, relevations, and triumph. Her role of the African-American earth mother has come to an end. I am still crying now that this is the end of an era.

I am going to finally say: Goodbye, The Oprah Winfrey Show!!!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Thursday, May 25, 2011
2:49 AM

Ashton Kutcher Replaces Charlie Sheen

2011-05-26T02:22:00.000-04:00

I know this is sooo late but I am going to report it anyway but with my own twist. We know actor, producer, and director Ashton Kutcher has been signed onto the hit CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men" to replace Charlie Sheen, who was fired. Although some people have mixed feelings about this, I feel that he will do a great job. He did get famous for playing Michael Kelso on "That 70's Show" and has been doing comedy since then. Michael was a male ho anyway so he can replace Charlie Sheen's character, Charlie Harper, easily with no problem. I don't see what the problem is because this is not the first time a star was fired from her or his show. Suzanne Somers was fired from her role as Chrissy Snow the hit sitcom "Three's Company" during the 1980-1981 season for demanding more money with the help of her husband, Alan Hamel. She was replaced by Jenilee Harrison, who played her cousin Cindy Snow, but she didn't last that long. Maybe her acting was not that superb. Else, she wouldn't have been on various informercials to make her budda and chedda. Jenilee did not have it. She was then faded out when Suzanne's permanent replacement, Priscilla Barnes, joined the cast as Nurse Terri Alden. Priscilla was a breath of fresh air but she told on the segment of "E The True Hollywood Story" about the sexism of the male producers like Mickey Ross. Anyway, Ashton is going to get paid nearly $20 million for his one-year contract. What the heck is the problem??? He was the one who made "That 70's Show" funny so he can keep the laughs going still. Yes, I watch the reruns on MTV when I am working out after work. He will be fine and I believe he will get along with the cast and staff. Congratulations, Ashton!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Thursday, May 26, 2011
2:21 AM

Psychology Today Can Kiss My Black Azz

2011-05-24T03:08:00.000-04:00

I couldn't believe how PSYCHOLOGY TODAY had the nerve to publish a blog by a pseudo scientist/evolutionary psychologist named Satoshi Kanazawa in which he wondered why Black women are less physically attractive than other women (European, Asian, and Native American). There seems to be open season on Black women now with Donald Trump's exploitation and manipulation of Black women on NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice", the spotlight on Beyonce and Rihanna as music's light-skinned booty shaking hoes, and Black women's objectification by their tits and asses in music videos and ghetto big booty magazines. I am not going to entertain this racist Japanese ass who was trained in the British psychology schools so he is very Anglophile and a tightwad with a small dick perhaps. No real Black woman want him. Many cultures have always equated people of African descent as physically and mentally less than for centuries so I am not surprised at all. He is not doing nothing else but a 2011 version of racial eugenics in which Black people have been labelled as inferior on all fronts so that the world can do or say what they want to us. My thing is that I know every culture is beautiful in their own way. He should know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is no monopoly on beauty and attractiveness. There is no one standard of beauty. African women in the Diaspora are all BEAUTIFUL and ATTRACTIVE in all of their unique looks, tones, colors, shapes, sizes, and hues. Like former model and talent agent Bethann Hardison stated on the defunct BET young adult show "Teen Summit", many people find Black women beautiful and attractive and the result is the rainbow within the Black community. After all, Black women are the first women on this Mother Earth and the mothers of all world civilizations. We ought not to look for other cultures to validate our beauty and self-worth because like RuPaul always asks, "If you don't love yourself, how in the hell someone else will?" I am not giving these small-dicked anal assholes like Kanazawa any airtime. I know the beauty and attractiveness of Black women. Shit, if I was heterosexual, I would love, date, sex, fuck, and marry a Black woman. Black women are beautiful and attractive by their looks, smiles, and strength. Although I am gay, I still love and admire Black women! Black women are the backbone of not just the Black communities in the African Diaspora but of the global stage. If it weren't for Black women, I would not be who and what I am today. I give my hat off to them. As far as I am concerned, Satoshi Kanazawa and Psychology Today can kiss my Black azz.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
3:07 AM

Donald Trump's Manipulation of Black Women's Images

2011-05-24T02:14:00.000-04:00

Yes, when I heard that Dionne Warwick, LaToya Jackson, Star Jones, and NeNe Leakes were going to be part of the 2011 edition of "The Celebrity Apprentice", I knew it was going to be a bitchfest because of how NeNe acted on the Bravo hit reality series "The Real Housewives of Atlanta". I already knew she was going to start shit with the three other Black women because she was already loud and abrasive on RHOA. I was just curious to see her in action. I will say that I was disappointed and embarrassed to see the Black women fighting with and against each other. I did not watch the show until the night when Dionne got fired. She did not want to stay and be bothered with NeNe's shit. She probably would have had to get out of her character and cuss NeNe the fuck out. After all, she was arrested for weed possession and she is the cousin of Whitney Houston, so she can get ghetto when she has to. Donald Trump acted like he was pissed at Dionne for digging her ditch to get fired. Dionne left after calling NeNe a coward. You can tell she did not want to be bothered as a woman of a certain age. I didn't blame her. NeNe aimed at Star and LaToya to the amusement of Donald Trump, Mark Burnett, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, the other contestants, and the racists, bigots, and prejudiced folk of Middle America. NeNe obviously became the hit since she played so well into the role of the Angry Black Woman. Star tried her hardest not to entertain NeNe's foolishness but acted too Sex and the Cityish. I am sorry but her Sistagirl juice should have came out. However, I knew where Star was coming from by showing NeNe that she could conduct herself with class and tact. On the other hand, I did not feel sorry for her for the fact that she is homophobic and quite nasty to some people. As for LaToya, she was just plain ditzy and acting like the Black (bleached White) version of Andrea Evans from "One Life to Live", "The Young and the Restless", "Passions", and "The Bold and the Beautiful". She was so non-threatening and neutral like her Casper-looking face. She did make me cry when she spoke of her late brother, Michael. NeNe went onto LaToya until they spoke, patched up their differences, and ganged up on Star. Star became the cut-throat villainess suddenly. I watched with Miss Barbara and we were like, oh boy! On the special three-hour episode, NeNe bounced from the competition, LaToya was fired again after pleading and begging to Donald Trump to let her come back to prove herself on the team Backbone with John Rich and Lil' Jon, and Star was fired because Donald didn't see the use of her once NeNe left. That was the highlight of the night: three Black women were fired! They were fired because there was pressure from an African-American grass-roots advocacy group, Color of Change, who got after him for his racist witch-hunt of President Barack Obama, his past of refusing to rent to Black and Latino tenants during the 1970s, his refusal to apologize for wanting New York to reinstate the death penalty to execute the Central Park Five, who were innocent of raping Trisha Meili, the Central Park jogger, and his stereotyping of Black women as bitches and villainesses. Color of Change went out to Star and Lil' Jon, who never responded in fear of blacklisting from the entertainment industry and White America. I was not surprised at all by it since the episode when Hope was fired was interrupted by the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden and President Obama's news conference. Star Jones was criticized by Donald for going after Meatloaf for referring to her as "Sweetie", a term which many women find offensive, but yet she had no problem when John Rich referred to her as "Toots". She got neutered after Donald fired her and had her to return with some of the other strong contestants to help out John Rich and Marlee Matlin with their final tasks before the finale. Speaking of the finale, Star tried to state how embarrassing she felt watching the episodes when referring to NeNe, whom she felt attacked all of the Black women verbally. NeNe denied doing that, accusing Star of bringing up a racial thing. It was like the pot calling the kettle black because NeNe accused former friend Kim Zolchiak, who is White, of treating her Black assistant, Sweetie, like a slave, and being verbally abusive towards her on RHOA. Suddenly, she felt like she made the mainstream media by participating on "The Celebrity Apprentice" so she is being a media whore and playing up the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman. NeNe screamed over Star's point and Donald didn't want to hear anything else about race since he is obviously a racist. Donald switched over to LaToya, whom most people know is not versed on racial politics since she is ditzy and dingey and bleached her African features to look Caucasian. No, she does not have vitiligo nor any skin disorder. She defended NeNe like they are really going to hang out after "The Celebrity Apprentice". It has been an explosive season, thanks to Donald Trump's media manipulation of Black women's images, courtesy of Dionne Warwick, NeNe Leakes, LaToya Jackson, and Star Jones. He loved that racial/racist/sexist mess but he is not the only media bigwig who loves to see Black women fighting on reality television over bullshit. I blame us as the audience who entertain, blog, and talk about this divide and conquer bullshit when it comes to Black men, women, and children humiliating ourselves to the amusement of other cultures who do not like us nor wish to see us at our best. I know now that I will not be watching "The Celebrity Apprentice" next season with Donald's racist problem with Black people. I am not going to make him richer while I am living paycheck to paycheck like most Americans. I urge all of us as people of African descent to stop looking at each other as less than and stop knocking each other down. I am a proud Black brotha who LOVES Black Women!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
2:13 AM

My Twenty-Year Quest for Afro-Brazil

2011-05-23T02:57:00.000-04:00

I was watching the Black In Latin America segment on Brazil with curiosity and interest. I have had a love affair with the South American nation of Brazil for 20 years. Ever since I read the article "Blacks In Brazil: The Myth and the Reality" by Charles Whitaker in the February 1991 issue of EBONY, I was in awe of the African culture in Brazil. I always felt a kindred connection to it for some reason. I don't know if it is a calling from the Ancestors but I always felt pulled towards Brazil. I can imagine if some of my Ancestors and their relatives were taken to Brazil from the Motherland. I don't even know where my Ancestors originated from in Africa. I would love to find out and determine if some were kidnapped and sold to Brazil to become slaves. I could not believe that Brazil took in more Africans than the United States and how Brazil has the second largest Black population in the world with Nigeria having been the first outside of the African continent. Brazil was the last nation to abolish slavery in 1888. I had a nightmare in which I was a young African child who was held at one of the slave forts on the West African coast before being shipped over to Brazil.

I wanted to write a saga novel about a Black family in Brazil when I was fourteen or fifteen. I was inspired by watching the repeat of the groundbreaking miniseries ROOTS on the Family Channel. I even took out a book titled TO BE A SLAVE IN BRAZIL: 1550-1888 by Katia M. De Queiros Mattoso from the library for research. I never completed the project because I still a high school life to live.

I was curious to research this because singer Paula Abdul stated that her dad, Harry Abdul, was Syrian-Brazilian. I remember when she claimed she was not African-American or Black, but Third World. Many readers of EBONY who read about her debt to Black America in the same issue on which South African activist and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela was on the cover. They wrote letters saying that Paula got her rhythm and dancing moves from the African-Brazilian culture in which her dad lived. Harry is supposedly not Afro-Brazilian, but a Syrian of Arab descent. According to Paula's Wikipedia page, Harry was of Sephardic Jewish heritage. It gets me that when Paula was Janet Jackson's choreographer, she was in JET and EBONY as if she was Black. She got her music debut on "Soul Train" but she is not claiming that. When she got famous and crossover, Paula was not Black. When her career hit a snag, she disappeared and reappeared on the Latin bandwagon. When that didn't work, she was then known in the Arab-American biographies. When she became a judge on "American Idol", she suddenly claimed both of her parents were Jewish. I don't know but Paula still has issues over her race and ethnicity. Oh well!

I tried watching the short-lived morning kid's show "Xuxa" hosted by Xuxa, the Nordic-blond White Brazilian of Austrian, German, Italian, and Polish descent, but I could not get into it. She had many Black, biracial, and multiracial Brazilian children on her show. It didn't last long in the United States. She was idolized by those same children and that was seen as a problem by many members of the Afro-Brazilian nationalist movement who felt they would feel inferior about their race, color, and heritage while looking up to a White woman as a popular culture icon. She even had an interracial relationship with the Black soccer hero of the 1960s and 1970s, Pele.

I heard about the killings of Black, biracial, and multiracial homeless children on the streets by the police who fear they will become the future criminals of Brazilian society, especially in Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paolo (San Paulo). I had a nightmare about being a homeless Black teen who was wondering around the nice areas in Rio De Janeiro at night and I was ended up shot by a racist White cop of either Portuguese, German, Polish, or Italian descent. I woke up quickly.

I was always curious about the Black history tours to Brazil since my undergraduate days at City College of CUNY. Professor Leonard Jeffries had a program called Zumbi which made it possible for African-American students to tour the African-centered section of Salvador da Bahia (Bahia) in Brazil. By the way, Zumbi was an African freedom fighter and runaway slave of the Maroon settlement of Quilombos dos Palmares who fought the Portuguese during the late 17th century. I even watched the film "Quilombo" about this history which is not taught to Black children in the public school system. I still want to watch the film "Xica" in which a Black slave woman's relationship with her Portuguese slave owner led her to become manumitted (free) in the town of Minas Gerais and elevated her status. The African Poetry Theatre in Jamaica, New York used to showcase the 1976 film but I am not sure if they still do or not. It eventually became a telenovela which came on one of the Spanish-language stations a few years back. I want to go on a Black history and heritage tour to Bahia, Brazil in 2012 for one of my vacations. I have to apply and get a passport so I can make my trip to Brazil. No, I am not going there to have wild international sex with the Brazilian women like many African-American men did until they were exposed a year or two ago. I will go to Brazil to connect with the African roots. I laugh because I read the novel ROCK STAR by Jackie Collins in which the biracial character Rafaella went to Brazil and suddenly came to terms of her African-American heritage through the African rhythms of samba music. I want to lose my 140 pounds of fat before taking the flight down to Brazil. I still don't know what the connection to Brazil may be but I will be making my trip in 2012 or 2013. My co-worker Adenike Cumberland took a trip to Bahia and had positive things to say about it. I am going to embark on that chapter God willing.

For The Cosby Show fans, Brazilian actress Sonia Braga, who played Mrs. Westlake, the high-school Math teacher for Theo Huxtable (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) and Walter "Cockroach" Bradley (Carl Anthony Payne II), is known as a White woman in Brazil, but it is so obvious that she has African ancestry. If she was born and raised in the United States, she would be considered African-American/Black, according to the one-drop rule. Despite this, she represented the Afro-Brazilian segment of the African Diaspora on "The Cosby Show".

I will be in Brazil in 2012 or 2013 for sho!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Monday, May 23, 2011
2:54 AM

Not Feeling Remake of "Juice"

2011-05-17T01:15:00.000-04:00

I am sorry but I am not feeling the news of a 45-minute remake of the hip-hop classic film "Juice" which made famous the careers of the late Tupac Amaru Shakur, Omar Epps, and Khalil Kain. Don't get me wrong: I am for remakes but the storylines and the actors have to fit and make sense. Not only that but "Juice" is one classic in the Black and hip-hop communities which should not be touched, tainted, nor tampered with. When I heard that contemporary Soulja Boy wants to play the coveted role of bad-boy Bishop, who was played by Tupac, I couldn't believe it and still cannot. I am not hating on him but I don't feel that he is ready to take on such an ambitious project. Tupac was and is a legend and enigma but Soulja Boy is not even there yet. "Juice" was a film of the time in 1992 when African-American filmmaking was at its height with John Singleton, Ernest Dickerson, Matty Rich, Spike Lee, Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and others. Hip-hop was still grass roots and not yet commercial and mainstream. Blackness and Afrocentricity were en vogue. It was innovative to see a film with four Black male best friends coming-of-age in Harlem in the midst of rap and hip-hop. "Juice" is one of my favorite films of all-time and I am very partial to Black film. I am a proud Black film buff and declare myself to be so, contrary to the belief that I am out of touch of my brothas and sistahs. I just do not see BET airing the Soulja Boy remake. It is just an extension of the Juice mixtape by the young rapper. Since BET is owned by Viacom, I have a feeling that the 45-minute film is going to be watered and filtered down with commercialized BS. It will not have the same Black aesthetic like it did nearly 20 years ago. I would not be surprised if the casting director cast Soulja a light-skinned, biracial or Latina/Hispanic love interest with European features. I do not even know if his Bishop will get a girl. It just seems like it is going to be so sloppy with the storyline and the casting. This version will not be directed by Ernest Dickerson and that is a motherfucking shame. Even veteran rapper Ice-T is against it because he feels that it is an insult to Tupac Shakur. Plus, there is no love lost between Ice-T and Soulja Boy. It also seems that Soulja Boy wants to become a legend by playing both Bishop and his original portrayer Tupac Shakur. He needs to go to acting classes first of all. Tupac was already an actor when "Juice" was made. Soulja Boy and the current class want to exploit the movie for their own agendas and it is not to make it a tribute to Tupac, Omar, Khalil, and Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins, whom he did not to connect with. He even didn't consider getting in touch with Queen Latifah, Samuel L. Jackson, and Cindy Herron (En Vogue), who were in the film as well. I am not going to watch it if it is completed. I know BET is going to make it garbage and hip-pop, not hip-hop. Soulja Boy needs to practice on acting before calling himself an actor. "Juice" is just one of those movies you just do not mess with, whether or not Soulja Boy has a mixtape titled "Juice". He is merely copying off his homeboy 50 Cent, who is acting under his government name of Curtis Jackson. Let's face it: many current hip-hop artists want to conquer Hollywood because hip-hop is being killed softly. He is famous for his own brand of music, but not as Bishop in "Juice". Tupac is turning around in his grave. I just have a feeling that it is going to be a flop. Not everyone wants this film made and I am one of them. I just do not see "Juice" taking place in Atlanta, the new Black mecca instead of Harlem. I just do not see the remake happening at all. I am sorry but Soulja Boy is a youngin rapper who is not ready to channel Bishop nor Tupac Amaru Shakur.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
1:10 AM

Book Review: TRUE YOU by Janet Jackson with David Ritz

2011-05-15T02:16:00.000-04:00

When Janet Jackson told Robin Roberts about writing a book on self-esteem during an ABC interview after the death of her brother, Michael, I thought it was going to be one of those self-help books which was going to cater to the female demographic within a certain age range. I was like, okay! When my BFF Ra Shawn bought, read, and recommend it, I knew I had to read it.

I bought a copy off a vendors table on West 125th Street in front of TD Bank in the Harlem section of Manhattan. I read it within two weeks and totally enjoyed it. I identified totally with Janet's lifelong issues with food, body image, weight, and self-esteem. I have been heavy since I was seven years old and mostly because I was an emotional eater and a picky eater simultaneously. I was spoiled by my grandmother Sally, who allowed me to put candies, chips, cookies, cakes, and other junk food into the shopping carts at Pathmark, Key Food, Foodtown, and other supermarkets we went. I enjoyed having my two cheeseburgers and French fries every Friday night at McDonalds with my grandfather Eugene and at home. I hated fruits and vegetables although Grandma wanted me to eat them. Meanwhile, I witnessed Grandma deal with her own issues with weight since she was very overweight. She tried numerous diets but always relapsed. She bought numerous exercise VHS tapes but never kept up her workout routines. She lost weight a couple of times but gained the weight immediately. She even had a membership at Lucille Roberts in Forest Hills, New York during the early 1980s. She lost a lot of weight in 1990 or 1991 when she had problems with my grandfather. Nevertheless, she always remained big although she even walked our German Shepherd, Joe, around the Van Wyck Playground several times. She always gave up. She ended up developing Type-2 diabetes whereas she had to take medicines and daily shots to check her blood glucose (sugar). I grew up watching all of this and ended up adopting what I saw. I was always teased for being fat. I was called Hubba by my pops, Abdul (Donald) Peebles and taunted about that by my so-called friends. I was never seen as the love and romantic interest by the girls and the boys. My fat was even ridiculed on by my uncle Ronald. I wore the most boring husky clothing from Alexanders and other department stores. I was called fat, fatboy, fatso, hubba bubba, and tub of lard. I was even referred to by the 1980s rap song "The Fat Boys Are Back" by the Fat Boys and I couldn't stand them because I was a reminder of how fat I was. When I got to junior high school, I ate and ate four bags of chips and popcorn while my friend and cousin-in-law Savera Richburg ate her candies especially her sour powers everyday after school while watching music videos and television reruns. I became self-conscious about everything when high school came around. I ate myself to oblivion until I was filled. I even experienced with bulimia, purging and throwing up in the toilet. I used to laugh at Kimberly Drummond's one-episode ordeal with bulimia on "Diff'rent Strokes" when she dipped that wonder bread into that creamy peanut butter, savored the taste, and threw up. Arnold heard her throw up as it disturbed his sleep. I tried Slim-Fast but it just made me more hungry. I lost weight a few times but the weight always came back. My fat has kept me excluded from certain circles and potential relationships. My fat has prevented me from gaining exposure in the gay community because I do not fit the beauty standards of gayness. I felt myself depressed and upset by the blatant discrimination directed to me by the gay community. I ended becoming invisible and secondary to many because of the fat. I began to see myself as ugly, not that attractive, and awkward because of the fat. Now, I weigh 321 pounds and presently pre-diabetic. I allowed the fat to conquer and control my entire life for all of my life.

TRUE YOU presents Janet's candid writing about being told she had to lose weight as a young actress working as Penny Gordon Woods on the hit cult sitcom "Good Times". I could not believe she did not like playing on the syndicated television show "Fame" as Cleo Hewitt during the 1984-1985 season. I thought she did. I watched her last appearance on that when Cleo went out to Hollywood on the Ovation Network a few weeks ago. She covered her body up with layers of clothes. She was either fat or pregnant like many people thought she was since she was married to James DeBarge. She looked great when her CD JANET
debuted with "That's The Way Love Goes". She was at her thinnest and sexiest. She was even accused of having her ribs removed. Those blasted tabloids! The National Enquirer or Star reported how Janet ate her fruits and veggies to get to her size. Months later out of the spotlight, Ronald shown me and Grandma a picture of Janet ballooning up. We couldn't believe it. From then, we knew Janet slimmed down when her CDs came out and ballooned up when she was not recording. Despite all of that, Janet is still a sexy-looking woman in her feisty 40s and showing the youngins age is nothing but a number.

TRUE YOU is a recommended read by me. Anyone can identify with her story, especially since issues of weight, food, self-esteem, and body image are concerned. I am now learning how to love me at the age of 34 years old. Life is a process in itself but I look forward to the next chapters of my life. There are also recipes by Janet's own nutritionist David Allen and they look delicious and good in their healthfulness.

Please read TRUE YOU: A JOURNEY TO FINDING AND LOVING YOURSELF. I recommend it.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, May 15, 2011
2:14 AM

Kay'Vion: A Musical Force To Be Reckoned With

2011-05-08T03:09:00.000-04:00

When I started IT'S A DONALD THING in 2009, it was slated to be my own soapbox about issues and topics pressing on my mind. I did not expect to do music reviews at all since there were many bloggers who had that down-pat. I love music and always have all of my life like most people. I am not a music expert like my BFF Ra Shawn "Da Professor" Chisolm but I know enough. Last year, a musician named Kay'Vion reached out to me, wanting to know if I would love to review his music. I did not respond immediately and I learned that was not kosher when you are in the industry. When I cleaned out my 2010 e-mails at the end of last year, I went across Kay'Vion's e-mail and I knew I had to support this brotha. I knew how it felt being a newcomer author in the urban-lit industry and wanted lots of exposure instantly. I always believed in supporting grass-roots artists and creatives before they get famous with the mainstream and Hollywood. There is a lot of untapped talent out there with the chops but do not get the exposure because many are unwilling to compromise their arts and crafts in exchange of sex, drugs, the casting couch, and other off-the-wall stuff which occurs in the entertainment, recording and publishing industries. The mainstream music industry is in limbo right now because it seems like they are featuring artists who just don't have the talent to save their lives and just doing mindless music without the substance. Many people want real music by real artists now. No more computer-generated music from the Internet. More grass-roots artists with raw talent and instruments. This is why I had to take this post to review Kay'Vion and his music.

Who is Kay'Vion? He is a singer, songwriter, producer, and engineer. He was born Daniel Johnson in Fort Worth, Texas and raised in Richmond, Virginia (my paternal grandma's hometown). He originally studied to become an attorney but put that on mind to study the creative process of music from producing to performing. He is influenced by pop, R&B, hip-hop, and rock. He credits Beyonce, Donny Hathaway, and Timbaland as his study curriculum. His MySpace page held the number one slot for Virginia and the 87th spot in the world in the MySpace Unsigned Artist Category. Within six months, Kay'Vion was able to attract over 1.5 million hits and plays. On his website (http://www.kayvion.com/), he attracted over 100,000 views and over 4,000 downloads. He made a hit with his R&B version of the Olivia Newton-John classic "Let's Get Physical" and it did very well at the 3rd slot on the FHHO Charts overseas. The uncanny thing about the song was that it was beaten by his own hip-hop song, "Do You Believe" which held its own at Number 2. He even defeated R&B baby crooners Trey Songz and Ryan Leslie on the same chart twice. Kay'Vion is an entrepreneur since he formed ArcTone Productions to create his debut smash CD "TRUTH BE TOLD". Not only did he sing, but he wrote, produced, arranged, engineered, mixed, and recorded as well. He went to create his second CD "S.I.R.E. (Success, Independence, Royalty, Education)". The CD had a mostly R&B sound. He is also the owner and Studio Engineer at IndieKing Recording Studio in the Bronx, New York. His upcoming third CD was originally titled "EVOLUTION" but has been renamed "FRONT AND SINNER". It is slated to debut on May 25, 2011 (the same date as the 25th year end of The Oprah Winfrey Show).

Kay'Vion is a smart cookie for sure. He can sing but SANG! I watched the video for his single "Everybody's Hero" and you can see and hear the passion for music from his lungs. It was produced by Sharp Edge Productions and directed by Joseph Rivera. Kay'Vion's neck veins even made an appearance. What was innovative about the video was that the love interest was played by a dark-skinned Black woman. In many mainstream R&B and hip-hop videos, the love interest have been mainly played by light-skinned Black women, biracials, multiracials, multiculties, Latinas, and Asians, knocking out dark-skinned Black women out the box. I loved the appearance of his band because instruments were really featured and played. The message of the song is that his girlfriend expects him to fulfill her every whim 24/7 but he is losing his focus and himself in the relationship. There are many people who want a relationship but as soon as it comes into their lives, they realize it is not all what they thought it was going to be. It is real. Romance is not for everybody. I am like this: everything is not for everybody!

I listened intently to three of his singles "Perfect Mistake", "Stand (Bye)" and "Love Lockout" and I have to say that Kay'Vion has what it takes to conquer the music industry by storm and bring back the elements of doing music for music's sake. It is refreshing that his music does not denigrate women nor refer to them as bitches, hoes, flows, sluts, tramps, and sexual objects. The three singles have their pop, rock, hip-hop, and R&B flavors and it is always great to create works of art with different ingredients and genres. What they have in common is the subject of LOVE but the stories are different. "Perfect Mistake" deals with a guy who falls deeply in love with a woman as if she bewitched and enchanted him and cannot let go out of his life. "Stand (Bye)" deals with a guy who is pining for that one woman who does not return his unrequited love, leaving him to wonder why she would rather love another guy who is abusive or not that bright. "Love Lockout" deals with a guy who seems like he has been hurt by a special woman so he does not want to experience romantic love ever again, closing himself off to his career and other life interests. I can identify with all of these themes and stories and it reaches me for real. The songs have something for every kind of man. A real artist or creative should be able to reach his or her audience effectively. Kay'Vion has definitely reached me. I will definitely listen more to his music and support his journey, which I hope will be a long one in the music industry. Real music is needed in the mainstream industry again and people want to feel good without all of the vulgarity, hateration, and denigration of people. Music is the universal language of all of humankind and should be able to convey what we feel and think on a positive level. Kay'Vion is really on his way for the fact he creates his own music and knows the business side so he won't get jipped and unsung by the mainstream recording industry like many talented artists and creatives do unfortunately. He has been applauded by Ra Shawn of how down-to-earth he is and that will carry him far. Kay'Vion is a creative who knows what he wants and he will get it.

It was an experience and pleasure in reviewing about Kay'Vion. Please go out and cop his third CD "FRONT AND SINNER" on May 25.

If yall want to experience Kay'Vion's music by yourselves, please feel free to visit his website (http://www.kayvion.com/) and his YouTube page (www.youtube.com/KayvionMusic).

You can contact him at his Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/KayVionMusic) and his Twitter page (www.Twitter.com/KayVion_Is_SIRE).

IT'S A DONALD THING

Sunday, May 8, 2011

3:07 AM

The Assassination of Osama Bin-Laden, America's Public Enemy #1

2011-05-07T22:51:00.000-04:00

As we already know for a week, Osama Bin-Laden has been assassinated by the Obama administration at his compound in Pakistan, where he had been hiding out at for five years. He had been on the run for nearly a decade right after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the U.S. Pentagon. His apprehension and assassination was obviously a victory for the United States of America and its president, President Barack Obama, whom many feel will be re-elected, mostly because of this military feat. While it brought closure to many Americans, especially those whose family members and friends lost their lives on September 11, 2001, it also brought skepticism and disbelief to those who wanted visible proof of Bin-Laden's death. There was a picture of him being shot in the head but it was photoshopped! I personally did not want to see a bloody death photo of him at all because I felt that would have been total disrespect to him as a person despite his role in the September 11, 2001 attacks. As far as I was concerned, President Obama declared and confirmed Bin-Laden's death at the hands of the U.S. military. Despite that, some Americans were not feeling President Obama's news conference as they had questions about the shooting death of Osama Bin-Laden.

There is a racist double standard with the national-sanctioned murder of Public Enemy #1 Osama Bin-Laden. I am sorry but I am saying it. I bet if President George W. Bush was in the White House, certain people would not have questions and inquiries for proof of death. President Obama is Black, so he is doubted and questioned about if the killing was legal and justified. Give me a break! Certain people in the United States DO NOT question the police brutality killings of African-American, Latino, and poor White people, so why question about Bin-Laden? They (Certain People) wanted him captured and apprehended, alive or dead, when Bush was in office but since it is the Obama administration, they want answers.

I thought the Americans who voted for President Barack Hussein Obama wanted him 50 percent to capture, apprehend, and kill Osama Bin-Laden, something which President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice could not do. His administration accomplished that, so what the fuck is the problem? We know what the problem and it is racial. Many Americans just refuse to give a Black man the credit for the apprehension and assassination of Osama Bin-Laden, whom they considered a huge threat to American national security and the big kahuna of the war on terrorism. President Obama even came to the Ground Zero site in downtown Manhattan this past Thursday to meet with the families of the 911 World Trade Center victims. He invited President George W. Bush to be there with him. I was not surprised that Bush declined the invitation. He just couldn't accept the fact that it was the Obama administration who did what the Bush administration should have accomplished in their eight year debacle. The U.S. military were just sent to Iraq to condemn dictator Saddam Hussein to death as a ways to avenge the humiliation of President George Bush Sr. They knew that there were no mass weapons of destruction but that was a lie to pacify those who wanted to hurt and destroy everything Middle East. President George W. Bush is a sore loser and hates Black people like Kanye West stated.

If one of Bin-Laden's daughters stated that her dad was indeed dead, what is the fucking problem?? There are just many Americans who get off by seeing images of dead bodies they killed like they did when scores of Black men and women were lynched in the South. Lynchings were entertainment to many White Americans who brought their picnic baskets to witness Black people getting burned, choked, and hung to death. Although President Barack Obama stated that was not the American way to get off on seeing bloody images of someone's death, he needs to read more about African-American history, especially after the Reconstruction and during the Nadir/Jim Crow era. Unfortunately, it is the American Way! If yall do not believe me, please take a trip to 125th Street in the Harlem section of Manhattan and look at the lynching photos located in front of the former Mart 125.

While Bin-Laden is dead, I am afraid that it is not over. He has a legion of global followers among Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is going to get ugly. We can only just pray that nothing like September 11, 2001 happens again in America. I am not going to put negativity into the universe so we will leave it like that.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Saturday, May 7, 2011
10:49 PM

President Obama's News Coverage Revenge

2011-05-06T01:17:00.003-04:00

While watching The Celebrity Apprentice (I admit it although I am supposed to be boycotting it because of his racism and hatred toward African-Americans especially President Barack Obama) this past Sunday with family friend Miss Barbara Drinkwater at 10:30 PM, we could not believe how NBC News was about to interrupt the program with President Obama's address to the nation about something mysterious. We wondered what it was. I told her how at 10:45 PM, the show was going to be interrupted. While everyone were wondering who uber racist Donald Trump was going to fire between Star Jones and former Playmate Dworaczyk, the show was interrupted. That was a mindfuck! It was revealed via our Canadian neighbors that Hope was fired.

I believe in karma and it can be a bitch. Donald Trump realized President Obama was truly a gangsta president after all and not a punk ass bitch. Donald had the nerve to question President Obama's United States citizenship and his qualifications to be enrolled into Columbia University and Harvard Law School. President Obama finally revealed his birth certificate and Donald Trump had to eat crow. The shocking announcement of the death of Osama Bin-Laden in Pakistan at the hands of the U.S. military in the Obama administration took precedence over Donald Trump's racist nonsense and Hope's firing. I was glad he was finally put into his place by President Barack Hussein Obama, one of the most-hated Blacks in his book and a citizen of the United States of America. Yes!!!!!!

IT'S A DONALD THING

Friday, May 6, 2011

1:15 AM

Mariah and Nick Have Twins and Name Them

2011-05-06T00:42:00.000-04:00

I was so happy that Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon finally welcomed their twin son and daughter into the world last week. I love them together and I sincerely do. While many Blacks wanna hate on them yet embrace Demi Moore's May-December marriage to Ashton Kutcher, I congratulate on them being a couple. We need more Black love of all persuasions. Many Blacks hate on them for no specific reason. I don't understand because when they wanted Mariah to publicly identify as Black and when she shut the naysayers up with "The Emancipation of Mimi" CD in 2005 with her renewed emphasis on her Blackness, everything was gravy. However, it became a mind fuck when she and Nickelodeon sensation, rapper, actor, comedian, producer, entrepreneur, host and record exec Nick Cannon got married in a private ceremony on her estate in the Bahamas. People began hating on them mostly because of the age difference. Bullshit! They just got mad because she was expected to marry another White man like her ex, Tommy Mottola, and Nick was expected to marry Selita Ebanks, the Black former model for Victoria's Secret. Remember: he used to date singer-actress Christina Milian and socialite slut puppy heiress Kim Kardashian. Mariah used to date New York Yankees shortstop and fellow biracial Derek Jeter and Mexican crooner Luis Miguel. Enimem swore up and down that he fucked Mariah but Nick checked him. We all know Mariah has much better taste than giving it up to the Detroit wannabe. Many people thought the marriage was fake. There were rumors of Mariah being a lesbian on the low and that she married Nick to cover it up. Many thought Nick was too young to handle Mariah, giving him the reputation of being her personal assistant and not her husband. I am like this: I love them together and they both look happy. The positive energy rubs off on their faces and smiles. When people are talking about them like dogs, they are doing something right - making love and not war!

Mariah and Nick named their son Moroccan Scott Cannon. He proposed to her at a Moroccan-style room at Mariah's apartment. Scott is his middle name and the maiden name of his grandmother. Their daughter, Monroe Cannon, was named after the late sex symbol icon Marilyn Monroe, who inspired Mariah in turn. Monroe does not have a middle name like Mariah. They are lucky to have their grandmothers, Beth Hatchett and Patricia Carey, in their lives. Aaah!

I hope the newest additions will provide much-needed healing for Mariah and her estranged sister, Allison.

Congratulations, Nick and Mariah!

Welcome, Monroe and Moroccan Scott!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Friday, May 6, 2011
12:41 AM

Black In Latin America: Haiti and the Dominican Republic

2011-04-29T21:42:00.000-04:00

When I first read in JET about PBS airing a four-part special on the lives of Blacks in Latin America called BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA, I was ecstatic because I felt it was about time. When I saw Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., whom the Afrocentric world refers to as "Skip", being the one traveling through Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, I was like, oh boy! Don't get me wrong because I enjoyed watching AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 1 and 2 on which he helped various famous African-Americans uncover their roots. However, I just felt that he should have pushed to cover the entire Latin American landscape all the way from Mexico to Argentina. Africans were sent throughout the region from 1492 to 1890 to work on the plantations and mines for the Spanish and the Portuguese.

I looked forward to watching the first episode about racial identity in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on April 19, 2011, but I only caught the second half with Gates speaking about Haiti's history as the top sugar plantation society for France until the Haitian Revolution from 1790 to 1804. Haiti became the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere and yet the poorest because their status as a self-governing Black threat from France, England, and America. Economic sanctions were placed on Haiti as a means to defeat the spirit of the Haitian people who looked to the Motherland of Africa as a spiritual force via Vodou. Haiti also went through dictators like Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier, who ruled Haiti with their iron fists and their secret police - Tontes Macoutes - as a means of persecuting those who disagreed with their rule. Suddenly, I finally understood why many Haitians migrated from their country for many years and risked their lives in shark-infested waters to seek political asylum in the United States. I realized that I could have been living in Haiti had the slave ships which carried my Ancestors from Africa took them there exclusively.

A few days later, my co-worker Adenike Cumberland e-mailed me the first episode but never got the chance to watch. I did it two nights ago and I finally got the chance to see Dr. Gates interview various Dominicans about the society's refusal to embrace their African roots and popular culture acceptance of the Taino and Spanish cultures. Some identity as Black and some identify as indio, a cultural hold-on to the Taino, who were exterminated on the island of Quisqueya-Ayiti (later renamed Hispaniola by the Spanish) within the first fifty years of Spanish colonialization. Indio became an identity to negate the nation's Africanness since 85-90 percent of the population are of African descent. When I read the responses on the BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA website, some Dominicans accused Gates of placing all Dominicans under the same umbrella of hating and negating their African blood. However, there are some Dominicans who are proud of their African, Afro-Dominican, Black, and Haitian identities. There were others who just did not want to see the whole picture and just hated on Gates for not profiling their venerated Taino. It was not a history of the Dominican Republic alone. It was about the Black experience in Latin America from slavery to the present. I do see this as a start to get all AfroDescendants in the Americas and the Caribbean to have positive and effective dialogues without the divide and conquer tactics to keep the African-American, Caribbean, and Afro-Latino communities fighting and hating on each other.

More on this later ...

IT'S A DONALD THING
Friday, April 29, 2011
9:40 PM

Tyler Perry's Conflict With African-Americans

2011-04-29T00:13:00.000-04:00

I know that there are going to be a lot of Blacks who will disagree with me but I am conflicted over Tyler Perry. I love the fact that he is a survivor of sexual and child abuse and used that to motivate his plays. I love the fact that he is a filmmaker who owns his own studio in the new Black mecca of Atlanta, Georgia. I love the fact that he employs many Black actors and actresses who would more than likely not get any roles in Hollywood. I love the fact he tells stories of Black people which wouldn't get mainstream attention. I love how he helped out millions of people who survived Hurricane Katrina in his hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. I love how his plays and films have helped millions of people who were childhood and sexual abuse victims, addicts, prostitutes, and other rejects of society.

HOWEVER and I mean HOWEVER, I just do not agree with Hollywood's toying with the film adaptations of Tyler's plays in respect to the color complex (intraracial discrimination based on skin color within the African-American community). I have always noticed that in the Madea films (DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN, MADEA'S FAMILY REUNION, and MEET THE BROWNS) that the male heroes were played by biracial actors Shemar Moore, Boris Kodjoe, and Rick Fox, while the male villains were played by dark-skinned actors Steve Harris, Blair Underwood, and Phillip Van Lear. Even in WHY DID I GET MARRIED and WHY DID I GET MARRIED 2, the biggest asshole was played by Richard T. Jones, who had the most noticeable African features than Tyler, Malik Yoba, Michael Jai White, and Lamaan T. Rucker. Tyler shut the African-American community up by making Derek Luke's character the hero in MADEA GOES TO JAIL, but I do remember Madea denigrating the African features of a prison inmate in the play version. The inmate was even equated to that of the stereotypical lesbian bulldyke. Tyler knows he cannot be doing that because there are gay rumors about him anyway although the tabloids linked him to Oprah Winfrey and he is always taking dates to award shows. Believe me, those dates know about him. More about this in another blog. Getting back to Tyler's colorstruck nature, he even shut us up by making brown-skinned actor Brian White the villain and Puerto Rican/Cuban actor Alex Rodriguez the hero in I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF. Alex may be Latino but he clearly has African ancestry as many Latino/Hispanic people do. I almost forgot to mention how the villainess in MADEA GOES TO JAIL was played by Ion Overman, an actress who is African-American, English, and Native American and often mistaken for Latina. That was a mindfuck and Tyler set it up that way to shut us up. My mother, Elizabeth Leslie, reminded me how Tyler was not colorstruck when it came to Idris Elba playing the lead single father in DADDY'S LITTLE GIRLS and she was right but it was not a Madea movie. You can't tell her about Tyler Perry so that is a discussion we just don't have. It seems that Mable "Madea" Simmons may be one of those typical Southern elderly women who grew up colorstruck with their light-to-brown-skinned grandchildren and great-grandchildren or did Hollywood put their historical racist perceptions of African-Americans into the pot? Hollywood has always placed African-Americans into six film stereotypes: TOMS, COONS, MULATTOES, MAMMIES, BUCKS, and SIDEKICKS. I do believe that Tyler's dad must be dark-skinned. I believe when he signed the contract with Lionsgate Films to distribute his films, there were stipulations as to how the characters were portrayed and the images resulting from them. Tyler thought about the mighty dollar like many other Black and Latino filmmakers or else he wouldn't have signed his John Hancock. I am not knocking him 100 percent at all but I will say that he is contributing to Hollywood's racist views of African-Americans especially full-figured Black women being portrayed by Black men like Tyler, Eddie Murphy, and Martin Lawrence. Many African-Americans think Lionsgate Films is owned by Tyler, but it is not. He owns The Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta. Lionsgate Films is the distributor of his films.

I am not liking the media battle between Tyler and Spike Lee, who cannot really talk at all because some of his films have received criticism too. I feel that both of them deserve their own space within African-American filmmaking history and tell stories from the African-American experience differently. I don't like one more than the other because I have my strengths and weaknesses with Tyler and Spike. I do notice how many of the old guard in the African-American community just refuse to pass the torch to the younger generation in all genres from politics and what have you. I just feel that Tyler and Spike should not be having their feud openly to the amusement and divide and conquer by Hollywood, who is not that enthused about greenlighting many poignant films about us. We need to learn as Black people not to tell everyone all of our business because it is not always necessary.

I do not know if I will see MADEA'S BIG HAPPY FAMILY because I am kinda over Madea. I am not a typical Black person who watch film and television without analysis and commentary. I do understand the role of subliminal forces in the media which are not really hidden but it has been said that if one wants Black people to be ignorant, just hide shit inside books. I hate to say it but many of us do not analyze shit which pertain to our people. We just sit on our couch or in the theaters blindly without recognizing the stereotypes, hidden messages, and science in the media. This is what Hollywood wants for us to spend nearly twenty dollars for a ticket, nearly ten dollars for popcorn, and nearly five dollars for a frank so we can laugh at ourselves and go home and believe that 90 percent of the population ain't worth shit. The 90 percent are the people of color and have-nots. This is why I cannot watch MEET THE BROWNS on TBS because the show looks so buffoonish. I am not the only one who finds it buffoonish. I am just writing about what some Black people feel. I just wasn't laughing when the trailer for MADEA'S BIG HAPPY FAMILY came on before the feature film I WILL FOLLOW premiered. The audience didn't laugh neither so that is saying something about how tired many of us are not with Madea but with Hollywood's antiquated stereotypes of African-Americans.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Friday, April 29, 2011
12:11 AM

Black People, Donald Trump Hates Us!

2011-04-28T22:43:00.001-04:00

Why are Black People so surprised about billionaire Donald Trump (The Donald) saying he has a good relationship with "The Blacks"? The Blacks? He is a wealthy White male who has always lived a capitalist life as a real estate mogul with his hotels and casinos. Yes, Black people followed his messy media marriages to Ivana Trump and Marla Maples during the 1980s and the 1990s. Yes, Black people envisioned growing up to have the money he has because I have and I am not going to lie about that. Growing up working-class and African-American during the 1980s and the 1990s, who wouldn't want Trump's money? Shoot!

It wasn't until I found out years later that he was a major proponent for New York to bring the death penalty for the Central Park Five, Black and Latino teens who were unjustly accused of raping a White female jogger named Trisha Meili in April 1989.

Donald Trump never formally apologized for creating an already racist climate which criminalized the Central Park Five - Raymond Santana Jr., Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Kharey Wise, and Yusef Salaam. He paid for the ad in four major New York-based newspapers to have them fried. As I am writing this, Raymond Santana Jr. wants an apology for Donald Trump as he pleaded today on NY1 in a report by news anchor and author Cheryl Wills. Matias Reyes was the lone rapist of Trisha Meili, according to DNA evidence. The Central Park Five were cleared but never received an apology from Trump. They are suing New York for malicious prosecution. NY1 reached out to Donald Trump, who has yet to respond nor apologize. It is no accident that Donald Trump is showing his true racist colors while the Central Park Five is fighting New York to get their settlement for being unjustlly accused of raping Trisha Meili. Donald Trump called for their execution and many White New Yorkers agreed with him. The Black and Latino VICTIMS were screwed as well by Trump's racism.

Donald Trump hates the fact that the United States of America is being run by President Barack Obama, a biracial man of Kenyan and Caucasian ancestries who is identitied as AFRICAN-AMERICAN/BLACK according to the one-drop rule. He wants to run for the U.S. presidency in 2012 with his capitalist and racist ideologies. He has been conducting his ignorant birther (21st century version of nativism) campaign with the support of those who dislike, despise, and hate President Obama and other Black people. It gets me how many racist, bigoted, and prejudiced Whites want to tell someone else how he or she is not a U.S. citizen yet their Ancestors came from Europe. Donald Trump's people came here from Germany during the 1880s and the 1890s so he has no right to say who is an American citizen or not. He can't really talk since President Obama's White mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, had Cherokee Indian ancestry as well as English, German, and Irish. The Cherokee and other Native American nations were here FIRST so Donald Trump is a Johnny-Come-Lately. Donald Trump's racism is reminding us that Blacks had to show their slave papers, Black Code papers, and apartheid papers all around the world. Black people, don't be scurred because OUR AFRICAN ANCESTORS had to show where they were going at all times or they were getting killed. Many of the bourgees wanna think Donald Trump is an ally, but he is a capitalist Klansman.

I know there are many Blacks who like the ministrelsy of Star Jones, NeNe Leakes and Lil Jon on Celebrity Apprentice but Donald Trump let all of us know we are "THE BLACKS". He even created a celebrity monster out of reality show Black bitch-cum-ordained minister Reverend Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, whose claim to fame was accusing Ereka Vetrini, a fellow contestant on the first season of "The Apprentice", of calling her a nigger (the N word). Wake up, Black people! He does not like us. He is a capitalist. Racism and capitalism comes hand-in-hand. Capitalism strived from enslavement of MY AFRICAN ANCESTORS globally and continues to do so from exploitation of people of color, poor people, working-class, and the working poor globally.

Most Americans know that Hawaii was a U.S. state when Ann Dunham gave birth to Barack Obama in 1961. It became a state two years prior in 1959. Duh! Donald Trump may be money smart but he is clueless in geography and history. Since racists like Trump wanna know if President Obama is an American citizen, they ought to shut the fuck up since the United States invaded Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, the Phillippines, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Minor Outlying Islands during the late 1890s and early 1900s. They made sure the Black Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani was fucked and married by John Owen Dominis out of her royal seat before taking Hawaii away. Black people, please read your history of Africans and African-Americans in Hawaii because WE have been there for centuries and not because Black men served in the military. Even Janet Jackson knows about the African connection to Hawaii and she is not a historian. There is a book by a writer named Ayin Adams who wrote about this history. It is titled AFRICAN AMERICANS IN HAWAI'I: A SEARCH FOR IDENTITY (Pacific Raven Press). Donald Trump ought to know that Dorie Miller was a national hero for his achievements at the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Dorie Miller was African-American but he really does not get much mainstream play. Yes, he was played by Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. in the motion picture PEARL HARBOR. Pearl Harbor was in HAWAII.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Thursday, April 28, 2011
10:41 PM

Jay Z. and Beyonce Singin' and Dancin' for Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T01:14:00.001-04:00

I read in the newspaper METRO about hip-hop's power couple Jay Z. and Beyonce being invited to the royal wedding of Prince William of Wales and Catherine "Kate" Middleton this upcoming Friday morning on April 29, 2011. I didn't know any significant people of African descent were invited after President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were not. Supposedly, Prince William and Kate are fans of Jay Z. and Beyonce.

Here we go again: Black people singin' and dancin' for White folk. We have been doing this since slavery for their entertainment. It is not like Jay Z. and Beyonce were invited as equals. Prince William, Kate Middleton, and many Whites still perceive Blacks as power sources and lifeforces of entertainment. I am not surprised about Beyonce accepting this because she does not understand nor comprehend the racial-racist science behind Black people singin' and dancin' for White people. After all, she is a light-skinned crossover Creole who really wishes she was Hispanic and not African-American. She is not a racial threat since she is multiracial with African, Creole, and French (possibly Haitian) ancestries, wears her blond wigs or weaves, and enjoys popular culture space in both African-American and mainstream publications as the crossover light-skinned prototype who is the symbol of the merging of African-American and European cultures. She is the model of the melting pot myth and assimilation aspiration. Meanwhile, Jay Z. has been accepted by American popular culture because of his status as a near-billionaire in the music, sports, and fashion industries. He has been validated and accepted by media mogul Oprah Winfrey for the same reason, despite her lifelong hateration for rap and hip-hop. They are the ideal entertainment for the royals. It is ironic that Beyonce is invited because it was Lady Camilla who stated that she was not a proper role model for young women because of the controversial sapphic music video "Telephone" she did with Lady Gaga. I guess Beyonce was not going to let Lady Camilla, whom many claim resembles a British bulldog, ruin her invite. Oh well!

Many African, African-American, Black British, and Caribbean musicians, singers, and dancers have always entertained the Royal Family for centuries. For example, the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee performed for Queen Victoria, the ancestress of Prince William, in 1873. Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, an African-American concert singer known as The Black Swan, performed for Queen Victoria several years before in 1854.

I guess this will mark the first time hip-hop and British royalty merge and it will be marked down in history for sure. While Jay Z. and Beyonce entertain Prince William, Kate, the Middletons, and the Royals en route to their third wedding anniversary in Paris next week, it will be more than likely that their singin' and dancin' will not change the status and plight of the African, Black British, and Caribbean communities in the United Kingdom.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Thursday, April 28, 2011
1:12 AM

Cady McClain Returns to ALL MY CHILDREN

2011-04-27T00:06:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe Emmy-winning actress Cady McClain is returning to the soon-to-be cancelled soap opera "All My Children". I read this on Soap Central (http://www.soapcentral.com/) and gagged. My guess is that she will be returning as Dixie Cooney Martin as a ghost. Remember: Dixie was killed by eating poisoned pancakes which were meant for her then-daughter-in-law Babe Carey Chandler (Alexa Havins) by the Satin Slayer - Alexander Cambias Sr. (Ronald Guttman) in 2007. Dixie's death became a major soap opera uproar directed towards Head Writer Megan McTavish. Dixie's ghost returned in 2008 to reunite her widower husband Tad Martin (Michael E. Knight) with their long-lost daughter, Kathy Mershon/Kate Martin (Alexa Gerasimovich). She even escorted her late uncle, Palmer Cortlandt/Pete Cooney (James Mitchell), to Heaven in 2010.

I have a feeling that there will complications for Tad and his new bride, Dr. Cara Castillo Martin (Lindsay Hartley) now that Dixie or a lookalike will pose a threat to the marriage. Like I stated, Cady will probably be playing Dixie. However, was Dixie really dead or held hostage somewhere??? Hey, stay tuned till when she returns to "All My Children".

IT'S A DONALD THING
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
12:05 AM

Phoebe Snow Dies at 60

2011-04-26T23:29:00.000-04:00

I was shocked to hear that musician-songwriter Phoebe Snow passed away and made transition to the Ancestors. I know many of you may not know who she was so I will tell you. She was a musician who was famous during the 1970s as she was known for her bluesy hit song "Poetry Man". She could have been more successful but she decided to devote much of her life to care for her mentally-challenged daughter, Valerie Kearns, who was born brain-damaged. It nearly destroyed her career entirely. Valerie died at the age of 31 in 2007.

Phoebe was hired by comedian-actor Bill Cosby to sing the theme song for his sitcom "A Different World" in 1987. Like many other people, Bill assumed she was African-American/Black, but she was actually White and Jewish. She never claimed being African-American. After the lackluster first season ended and Debbie Allen became Executive Producer, Phoebe was replaced by Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin as theme show singer.

Phoebe Snow made a cameo appearance in the film "Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom" as herself when she sang her song "Something Real" at the wedding of star-crossed lovers Noah Nicholson (Darryl Stephens) and Wade Robinson (Jensen Atwood). "Something Real" is on the soundtrack of the film by the way.

Phoebe's best-known song "Poetry Man" was remade by rapper-musician-actress Queen Latifah (Dana Owens) in 2007. Queen Latifah's rendition was heavily lauded and praised when it received airplay on the defunct jazz station CD 101.9 FM.

Phoebe made transition to the Ancestors via complications of a 2010 brain hemorrhage. She was 60 years old.

Rest In Peace, Phoebe!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
11:29 PM

Can Malikah Shabazz Be Capable of Doing Wrong?

2011-04-19T21:15:00.002-04:00

I couldn't believe it when I heard that Malikah Shabazz, one of the twin daughters of the late activist Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was accused of identity theft and grand larceny. I heard it on 107.5 WBLS-FM when Ann Tripp reported it during "The Steve Harvey Morning Show". I was like, oh boy! She had to be extradited to Queens from Mars Hills, North Carolina, where she was arrested on charges of identity theft and grand larceny. She appeared in the Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens last week while being placed in protective custody at Rikers Island in East Elmhurst. She is accused of assuming the identify of Khaula Bakr, the wife of one of her late dad's bodyguards and stealing $50,000 from her via credit card charges. She was held in lieu of bail set at $100,000.

Her twin sister, Malaak, vowed to raise the money to bail her out of jail. However, the six daughters of Malcolm and Betty (Attalah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, Malikah, and Malaak) are embroiled in a legal battle over their late mother's $1.4 million estate, which includes unpublished works by Malcolm and Betty. However, Malaak denies a rift with her twin over the probate issue. Well, it appears that Malikah's issues has spilled over into another chapter of the Shabazz family drama. Malaak and Ilyasah are accused of mismanaging the estate and Malikah has been accused of mental illness.

While researching for this blog, I ran across information of which THE NEW YORK BEACON, an African-American owned newspaper based in New York, reported another one of Malikah's charges of credit card forgery back in 1995. She had to pay a fine of $250 for court fees and fines. Her forgery charge was going to be dropped in 1996 on the condition that she stayed out of trouble. I could not believe she was involved in another credit card forgery and then goes through the same shit over and over. Some people never learn from their mistakes.

I can admit that I was one of those people who felt that the children and grandchildren of prominent people who impact and impacted societies with social justice, civil rights, art, literature, politics, religion, and celebrity ought to carry the torch of their progenitors. I had to realize that no one is perfect and humans should not be equated to God. Just because Malikah is the daughter of Malcolm and Betty, it should not be looked upon as a prerequisite to an untouchable personality. She is a human being like everyone else. Her parents were famous and prominent freedom fighters and activists in the African-American community. That's all and because of that, many people feel they have to look up to her as their daughter who should be honorable enough to carry onto their legacies without going through drama and other issues. Unfortunately, we shouldn't do that at all. She is capable of having flaws like everyone else. It is just sad that this had to happen days after the 46th anniversary of Malcolm X's assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. That was not an accident at all.

The sad result can be seven years in prison for Malikah if convicted of the charges. The African-American community just has to keep her in our collective prayer and hold her up.

IT'S A DONALD THING
April 19, 2011
7:15 AM

ABC Cancels All My Children and One Life to Live

2011-04-18T01:36:00.000-04:00

When I returned from lunch on Thursday, I cried literally when I learned two of my favorite soap operas, "All My Children" and "One Life to Live", were cancelled by ABC. I was aware of the rumors of them being plugged even back in 2007 when TV Guide Canada reported that AMC was getting cancelled. As a result, Emmy winners Darnell Williams and Debbi Morgan were rehired to reprise their roles as Jesse and Angie Hubbard, daytime's first African-American supercouple. The African-American audience went away despite Tonya Pinkins being there as Livia Frye but she seemed like she was recurring and had no real story after Michael B. Jordan (Reggie Porter Montgomery), Tanisha Lynn (Danielle Frye), and Charles Parnell (Derek Frye) were fazed out. Rebecca Budig was rehired as Greenlee Smythe while AMC fired her replacement, Sabine Singh, who was just getting adjusted to her role. Meanwhile, OLTL was rumored of a cancellation last year. Well, thanks to ABC Daytime President Brian Fons, my two favorite soap operas are leaving the air. AMC will go off in September 2011 and OLTL will go off in January 2012. They were slated to be replaced by a cooking and a reality show, which are lower-budgeted and cheaper to produce.

I am saddened because AMC was the first soap opera I watched from the age of 5 in 1982 with my late paternal grandmother, Sally Peebles, and my late paternal aunt, Rogina Peebles. I treasured those times with them. I started watching OLTL because my grandmother's co-worker, the late Miss Alberta Leonard, loved watching to see what was going on with vampy Tina Lord (Andrea Evans). Miss Thang had it going on back in 1985 and I became hooked with her scheming and her love story with Cord Roberts (John Loprieno), which began a year later in 1986. However, I couldn't get understand why Viki Buchanan (Erika Slezak) split into her alter-ego, party girl Niki Smith.

It seems like soap operas are an endangered species. "Guiding Light" was taken off the air after 72 years on both radio and television off CBS. "As The World Turns" was taken off the air after 54 years on CBS. It was predicted that soap operas would start facing cancellation threats within five years by a soap opera industry insider who appeared on SoapNet's defunct talk show "Soap Talk". That was back in 2002 or 2003. At the time, NBC aired the first reality soap opera "Starting Over" and it was predicted that if their numbers beat the soap ratings, the soaps were finished. Since then, "Starting Over" was cancelled along with "Passions" off NBC. "Passions" lasted an extra two years on DirectTV and was soon cancelled. Like I always stated, the cancellation of "Passions" was karma for NBC cancelling "Another World" in 1999. That is another blog altogether. Anyway, the soaps are definitely in trouble. Head writers are not writing their soaps with heavy-hitting storylines, character-driven plots, interesting characters, and innovative ideas like Irna Phillips, Bill Bell Sr., and Agnes Nixon did. A present-day example of writing complaints go to "The Young and the Restless" under the Maria Arena Bell regime. Many women are working outside the home unlike 60 and 70 years ago. We are not taking away from the housewives who still comprise an audience but they are not huge enough to save soap operas from cancellation threats. Many African-Americans still watch soap operas yet feel their representation is small and minimal with the present exception of "All My Children" with the Hubbard clan (Jesse, Angie, Frankie, and Randi). It's like they rather watch the numerous court shows than to wait for soaps to hire a significant number of African-Americans and drop them when they are not needed anymore. Court shows are the 30-minute alternatives on which litigants of all colors, backgrounds, and races face the numerous judges while airing dirty laundry. At least the cases or in some instances, the soap opera-like storylines concluded within an half-hour instead of months, years, and sometimes decades like soap operas.

I am sorry but this is why "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" are going off the air. Brian Fons is thinking more about greed than what the audiences want. The audiences have centered their lives and schedules around these two soap operas for over 40 years. I hope soap opera fans like myself will fight the cancellations and save these shows from daytime television extinction. I hope with the grace of God that we will continue to tune in to see the characters we have to come to love and hate and even looked upon them as if they were members of our families and friendship circles. We'll see and they are soap operas, so you never know. I do feel that ABC's daytime ratings will decrease and the soaps would have to return. I doubt that "General Hospital" is going to be the only soap to carry ABC's daytime lineup successfully. I don't know but there is going to be a fight for sure to see the citizens of Pine Valley and Llanview on our television screens. It's not over til the fat lady sings.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Monday, April 18, 2011
1:35 AM

Kobe Bryant's Anti-Gay Asshole Slur

2011-04-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

I was at the gym on Tuesday when I heard on Sportscenter how Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 by NBA Commissioner David Stern for referring to the referee as a "fucking faggot" because the latter called a foul on Kobe. Later, Kobe claims he did not mean to denigrate the gay and lesbian communities. Yeah right because you were caught and unable to get away with it. I am glad that Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) immediately got after his arrogant and homophobic ass. I am surprised at David Stern's response to Kobe but then again I am not because he knew public backlash would cost the NBA money. In 2011, there is no openly gay active basketball star in the NBA and David Stern is going to make sure of this. Athletes like John Amaechi had to come out after retiring from basketball. Last week, there was a homophobic outburst when two members of the Toronto Raptors, Leandro Barbosa and Reggie Evans, held hands after a win over the Orlando Magic. The NBA is still a man's game with their homophobia and heterosexism.

Kobe is one of the many people who refer to gay folk and suspected gays as "faggots" daily on a global scale. Since he is African-American, I will focus on this. In the Black communities in the African Diaspora, it is a fact that there is ultra masculinity and scorn of those who do not fit the social stereotypes of the so-called badd black nigger. Those who do not subscribe to the notion of Black masculinity as faggots. Particularly, gay and bisexual men are automatically singled out as well as straight folk who are suspected or rumored to be gay, bisexual, or on the down-low. Some Black men, women, and children feel they can use the slur freely because many in the communitty hate on gay folk, so they feel they can get away with it. In cases like in Jamaica, West Indies, Black gay people are beaten, stoned, attacked, stabbed, and murdered with the permission of the police and the government. Gay people are still being killed under the term "faggot" as Black people are still being killed under the term "nigger". Faggot and nigger are NOT terms of endearments at all despite what some hip-hoppers and some shady gay queens claim. Some men love to refer to those they deem weak as "faggots" just to show off in front of their boyz.

Kobe cannot really be calling someone a "fucking faggot" at all. He is a Black man who is in an interracial marriage to Vanessa Laine Bryant, a woman of mixed Mexican and White ancestry. It gets me how many Blacks are quick to call someone a faggot while they date, fuck, and marry outside their race. If they don't have a problem with interracial dating, sex, and marriage, then they shouldn't be hating on gays. Many interracial couples still get discriminated in America. There are still bigots and racists who do not believe people of different races and cultures should intermingle. There are still Bible-thumpers who will cite the Bible to argue against interracial romance and homosexuality. The media was ready to fry him when he was accused of raping a White woman several years ago. Kobe should be getting this lesson and be more sympathetic and understanding towards gay folk, but he is so arrogant for his own britches.

Well, he wants to appeal being fined. He has to apologize to the LGBT communities for the usage and intent of the term "faggot" if he wants to continue his success as a baller. If not, Kobe is not going to last too long. These public figures need to fully understand that they cannot just be calling people terms "faggot" and "nigger" and think no one is going to call them out on their racism, homophobia, and other isms. I hope Kobe gets it together and focus on the game instead of acting like the asshole he was last week. Kobe, I am sorry but you did an asshole move. I hope you learn your lesson or gay folks will work on a machine to blackball your arrogant ass.

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, April 17, 2011
9:47 PM

Barry Bonds Is So BallBusted

2011-04-17T01:41:00.001-04:00

Baseball great Barry Bonds is not so great nor victorious after all. He had been found guilty of obstruction of justice during his steroid (drug enhancement) trial. I am not surprised at all since he has been on baseball's shit list for nearly 7 years for those home runs. He was not supposed to have been trying break any more records as an African-American baseball player. In other words in layman's terms, he was not supposed to be trying to go past Babe Ruth's 714 home run record like Hank Aaron did in 1974. Hank received racist death threats for breaking the home run records of Babe Ruth, baseball's great White hope of all-time.

Speaking of Babe Ruth, the media wants to say how White he was but from his physical features (thick lips and broad nose), it looked like he had African ancestry. He also had an olive complexion and it was suspect during the 1920s when many African-Americans were passing for White. He was even referred to as "Nipperlips" by some racists and even heard racist smut from his colleague and friend Ty Cobb. He got angry when people wondered if he was Black or had any Black in him. Many African-Americans were fans of him because of the rumored African blood. Filmmaker Spike Lee even wondered about this and of course America was quick to suggest he was off his rocker. Some White sports commentators even wondered who cared if Babe Ruth was Black or White. Others merely stated it was impossible for their White baseball hero of the 1920s New York Yankees to have been Negro, colored, Black, African-American, or a person of color.

Barry was an asshole for taking those steroids, knowing very well that the media was going to get him for that and for trying to be the second Black to break Babe Ruth's record. I do not feel sorry for him but I do understand the way America wanted him to fall into his own ditch. He was an asshole because he was so cocky about everything like he was not going to get caught and found guilty. I could have told him that he was not lucky like Mark McGwire was when he beat Sammy Sosa, the Afro-Dominican rival who did not want to accept an award from CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) for being a role model for the African-American community. He is African racially but culturally Dominican, so you know most likely he would never identify as African, Black, Negro, or even Haitian in his Dominican culture. That is another story and another blog. Sammy was not going to represent as Black. I would not be surprised if Roger Clements gets off scot-free. Most likely, he might just well.

I will admit that Barry Bonds was looking sexy to me although he is heterosexual. Since he took those steroids, it is noted that men like him who take those steroid shots have mostly buffed chests and arms but possess small dicks. His mistress, Kimberly Bell, even testified in court that his testicles (his ball sack) were small and tiny. Damn! What a way to emasculate a man. Some women claim dick and ball size does not matter but they are lying. They know they want men with big, gigantic, thick, and fat dicks to crush and pound their pussy walls with their huge ball sacks clinging against the edge of the women's pussies and asses. Kimberly just got pissed that he could not sexually satisfy her fully and make her pussy juices gush out in orgasmic waves, not that he was not going to leave his second and FIRST Black wife, Liz Watson, for her.

Barry Bonds shows me why I never want to get fucked and done by bodybuilders and steroid-users. Don't get me wrong because I don't want no porn 13 inch dick to pound me hard to the fact I would have to be admitted into the emergency room at Jamaica Hospital or Queens General Hospital. Hell to the no! On the other end, I don't want a short-dicked man neither because I want to feel him explore my male anal walls and make love to me and fuck me lovely. This is what happens as an after-effect to steroid use.

I don't blame Barry entirely. I blame baseball and America's patriarchial culture for causing men such as Barry, Mark, Roger Clements, and even Jose Canseco for employing steroids to enhance their abilities to play their game. Men are pressured daily to prove their masculinity and manhood in sports and other aspects of American culture. Unfortunately, they all pay for taking steroids to enhance their game and their false sense of male power. I cannot wait to see how this will play out but I have a feeling that Barry Bonds is going to serve prison time. It is sad to see Black men make money for White-owned sport enterprises and be liked, admired, idolized, and claimed. As soon as they commit some criminal act or get involved in something scandalous, the sport enterprises are so ready to strip everything from them and throw them either in prison or back to the poverty-stricken ghetto neighborhoods many Black athlets came from.

Barry may not have Liz nor Kimberly in his life now but I bet he will meet and marry another sister now that he is in trouble. I know he was married to a White woman named Susann "Sun" Margreth Branco years ago and then got with Liz, who is African-American. I am not sure if Kimberly is White, Black or biracial. I would not be surprised Barry will get with another sister in the near future. Hey, we'll see!

IT'S A DONALD THING
Sunday, April 17, 2011
1:40 AM

Lawrence Taylor: Football Legend and Sex Predator

2011-04-13T22:52:00.000-04:00

Lawrence Taylor, one of football's legends of all-time, is now labelled a sex predator. I heard this on
WBLS-FM when Ann Tripp reported it during "The Steve Harvey Morning Show". It is a shame to see his life and image get tarred and feathered at his own hands. He has always been in the media with his issues with drugs from way back when he was a New York Giant. I feel sorry for him but I don't. L.T., as he is known in the media and popular culture, has always been known as an athlete who lived his life on the edge with drugs and sex. I could not believe when I read some of his autobiography, OVER THE EDGE: TACKLING QUARTERBACKS, DRUGS, AND A WORLD BEYOND FOOTBALL (2003), to research about the seedy side to football culture for my novel HIDDEN FIRES (2009) at how he purchased prostitutes for his rivals on the night before the big game. It was always a rule not to have sex before a major game but we all know most of the athletes can't help but fuck anyway and that went for L.T. Speaking of him, it is a shame how many athletes and other public figures are always caught with their pants down, dicks poking out, and asses showing when scandals involving underaged females surface. I know that many of his fans automatically accused the 16-year-old hooker of everything in the book, but they were both wrong. He should have known that being in the public limelight will bring strange bedfellows and they include young tricks who are after the mighty dollar. She was wrong about lying about her age, dressing and looking grown. Yes, statutory rape did happen and no one denies that, but it takes two to tango. Yes, there are many men who look at hookers as merely sexual playthings and not as women who have to sell their bodies to make ends meet. We do know that many hookers aim for the big ballaz in every industry. He was not immune from that although he is a football legend and a one-time contestant on "Dancing With the Stars". We do know that young girls are prostituted by their families to snag particular celebrities so they can cash in for life. I am just looking at this from both sides of the coin. Now, he is not only a football legend but a sex offender/predator in the books. However, why is he getting this treatment whereas his White counterpart, Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was accused of sexually assaulting two women in two different cases? I do not want to be accused of playing the race card but it is what it is. Ben is White so he was given a slap on the wrist and can now brag about his engagement. Meanwhile, L.T. is the media bad boy of football lore with his troubles with drugs and sex. Yes, he is African-American. I just wanted to put that out there. Anyway, his wanting to be the bad boy at his middle-age led him to become a sex offender, thanks to a 16-year-old trick and her pimp. I see why Snoop said that he didn't like them hoes.

IT'S A DONALD THING
10:51 PM
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

My For Real Tho Reflection on Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

2010-06-25T22:03:00.005-04:00

I am listening to the WBLS 107.5 FM weekend tribute to the late great Michael Joseph Jackson right now in my basement apartment in South Jamaica, Queens. "Let's Wait Awhile" by his baby sister Janet Damita Jo Jackson is playing while I am typing this special blog about him. I could be watching ABC-TV's biased special programs about Michael but I choose not to because they are not going to praise him for his greatness as an entertainer, musician, dancer, businessman, brother, son, uncle, humanitarian, cultural trendsetter, and African-American man. ABC-TV correspondents Cynthia McFadden and Elizabeth Vargas are just going to focus on his legal, financial, and media troubles. They are going to refer to him as that ignorant moniker "Jacko". They are going to probe into the notion of him as a prescription drug addict. They are going to wonder about the well-being of his three children, Prince Michael Jackson, Paris Jackson, and Prince Michael Jackson II (Blanket) as they are mysterious freaks. I am not tired of America's biased perception of Michael Jackson so I refuse to listen to their dumb-ass opinions.

I am glad I write my own blog, IT'S A DONALD THING, because I am going to give it to yall straight up and no chaser with my unapologetic views on various topics, subjects, and people. Tonight, I will give yall my own views about the life of Michael Jackson (1958-2009) in such an Afrocentric and holistic perspective. I do not believe in the White media's coverage of African-American lives because I know they cannot effectively tell our stories accurately. We can tell our stories and only we can. They don't really know the whole story. They think they do but they don't. What I may write is not going everyone but it is okay. It is not that serious. My goal is to illustrate the greatness behind the man himself: Michael Joseph Jackson. Like the DJs on HOT-97 say, let's go!

I am remembering the great Michael Joseph Jackson right now with tears in my eyes. He was a global genius who changed the face of music and popular culture. He was not no Jacko as the White media like the racist New York Post, Barbara Walters, Nancy Grace, Martin Bashir, Diane Dimond and others portray him. He was an African-American man who loved humanity and many people couldn't take his power from him.

Michael Jackson was a Black man who raised his kids: Prince, Paris, and Blanket. The White media says they are not his biological kids because they look ultra Caucasian and do not exhibit the stereotypical olive-skin biracial looks. Excuse me, but at least he raised them regardless. We know that many heterosexual men of all colors do not raise their children. Michael is their father in name and blood. Period!

Michael Jackson did not molest nor rape Jordan Chandler like Nancy Grace, Diane Dimond, Martin Bashir, the White media, and the Black conservatives accused him. Jordan's father, Evan, killed himself right after Michael's death. I wonder why. Most guilty people commit suicide after committing crimes which they have hidden for years. He was the one who put Jordan to lie about MJ molesting him.

Michael Jackson was hated by many because he was an African-American man who conquered the WORLD, not just America and the ghetto. He was not pigeonholed as many African-American musicians are. He transcended race and color yet he was proud of his Blackness. He loved to read about Black history. He was crowned royalty during his 1992 trip to Africa. He was conscious of racism here in America and the rest of the world. He was in Brazil, where Black people live in the poverty-stricken favelas and the homeless Black and Brown children are shot and killed by the Portuguese (White) police officers. Brazil is the only nation where the majority of enslaved Africans were shipped to during the Middle Passage of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1500-1888). This is why "They Don't Care About Us" is so important in his music catalogue and the music video was directed by Spike Lee. He did not bleach his skin and it was proven in his autopsy. He was thought to have wanted to look White for many years and Jermaine was going to dis him about that in a song which was never recorded to the masses. It was not until when LaToya appeared on "Geraldo" with her bombshell of Michael having vitiligo. The skin lightening allegations were put to rest mostly although some had their doubts, claiming he did not like his Blackness and his 1992 trip to Africa.

Michael Jackson was not gay. He stood for gay rights like his two sisters, LaToya and Janet. Many Black straight women are mad at him for marrying Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe. He also dated actress Tatum O'Neal and Brooke Shields back in the day. He surprised many by kissing model Ola Ray in the classic video "Thriller", model/actress/entrepreneur Iman in his video "Remember the Time", chasing after model/actress/author Tatiana Thumbtzen in his video "The Way You Make Me Feel", and flirting with model/actress/media bitch Naomi Campbell in his video "In the Closet". They were all Black women and he was not only into White women exclusively. There were rumors of him and Tatiana, who wrote a tell-all titled THE WAY HE MADE ME FEEL. She was his media girlfriend to throw off gay rumors. She was the first woman to kiss him in public and she beat Lisa Marie Presley to that. Yall must know Debbie is not the stereotypical White woman in distress and the White media don't like the fact she doesn't take anyone's shit. The fact he had the kids really intrigued many people as if he never had sex.

We all know there was a rumor of Michael and Janet being the same person. Many of us Blacks run with these urban legends. LOL. He really and truly admired and loved Janet. His favorite songs are "Rhythm Nation 1814" and "The Knowledge". People want to talk about Donny and Marie and I don't have anything against them being a little bit country and rock n' roll but Michael and Janet did it for Us.

Prince, Paris, and Blanket are not mysterious children. There have always been White-looking children within the Black community ever since slavery. Slavery was the racist institution which produced the skin-color complex, intraracial discrimination, self-hatred, inferiority complexes, hair politics, and other bs. It was those White males raping Black and biracial women on those plantations and those White females forcing Black and biracial men to fuck them or they were going to cry rape and threaten to have them castrated or lynched. The one-drop rule in the U.S. stated that anyone with a drop of Black blood was Black and that applied to biracial, multiracial, and light-skinned people who were termed as mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, mustee, musteefino/musteefina, and other crazy race mixture terms. Some of these people looked Caucasian and yet were assigned to life in the African-American community as slaves.

The White media do not like the fact the Jacksons and the entire Black community are taking care of Prince, Paris, and Blanket. They want those kids to grow up to hate their Black side like Diane Dimond insinuating on The View today that some of the Jackson cousins are uncouth. Their Black and Black-Latino cousins! There are healthy biracial kids within the Black community because we are a loving people.

People wanna say Michael Jackson was going broke at the time of his death. I would go broke too if I was taken to court because people accused me of child molestation, money issues, song copyright issues, and other bullshit charges. The media have been trying to destroy him since making history on the Motown 25 Anniversary show in 1983. He had to pay attorneys. Duh!

When Michael Jackson was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey the first time around, Brooke Shields stated that she didn't mind dating him. Oh no! The media was not having that at the time since she was then having her adult career. They hurried up and matched her with tennis champ Andre Agassi. They did not want Brooke in a real interracial relationship with him.

Michael was close to his late sister-in-law, Enid, who was married to Jackie. Guess what? Jackie cheated on Enid with PAULA ABDUL, who was a Laker Girl at the time. She got pregnant but aborted the unborn child. She had the nerve to become Janet's choregrapher a year or two. I am sure Michael was pissed at Paula for doing that to Enid.

I will always love Michael Jackson's music, contrary to the belief I am not into my Blackness. I grew up listening to his music like every other child who was born in the late 1970s and grew up in the 1980s. I loved all of his songs as did my uncle Ronald. I used to watch his Bad tour in Japan with my former cousin-in-law, Savera, everyday after school. I am Black and grew up in a Black family. Hello!

Oh yes, Michael Jackson was the ONE who forced MTV to air music videos by Black artists in 1983. Before then, Martha Quinn and her New Wave crew did not think Black musicians were worth airtime. Michael changed the face of music videos so Hype Williams and Bille Woodruff betta give him credit. Michael made it possible for MTV to show us on the station. I know Martha feels like a dumb ass. He later became termed as THE KING OF POP. He even bought the musical catalogue of all of the music recorded by the Beatles and Enimem. In the event of Michael Jackson's death, the catalogue would go to his friend and singing mate, Paul McCartney, but it looks like the Jackson estate is not giving it up. It has been spectulated he was killed for the Beatles catalogue.

Michael Jackson was the one who went and sued Sony, exposing how much of an asshole Tommy Mottola was. People criticized him for consulting with Rev. Al Sharpton but it was a great step in letting people how the music industry gets down by exploiting and milking their artists. Tommy was the same one who did not want ex-wife Mariah Carey to let the media know her dad was a Black-Latino man named Alfred Roy Carey.

People were pissed at Michael's friendship with Elizabeth Taylor. I don't know why. America does not want Blacks and other cultures to be friends. Liz was supposed to have been a Hollywood prejudiced hater who was supposed to stay around from Michael. Oh please. They were the best friends. All White people are not racist. All Black people are not kind. I think true friendship was not be based on race.

Michael's friendship with Princess Diana even pissed conservative mass media. I guess they feared he was going to really school her on the racism and other ills in America. She was beginning to see things for herself and the British Royal Family were not pleased at her newfound independence. Michael even knew Queen Elizabeth II had Princess Diana killed cuz she was going to marry Dodi al-Fayed, a Muslim.

I hope yall enjoyed this blog on the life of Michael Joseph Jackson. I know I have because IT'S A DONALD THING.

Donald
Friday, June 25, 2010

PS: Please celebrate and honor the legacy, life, and memory of Michael by listening to his CDs (The Jackson Five and his solo career), reading books written by or about him and the Black periodicals which covered his career from the beginning like EBONY, JET, RIGHT ON!, etc., having dialogues about Michael's influence on the music industry and popular culture, and letting the White media know when to shut the fuck up when they call him Jacko or talk disrespectfully about his children.

Cleopatra's Hollywood Controversy

2010-06-25T15:12:00.001-04:00

The debate over Cleopatra's racial identity has risen all over again due to the Hollywood buzz about Angelina Jolie playing her. The Oscar-winning actress and humanitarian will become the next actress to play the Queen of the Nile in an upcoming biopic. Contrary to popular belief, Angelina is not taking up where actress Elizabeth Taylor left off at when she played Cleopatra in the 1963 motion picture with her future husband, Richard Burton, who played Marc Antony. The last actress to play Cleopatra in a film was model/actress Leonor Varela. The ABC-TV two-part miniseries co-starred actors Timothy Dalton, Billy Zane, and Rupert Graves. Leonor was a stunning beauty of a multiracial/multicultural background: Spanish, Greek, Syrian, French, Italian, and Algerian-Amazigh. At least she shared a common Greek ancestry with Cleopatra. She was on the cover of LATINA MAGAZINE at the time. Even before Elizabeth and Leonor, Cleopatra was played by actresses Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, and Vivien Leigh. Now with Angelina about to portray Cleopatra, there is still one big question: what is Cleopatra's real racial and ethnic makeup?

Cleopatra has been interpreted and depicted by many poets, playwrights, authors, writers, filmmakers, and other artistic people in numerous ways throughout centuries to suit the creators' various agendas and interior motives.

Cleopatra was and is an important historic figure. She was the Queen of the Nile before the Arab invasion of Egypt (Kamet, Kamit, Kemet, Kemit, Khamet, Khamit, etc.). She was a powerful force to be reckoned with. She was a monarch who did whatever she had to do for Egypt. She used her sexual wiles, pussy, vagina, vajayjay, pugina, etc. to entice two Roman men, Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, so she could maneuver over the Roman Empire. As Queen of the Nile, she couldn't pay to play nice with her enemies. She had to betray family members to get to where she had to go. No one said being a king, queen, prince, princess, dutchess, and other royalty was a peaceful or kindly gesture. Cleopatra was no angel or saint by the stretch of the imagination.

Playwrights, poets, and novelists have always written and depicted Cleopatra as a Greek woman. I am sure they knew she was a woman of color as in Black. Her loyalties and political aspirations were geared to Egypt, nor to Greece nor Rome. She worshipped Egyptian gods and goddesses. She was not another White woman trying to be, look, and sound Black. She knew clearly she was a Black woman. Her paternal grandmother was of African ancestry and she was aware of this. Her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, was most likely biracial (African and Macedonian) and looked like he could pass for 100 percent Greek. I just read there was a documentary produced by the BBC on which it was revealed that Cleopatra was not 100 percent Greek after all. She had some African ancestry in her genealogy. The Black community did not need the documentary as confirmation of Cleopatra's Blackness. We all knew when the late historian J.A. Rogers profiled her in his classic and seminal THE WORLD'S GREAT MEN OF COLOR, Volume 1. We all knew when Dr. Ben stated there were seven Cleopatras yet the Cleopatra we all know was singled out because of her global and cultural proximity and significance in the annals of the Western World. We all knew when model/actress/former CBS Sports commentator Jayne Kennedy Overton stated on national television that Cleopatra was a Black woman. We all knew when the late historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke wrote about her in an Afrocentric perspective. We all knew when writer Charles Whitaker asked the readers of EBONY if Cleopatra was Black. We all knew when the late actress Tamara Dobson played the blaxploitation heroine Cleopatra Jones in two movies. We all knew when the Black British sister-trio girl group Cleopatra hit the music charts. We all knew when entertainer/actress Beyonce Knowles played blaxploitation parody Foxxy Cleopatra in the film "Austin Powers in Goldmember". We all knew when we watched Riff-Raff's girlfriend, Cleo, on the animated cartoon "The Catillac Cats". We all knew when Jamaican dancehall artist Patra hit the U.S. charts as "The Queen of the Pack" during the early-to-mid 1990s. We all knew when entertainer/actress Janet Jackson played Cleo during the 1984-1985 season of "Fame". We all knew when Queen Latifah tapped into her inner lesbian aggressiveness as the menacing lesbian Cleo in the film "Set It Off."

The Western World knows that Cleopatra was indeed a Black woman with political loyalties to the African country of Egypt but do not want Black people, especially Black women all around the world to know we are a people who began humanity, created world civilizations, and contributed to history on the world stage before enslavement (slavery), imperialism, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, discrimination, apartheid, racism, etc. Black women were not mammies, tragic mulattoes, bitches, hoes, wenches, flows,Sapphires, Jezebels, chickenheads, video vixens, welfare queens, baby mamas, shorties, ride or die chicks, etc. like how the Western mass media depict all Black women globally. There are many Black girls and women who need to grow up secure in loving their Blackness. They need to know Cleopatra was indeed a Black woman who made a strong impact on the world. They do not need to see Angelina Jolie play Cleopatra at this day and age.

Images in mass media can both help and hinder the lives of Black people, who watch the most television and film than other cultures. Some people can argue and say Angelina has the legitimate right to play Cleopatra since acting is supposed to be colorblind. That would be nice if Cleopatra's true racial identity was never suppressed and hidden by the history writers of the Western World as a means of making Black people feel culturally and racially inferior. Cleopatra has been racially bleached in the mass media throughout centuries along with Jesus Christ, Hannibal, Aesop, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ludwig Von Beethoven, etc. Young Black boys and girls need to see and read about positive Black images in the media. The positive images of a shero like Cleopatra as a Black woman would decrease the usage of negative terminologies such as nigger/nigga/niggah, chickenhead, bitch, ho, baby mama, pigeon, etc. out of the minds and mouths of Black people towards each other.

I don't care how Angelina Jolie had her lips injected with collagen or inherited them from her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who was part Iroquois. I don't care if she adopted Ethiopian-born Zahara Marley, gave birth to Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, her love child with Hollywood White heartthrob Brad Pitt, in Namibia. I don't care if she did humanitarian work in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Chad, and the Darfur region of the Sudan. I don't care if she played Mariane Pearl, the multiracial (Dutch, Jewish, African, Chinese, and Cuban) widow of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was slain in Pakistan, in the film "A Mighty Heart". She is not a Black woman and not culturally and racially capable to play Cleopatra. If she shouldn't play Cleopatra, then who should?

There are many and I mean MANY Black, biracial, and multiracial actresses who are looking for quality roles in Hollywood. Cleopatra can easily be played by an actress like Halle Berry, Thandie Newton, Sophie Okendo, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Beyonce Knowles, Zoe Saldana, Denise Vasi, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Williams, Jurnee Smollett, Jennifer Beals, LisaRaye McCoy, etc. There are many real-life biracial and multiracial women who can get the role and work it without the standard Holllywood racial makeup being applied onto the face of another White actress like Angelina Jolie. However, we as members of the Black community should not expect Hollywood to do the politically correct thing by casting a Black or biracial actress to play Cleopatra. Hollywood has always been about making money. The Hollywood players are not social workers. Hollywood does not want to see people of color, women, LGBT, and other marginalized people reflected in a positive light. As far as they are concerned, all Black women have to fit within the stereotypical box as mammies, tragic mulattoes, Sapphires, baby mamas, welfare queens, bitches, hoes, flows, chickenheads, pigeons, Jezebels, golddiggers, hookers, matriarchs, maids, Strong Black Women With Attitudes, and other negative connotations associated with Black women. Hollywood do not and will never see Black women on the world stage so we need not to boycott and protest White actresses like Angelina Jolie in playing Cleopatra. Despite Michelle Robinson Obama being the first African-American First Lady of the United States of America, Black women are still seen as everything else but Cleopatra.

What Black actresses should do is pull their resources and monies together and create an independent film about Cleopatra in an Afrocentric perspective. Directors Julie Dash, Darnell Martin, Kasi Lemmons, Gina Prince-Blythewood, Debbie Allen, Jada Pinkett Smith and Sheryl Lee Ralph can get the ball going. Instead of complaining about the scarcity of Hollywood roles for Black women, we as a community need to accept Hollywood for what it is - a media machine which is used to forever denigrate Black people in stereotypical roles subliminally and literally. Once that happens, we can finally create, produce, and direct movies which will foster self-esteem and good confidence in Black people. We do not need Cleopatra to be thrown down our throats as a White woman in the form of Angelina Jolie. Hollywood does not have the legal right to tell us how to celebrate, idolize, love, like, honor, and feature our heroes and sheroes. Like how they paraded Cleopatra around in the forms of Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, and Leonor Varela, we need to see Cleopatra in her true form - a multiracial woman of Greek, Persian, and African ancestry who identified as a Black woman on the behalf of Egypt.

While it was done out of parody and satire, it was very refreshing to see actress/comic and "The View" host Whoopi Goldberg play Cleopatra in a commercial for POISE, the bladder control undergarments. It was the first time I've seen an African-American Jew play Cleopatra in American mass media. Well, Whoopi could pull this off since she is a comic and her Cleopatra schtick can be seen as laughable, funny, comical, satirical, far-fetched, unbelievable, etc. It is already known she cannot play Cleopatra in a real motion picture within the Hollywood confines. While it is refreshing to see Whoopi play the Queen of the Nile on a commercial for bladder control undergarments, it is still not progress!

While it looks like Angelina Jolie will go ahead to play Cleopatra, the controversy over Cleopatra's racial identity will still be a hot pressing issue. Within the midst, the Black community need to read and study about our history, claim our sheroes and heroes for ourselves, and control how images of our people are distributed throughout the world. One last note, instead of complaining, bitching, crying, fussing, cussing, cursing, boycotting, protesting, and rallying about and against the love and hate relationship between African-Americans and Hollywood, we need to collectively create our own mediums of cultural expression, let it be film, television, literature, music, art, drawings, sculptures, photography, etc. We need to recognize what poet Sonia Sanchez knows about us: We a Baddddd People! We are royalty. We are the daughters and sons of Africa. We are the heirs of Mother Eve. We are the children of Cleopatra.

Sorry, Wendie Malick, but you need to know you have a drop of African ancestry since you affirmed you are a direct descendant of Cleopatra on "Hollywood Squares" a few years ago. Welcome to the family! Her father, Ken Malick, is Egyptian of Arabian ancestry.

FYI: Wendie Malick is an actress who is best known for her roles on "Kate and Allie", "Dream On", "Just Shoot Me" "Baywatch", "Frasier" and "Hot in Cleveland".

Please read BECOMING CLEOPATRA by Francesca Royster as a reference.

Donald
Friday, June 25, 2010

Thank You For Being A Friend, Rue McClanahan!

2010-06-12T22:40:00.003-04:00

I was distraught when Ra Shawn Chisholm, my BFF, called me at work a week or two ago to inform me how actress Rue McClanahan passed away as a result of a stroke and a brain hemorrhage. I could not believe it because I thought she was going to get well after her bypass surgery and stroke. It would have nice for her to have surprised long-time friend and sitcom co-star Betty White on her recent hosting stint on "Saturday Night Live". God called her home where she is at a much better place.

I knew about Rue McClanahan's television work since I was a little boy. I knew of her role on the Norman Lear sitcom "Maude" as Vivian Cavender Harmon from 1972 to 1978 but I never watched it ever. As a TV freak, I knew her sweet but scatter-brained character was best friends with the title character, outspoken political liberal Maude Findlay (Beatrice Arthur) and married to Republican Dr. Arthur Harmon (Conrad Bain).

It was not until "Mama's Family" premiered on NBC in 1983 when I became familiar with Rue's work. She played Aunt Fran Crowley, the sister of Thelma Harper (Vicki Lawrence). I wasn't really feeling the characters nor the show as didn't most of Middle America so NBC cancelled the show in 1984.

As soon as NBC premiered "The Golden Girls" in the fall of 1985, Rue finally struck gold as Southern belle nympho and Florida homeowner Blanche Deveraux. She was reunited with Beatrice Arthur, who was cast as sarcastic divorcee Dorothy Zboniak, and Betty White, who was cast as ditzy Rose Nylund. Rue and Betty starred together on the failure "Mama's Family" as Aunt Fran and her niece, Ellen. The three television vets came together to act with theater veteran Estelle Getty, who was cast as Dorothy's mother, Sophia Petrillo. The chemistry between the quartet became legendary and classic magic. The series was a Saturday night hit for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992. Rue really acted her ass off as Blanche, who had an insatiable appetite for sex and men. Blanche was the Golden Girl who let middle-aged and elderly women know they can still have and enjoy sex at any age. Although she never revealed her real age like most women, she was living her life and never caring about who disapproved of her sleeping around with numerous men. She wanted to find the right man after the death of her husband, George Deveraux (George Grizzard). She did not care when the other Girls referred to her as a slut, tramp, overused mattress, and other less-than-flattery names. Although Blanche had sexual relations with Caucasian men on-camera, the fans know she got it on with African-American and Latino men as well. She revealed her interracial sexual experiences on the episode when Dorothy's son, Michael (Scott Jacoby), announced his engagement to his older African-American fiancee, Lorraine (Rosalind Cash). Sophia asked Lorraine's mother, Greta (Virginia Capers) and aunts Trudy and Libby (Lynn Hamilton and Montrose Hagins) if it was true about African-American men having big penises. Blanche accidently blurted out that it was true as did Trudy. Dorothy hurried up and stated it was a myth. Blanche asked Greta, Trudy, and Libby if they could give her names of African-American millionaire men. There was one episode when Blanche and Sophia fought over a Cuban man named Fidel (Henry Darrow). She even got herself hot talking about Latino soccer teams. It was obvious she did not discriminate when it came to men and sex. She always went to The Rusty Anchor, a nearby bar where she met her gentlemen friends. Despite her reputation as a promiscuous woman, she was jealous of Dorothy's intellectualism. She was the one who got Dorothy to stop feeling sorry for herself after being dumped by her ex-husband, clingy Stan Zboniak (Herbert Edelman), and go out there to mingle. She was mostly sisterly with Rose. She was like the third daughter of Sophia, who insulted her countless times with her version of Sicilian tough love. Blanche was a complex woman who didn't get along with sisters Virginia (Sheree North) and Charmaine (Barbara Babcock). She had a fit when her brother, Clayton (Monte Markham), came out to her as a gay man. She couldn't take it when her other brother, Tad (Ned Beatty), resurfaced after years of being in an institution for his mental illness. She had strained relationships with daughters Janet (Jessica Lundy) and Rebecca (Shawn Schepps, Debra Engle) because she was not mother material. She held her father, Curtis "Big Daddy" Hollingsworth (Murray Hamilton, David Wayne), on a high pedestal until he decided to sell the family plantation so he could begin a country music career and when he married a younger woman named Margaret Spencer (Sondra Currie). She learned Big Daddy had a lifelong affair with her African-American nanny, Viola Watkins (Ruby Dee), after his death. Blanche opened her home to a niece named Lucy (Hallie Todd) and her numerous grandchildren. There were running gags about the size of her butt throughout the seasons. I am thinking it either came from having lots of anal sex or she had African ancestry in her genealogy (well, she learned she was part-Jewish). I have heard whenever a Southern White woman was really pretty, she had African blood. I do believe Blanche was part African-American but that is another blog. She was not as pale as Sophia, Dorothy, and Rose. Rue was part Choctaw Indian anyway so there you go! Blanche used to dress her ass off on various episodes. I would find out years later that many of Rue's fashions were designed by an African-American man, whose name I do know but read in an old fashion magazine.

After the cancellation of "The Golden Girls" in 1992 and the lackluster CBS spinoff "Golden Palace" in 1993, Rue went to star in a funny monologue play called "Nunsense". I watched it on Channel Thirteen and it was funny.

Rue eventually contacted breast cancer during the mid-1990s and went into remission. The chemotherapy altered her appearance but she did not give up. She appeared on the UPN short-lived revival of the hit ABC classic show "The Love Boat" called "The Love Boat: The Next Wave" as the mother of the late Robert Urich.

She shocked many of her African-American fans when she appeared in the film "The Fighting Temptations" with Cuba Gooding Jr., Beyonce Knowles, Steve Harvey, and Mike Epps in 2003.

She wrote and published her tell-all memoir, MY FIRST FIVE HUSBANDS ... AND THE ONES WHO GOT AWAY in 2007. She got much love from the gay community on one of her book signings in New York. She was a gay icon for many years and a supporter of gay rights and gay marriage. She was a cast member of the gay series SORDID LIVES which aired on LOGO.

I almost forgot to mention how she was on an episode of the classic television sitcom "All in the Family" when she and actor Eugene Roche played married swingers who tried to get Archie and Edith Bunker (Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton) into the swinging lifestyle.

She was married six times.

Thank You for Being A Friend,
Rue McClanahan,
Rest In Peace: 1934-2010

Whatchoo Talkin' Bout Willis?: My Reflection on Gary Coleman

2010-06-12T11:19:00.000-04:00

I watched the late Gary Coleman on television growing up as Arnold Jackson on "Different Strokes" on NBC, ABC, the Fox-5 reruns at 5 PM from Monday-Friday, and on Nick At Nite. He was a cultural icon to me and millions. I remember "The Gary Coleman Show" which was the Saturday morning cartoon airing on NBC from 1982-1984. He made me laugh very much. I am saddened beyond recognition because I cannot believe he is really gone. He should've gotten his closure as a child actor transitioning into adulthood. Much of the White media buffooned him as a has-been but he was still legendary in African-American and White households. He did not get caught up in the Hollywood drug scene like Corey Haim, Brittany Murphy, and even Todd Bridges, who has been sober for many years and wrote a recent autobiography, KILLING WILLIS. He did not go out of control like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jodie Sweetin, Drew Barrymore, and other celeb kids or Hollywood kids as author Jackie Collins termed for one of her best-sellers. Gary was even looked upon as a joke when he ran for Governor of California in 2003 against Arnold Schwartzenegger and porn actress Mary Carey. He was not a joke at all. He was just trying to his life separate from his Different Strokes past. He never celebrated the fruits of his labor due to legal and personal issues he had as a former Black child star, which Hollywood does not really care about - the trials and tribulations of Black child stars like him, Jaimee Foxworth, Marc Copage, Brenden Jefferson, etc. I will miss him very much.

Gary got his start on the talk-show satire sitcom "Fernwood 2-Night" which was hosted by Martin Mull and Fred Willard in 1977. He sat alongside Sydney Penny, the biracial (Caucasian and Cherokee) daughter of country stars Hank and Sheri Penny who became a television star like Gary. She went on to play the young Meggie Cleary on the miniseries "The Thorn Birds" in 1983, Gidget's niece Dani on "The New Gidget" in 1985, and became a soap opera star on "Santa Barbara", "All My Children", "Sunset Beach", "Hyperion Bay", "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "All My Children". Gary guested on "The Jeffersons" and "Good Times" before gaining fame as Arnold Jackson on "Diff'rent Strokes".

I watched a TV-movie "Playing With Fire" with him, Cicely Tyson, and Yaphet Kotto in 1985. He played a teenaged pyromaniac who acted out because his parents divorced. It was the first role in which he branched away from his Arnold persona. He was really fierce in that movie.

After the cancellation of "Diff'rent Strokes" on ABC in 1986, Gary guested on "227" as a gangster who crossed paths with Mary Jenkins (Marla Gibbs) and the other tenants. It was great to see him and Conrad Bain, who played his White adoptive father, Phillip Drummond, play on the last episode of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" as their characters looked at the mansion while Will and the Banks family prepared to move out.

While Gary was sober and clean, his co-stars Todd Bridges and Dana Plato had their own media troubles. Todd struggled with drug abuse and Dana robbed a convenience store. It was thought by the media from here that the sitcom was cursed. It couldn't have been cursed since Shavar Ross, who played Arnold's friend Dudley Ramsey, became a successful director, producer, screenwriter, filmmaker, and blogger. He also went on to play Weasel, the friend of Eddie Winslow and Waldo Faldo on the 1990s ABC sitcom "Family Matters". Dixie Carter, who was the first Maggie McKinney Drummond, went on to instant fame as Julia Sugarbaker "The Eleanor Roosevelt of Atlanta" on the CBS hit sitcom "Designing Women" as well as other roles on "Family Law" and "Desperate Housewives". Mary Jo Catlett, who was Pearl Gallagher, the fourth Drummond housekeeper, was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for her role as Mary Finnegan, the housekeeper of Katherine Delafield (Edie Lehmann), during the 1989-1990 season on "General Hospital". Nikki Swasey, who played Arnold's nemesis, Lisa, works behind the camera. Janet Jackson, who played Charlene Duprey, Willis's girlfriend, went to become the famous Miss Jackson If You're Nasty after getting control from her father, Joseph Jackson, as an entertainer, musician, and actress. The sitcom was not cursed. People just go through shit and issues. That went for Todd, Dana, and even Gary.

Gary sued his adoptive parents, Willie and Sue Coleman, and his advisor for misappropriation of his money in 1989. He had legal and financial issues ever since. He had to become a security guard to make a living. That was fucked up since the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the rest of Hollywood should have looked out for him but when it comes to former child stars, the reality is harsh as they realize they have to survive on their own. Gary and the Colemans parted ways. Gary never forgave them for fucking with his money. Years later, he should have so he could get inner peace. Unfortunately, his life was not a crystal stair for him. He was accused of physically assaulting an aggressive fan, who was pissed because he didn't personalize her autograph. He was also accused of hating on White people in the media not so long ago. He just didn't have it easy for himself.

When comedian/actor Sinbad hosted the short-lived late-night show VIBE, he conducted a "Diff'rent Strokes" reunion with Todd, Dana, and Gary. Todd announced his sobriety and his marriage to current wife, Dori Bridges, a White woman. Dana was getting her life together after the convenience store robbery, posing for PLAYBOY, and doing her soft-core porn film "Diff'rent Strokes: The Story of Jack and Jill ... and Jill" on which she played a lesbian artist. Gary was just living his drug and alcohol-free life but struggling with his demons.

I remember when Gary escorted a Latina or White woman to a Hollywood function so I assumed he finally busted his nut and lost his virginity. Nope, but when he married White actress Shannon Price in 2007, he became a man in the sexual sense. The marriage exhausted itself out and they divorced a year later in 2008. It was a volatile union from the beginning to the point when they were arrested for disorderly conduct and domestic violence. They even appeared on "Divorce Court" in front of Judge Lynn Toler as a means of trying to save their marriage.

When I left my job early on Friday, May 28, 2010, I purchased a copy of Todd Bridges' new autobiography KILLING WILLIS from a thrift shop in the Hells Kitchen-Midtown section of Manhattan. I came home hours later and surfed on Facebook, only to read how Gary Coleman passed away from a brain hemorrhage which resulted from a fall at his house in Utah. I cried for real for an hour or two. I wondered what Conrad, Todd, Nikki, Mary Jo, Shavar, Janet, Charlotte Rae (Mrs. Edna Garrett), Kim Fields (Dorothy "Tootie" Ramsey), Danny Cooksey (Sam McKinney), and Steven Mond (Robbie Jason) were going through. I also paid my condolences to Shannon, not knowing they were already divorced.

My BFF Ra Shawn Chisholm and I wondered if Willie and Sue was going to make a media statement about Gary. These were the same ones who fucked with his money. They eventually did this week on "The Today Show" amid the battle over Gary's estate with former daughter-in-law Shannon. They need to let him be buried and rest in peace. Willie and Sue had not talked to Gary for twenty-three years. They stated they were not going to fight over Gary's will. He wanted to be buried in Utah in the event of his death but Willie and Sue wanted him to be buried in Ilinois. Shannon is fighting for executive control of his estate by citing she was his common-law wife at the end of his death. Sue and Willie suspect foul play but it has been proven Gary's death was not a murder. It was a shame to see Gary's deathbed photo on the cover of the tabloid GLOBE. I believe Shannon leaked the cover photo and other photos to GLOBE, but she has denied involvement in that. Todd Bridges is even livid at this. I know Shannon Price just wants the money and does not give a shit about Gary Coleman. She is just going to get the kit and kaboodle and bounce of the scene. I wouldn't be surprised if she has a book deal very soon and publishes a tell-all about Gary. She looks and seems to be an opportunist.

Like many people, I just want Gary to finally be buried so he can rest in peace.

Rest In Peace,
Gary Coleman: 1968-2010

My Forgiveness of Lena Horne

2010-06-12T03:20:00.003-04:00

I was about to surf Facebook weeks ago when I found out African-American legend Lena Mary Calhourn Horne made transition to the Ancestors on Sunday, May 9, 2010. She was 92 years old.

My BFF Ra Shawn Chisholm and I just discussed Lena Horne over the week prior to her death. It was in reference to Lena not wanting entertainer/actress Janet Jackson to portray her in a biopic which was going to be produced by Roy Campanella Jr., filmmaker and the son of baseball legend Roy Campanella in 2004. Her reason was because Janet's big black woman tit popped out during a performance malfunction during the Super Bowl XXXVIII. It wasn't like Janet was acting or being a ho during her routine with blue-eyed wannabe R&B singer Justin Timberlake. Janet's tit popped out accidently but Lena acted as if she was going to tarnish her name and image. Oh please! I always imagined what she did inside the Cotton Club as a sixteen-year-old ingenue with those older musicians. I am not trying to defame her and her legacy but really!

African-Americans posted comments up on Facebook, giving heartfelt tributes to Lena and offering condolences to her family.

I enjoyed Lena's classic cameos on THE COSBY SHOW and A DIFFERENT WORLD. Her two Crest Toothpaste commercials were elegant and classy.

I read her family history in THE HORNES: AN AMERICAN FAMILY, which was authored by her daughter, author/journalist Gail Lumet Buckley, when I was a student at John Bowne High School. That was one of the first books about the Black Bourgeoisie I've ever read so it was an unique piece on African-American history. One important aspect which I took from the book was how Lena was very sheltered within the confines of the Black Bourgeoisie with their inclusive social clubs like Jack and Jill, The Links, and the Bon Ton Society, which membership was based on one's skin color, hair texture, social standing, arranged marriages, the upholding of the Talented Tenth belief, and the overwhelming wish to fully assimilate into White society. Somehow, Lena struck me as the type of woman who didn't fully subscribe to that life. She was more or less raised by her paternal grandparents, Edwin and Cora Horne. Cora was a prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). I could identify with Lena because she wasn't really raised by her parents, Edwin "Teddy" Horne and Edna Scottron Horne, and I guess she felt alone sometimes. Music was her escape from her family issues and she grew into her own in the field.

I was always fascinated by the fact Lena chose not to pass for another race although her features were an amalgam of African, French, Haitian, Native American, English, Portuguese, and Hispanic/Latino bloodlines, cultures, roots, and blends, consensual or involuntary. She was the epitome of Black beauty in Black publications, such as EBONY, JET, SEPIA, THE PITTSBURGH COURIER, THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS, NEGRO WORLD, ESSENCE, etc. for centuries. Not taking anything away from her, but many Blacks and Whites fawned over her beauty because of the biraciality and multiraciality stemming from both sides of her family. I strongly believe actress/singer Ethel Waters felt resentment towards Lena during the filming of the musical "Cabin in the Sky" because of the skin color thing. Lena was light-skinned and swelte, while Ethel was dark-skinned and heavy-set. It seemed to Ethel that Lena was given star-billing on the basis of her skin tone. She was the sex symbol and MGM darling because of her multiracial family tree. She was the predecessor of mulattic mixed biracial multiracial Creole looking media starlets of today, such as Halle Berry, Beyonce Knowles, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Leona Lewis, Jordin Sparks, Rashida Jones, Nicole Richie, Alicia Keys, Maya Rudolph, Vanessa Williams, Chanel Iman, Tyra Banks, LisaRaye McCoy, Tiny, Nicole "Hoopz" Alexander, Deelishis, Lauren London, etc. Despite of her skin color, Lena still identified as a Black woman. She could have passed for White, Native American, or Latina but choose to remain African Colored Negro Black Afro-American African-American A Person of Color. She had to when a White waiter addressed her as a "nigger" at a restaurant where she had a meal with her second husband, a White Jewish musician named Lennie Hayton. She was an outspoken activist when it came to segregation in the U.S. military. She was a member of the NAACP since the age of two when Grandma Cora Calhoun Horne signed her up. After being referred to as "a nigger", she was really culturally and racially shell-shocked . She yelled the word "Freedom" at the 1963 March on Washington which was organized both by Black gay activist-pacifist Bayard Rustin and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She separated from Lennie around that time in history.

She gave Black America a cultural treat when she played Glinda the Good Witch in the African-American version of "The Wizard of Oz" called "The Wiz" in 1978. "The Wiz" cast her with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, and Mabel King. It was directed by Sidney Lumet, her White former son-in-law. Sidney was once married to Gail and fathered her two grandchildren, Jenny and Amy. I could imagine working under Sidney's direction must have been hard on Lena since she was his former mother-in-law. She took Gail's side 100 percent as mothers do for their daughters, the ones they are close with. Anyhow, "The Wiz" was a box office flop in the eyes of White America. Despite that, the film and its stars were revered in the Black community. Many Black folks shown and gave Lena much love.

It seemed like when Lena's one-woman show "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music" premiered on Broadway in 1981, she finally began letting a lot of emotions, fears, frustrations, and insecurities go. She let loose the cultural and social expectations both the Black Bourgeoisie and White America had for her. She redefined herself and proudly proclaimed herself a Black woman. We know how she defied Hollywood's stereotypes of Black women as maids, mammies, Jezebels, Sapphires, tramps, bitches, hoes, flows, etc. when she and her father, Teddy Horne, let MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer) know that she wasn't working as a maid. They agreed as she was a featured songstress in movies like "Cabin in the Sky", "Stormy Weather" and "Panama Hattie".

Although Lena died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital due to an illness, it wasn't until I watched three of her movies which aired on Turner Movie Classics on Friday, May 21, 2010: "The Duke Is Tops" (later renamed "The Bronze Venus" by MGM), "Cabin in the Sky" and "Panama Hattie" that I finally got an appreciation for what and who Lena Mary Calhoun Horne Jones Hayton was as a woman, African-American, singer, actress, dancer, civil rights activist, daughter, granddaughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, cultural icon, friend, lover, enemy, etc.

I was taken aback by Lena and Gail not wanting Janet Jackson to play Lena after the tit-for-tat Super Bowl XXXVIII debacle in 2004. Lena admired Janet and vice versa. It wasn't like Janet showcased her big black tit on purpose like Lil' Kim did at the MTV Music Video Awards in 1999 when both of her nipples were covered by blue pasties. Diana Ross squeezed them to the shock and surprise of the audience and viewers. Janet was not being a slut, tramp, ho, Jezebel, or other negative characterizations and stereotypes of Black women. Lena could not really talk since it was said and written that she had an affair with boxer Joe Louis (The Brown Bomber). I am not writing this to lambast nor blast Lena because that would be tacky and whack. I am merely stating my feelings prior to and after her death. I felt Lena should've understood it was not Janet's intention to embarrass, humiliate, nor stereotype African-American womanhood. Janet Jackson wasn't a low-life nor ghetto trash-type of a woman who decided to show her tit just for the hell of it. It was a malfunction which that punk-ass Justin Timberlake should've taken the responsibility for. ABC still wanted Janet to play Lena in the biopic but Gail asked Janet to walk away from the project. Janet did and moved on gracefully. Meanwhile, Lena and Gail didn't mind the possibility of singer/actress Alicia Keys in portraying the Bronze Venus in a biopic produced by talk-show/media mogul Oprah Winfrey. They did not want Halle Berry to play Lena, who stated that Halle did not have the "right color" and this can be read in James Gavin's biography STORMY WEATHER: THE LIFE OF LENA HORNE. I feel Lena and Gail didn't want Halle because of her controversial sex scene with Billy Bob Thornton in the Oscar-winning film "Monster's Ball" and her million-dollar black titty showcase in the film "Swordfish". I guess Lena and Gail were like: Oh no! It is ironic of how Alicia Keys played a lesbian assassin in the film "Smokin' Aces", yet Lena and Gail had no problems with the possibility of her playing Lena. Alicia even carried on a relationship with hip-hop producer Swizz Beats during his separation from R&B singer Mashonda and still no controversy from the Lena and Gail camp. Well, we will see who will play Lena if the biopic is greenlighted and ready for a premiere.

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne will forever be missed.

She is survived by her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, her six grandchildren (Jenny and Amy Lumet, William, Thomas, Lena, and Samadhi Jones), and three great-grandchildren.

Gail Lumet Buckley wrote and published a second book, AMERICAN PATRIOTS: THE STORY OF BLACKS IN THE MILITARY FROM THE REVOLUTION TO DESERT STORM in 2001.

Jenny Lumet starred in the 1986 Run-DMC film "Tougher Than Leather" as Pam, the secretary whom Run (Joseph Simmons) flirts with. Pam spent more time during her nails than her job. She was also featured in "Q&A", another film directed by her dad, Sidney in 1990. She played Nancy Bosch, the ex-girlfriend of a police officer who was dating a Puerto Rican drug dealer, a witness to a major crime being investigated.

Jenny was formerly married to Italian/Cuban actor, Bobby Cannavale, from 1994 to 2003. Bobby starred on the short-lived A&E court drama "100 Centre Street" as crooked ADA Jeremiah "J.J." Jellinek who was involved with the Mob. He acted alongside veterans Alan Arkin and LaTanya Richardson-Jackson. Since "100 Centre Street" was created and directed by his then father-in-law, Sidney Lumet, it was obvious it was nepotism which got him the job. It obviously paid off since Bobby Cannavale went on to win an Emmy for his work as Officer Vinnie D'Angelo, the first long-term boyfriend and future husband of openly gay lawyer Will Truman (Eric McCormack) on the hit sitcom "Will and Grace". Jenny and Bobby had a son named Jacob Cannavale.

Jenny has another child, a 2-year-old daughter named Sasha, by her second husband, a Jewish man named Alex Weinstein.

Jenny is now known as a screenwriter in her own right. She wrote the screenplay "Rachel's Getting Married" which became a motion picture with Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin, and Rosemarie DeWitt in 2008 and was directed by acclaimed Jonathan Demme, who is known for hits like "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia" and box-office flops like "Beloved".

Amy Lumet is a sound editor. She worked on films like "Making Mr. Right" and "The Last Party". She was once married to P.J. O'Rourke, a conservative political satirist, journalist, writer, and author from 1990 to 1993. It is rumored that she had an affair with Arizona Senator John McCain during her marriage to O'Rourke.

I never knew about Lena's other granddaughter, Samadhi Jones, until James Gavin's STORMY WEATHER: THE LIFE OF LENA HORNE introduced her. Her Aunt Gail acted as if she never existed in THE HORNES: AN AMERICAN FAMILY. I wonder why while she acknowledged Thomas, William, and Lena (Little Lena), the children of her brother, the late Edwin "Teddy" Jones. It seems to me that it was not believed Samadhi was Teddy's daughter but that of another Black man and his White widow, Marsha Thompson Jones. Samadhi was indeed the daughter of both Teddy and Marsha and the full-sibling to William, Thomas, and Little Lena.

Samadhi has a daughter named Dharma.

Thomas Jones is a pastry-chef instructor in New York. He served in the military and graduated from the French Culinary Institute in 2003.

Little Lena Jones is now a teacher.

William Jones is living a civiilian and quiet life.

I am wondering what will happen to the next generation with Jacob, Sasha, and Dharma. Time will only tell.

I knew you all were feeling the T about Lena, Gail, Jenny, Amy, Samadhi, Thomas, Little Lena, and William. I know I did. After all, it's a Donald Thing!

Rest In Peace,
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne: 1917-2010

We Hardly Knew You, Ben Carrington

2010-06-11T23:03:00.000-04:00

British actor Christopher Cazenove, who was best known to American audiences on the 1980s prime-time soap opera "Dynasty" as Ben Carrington, passed away on April 7, 2010, six days after that of his on-screen brother, John Forsythe. He had septicaemia, which is known as blood poisoning.

Christopher joined the cast of "Dynasty" during the 1986-1987 season. His character, Ben Carrington, was the "black sheep" of the Carrington fortune. He lived in exile in Australia. He was believed to have been responsible for a fire which killed his and Blake's mother, Ellen Lucy Carrington. Alexis sought him out and brought him to Denver, Colorado, to cause trouble for her ex-husband. They quickly become allies as they attempt to turn the tables on Blake. Ben sued for his share of their father's estate. They also ganged up on Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll), the biracial half-sister of Blake and Ben, by claiming her African-American mother, Laura Matthews, lied about their White father, Tom Carrington, siring Dominique. Blake realized he lost his fortune due to Ben and Alexis's scheming. Ben had drama of his own when it was revealed he had a long-ago affair with Emily Fallmont (Patricia Crowley), the wife of Senator Buck Fallmont (Richard Anderson) and how he left his mother alone to be with Emily. Ben was being blackmailed with this information by aspiring novelist Caress Morell (Kate O'Mara), the sister of Alexis. He had Caress shipped back to prison in Venezuela as a means to cover his secret affair with Emily. The secret was revealed after Emily was hit by a car and confessed on her deathbed about her affair with Ben. It was a possibility that her son, Clay Fallmont (Ted McGinley), was Ben's son. During the 1987-1988 season, Blake saves Ben from an oil rig explosion in Southeast Asia, reconciling and patching up their differences. Ben was also able to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Leslie Saunders Carrington (Terri Garber). This revelation of the possibility of Ben siring Clay ruined any chance of a romance between Clay and Leslie, who could have been half-siblings. The DNA test was inconclusive so Clay and Leslie ended their relationship. Both Clay and Ben left Denver. Ben was able to make peace with Blake at this point.

I watched an episode of Lifetime's "Intimate Portrait" about Joan Collins and was surprised to see a photo of Christopher Cazenove and Stephanie Beacham (Sable Scott Colby) attending one of Joan's book signings for her best-selling novel PRIME TIME.

Christopher and Stephanie would guest on CBS' hit daytime soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" as themselves in 2004 when the boutique Jackie M opened to the delight of Jackie Payne Marone Knight (Lesley-Anne Down).

Joan and Stephanie were among the guests who attended Christopher's funeral in the United Kingdom.

Rest In Peace,
Christopher Cazenove
1945-2010

Blake Carrington DIES

2010-06-11T21:45:00.000-04:00

I was spending a Saturday afternoon home a couple of weeks ago when I learned sad news by stopping by the Facebook page of actress Terri Garber. I was saddened to read how actor John Forsythe died at the age of 92.

By the way, Terri is best known for her role as bitchy and saucy Southern belle Ashton Main Ashton on the miniseries trilogies "North and South", "North and South: Book II", and "North and South: Book III". She followed that role by playing Leslie Carrington, the niece of John Forsythe's stern patriarch, Blake Carrington, on the hit 1980s excess-laden, big hair fun, and shoulder padded nighttime soap opera "Dynasty." She was on there from 1987 to 1988. She also starred on daytime soap operas, such as "Texas", "Santa Barbara", "General Hospital", and " As The World Turns."

Terri considered John a joy to work with on "Dynasty". I asked her if she heard from the other cast members regarding John's death. She replied that she didn't. I looked at the photo she posed in with John, John James (Jeff Colby), Gordon Thomson (Adam Carrington), Jack Coleman (Steven Carrington), Heather Locklear (Sammy Jo Reese Carrington Fallmont), and Leann Hunley (Dana Waring Carrington). I cried instantly because I grew up in the 1980s when "Dynasty" was hot.

John was like the White grandfatherly figure like Papa Smurf was to the legions of children worldwide. I felt sorry for him because I considered him as an older man. I looked at the elderly characters like they were the scapegoats for everyone's issues and isms. When I began watching the "Dynasty" repeats on Fox 5-TV at 11:30 PM back in 1986 or 1987, I began to see Blake Carrington in a different light. Whereas I became addicted to the "Dynasty" episodes on ABC, the Fox 5-TV reruns took the viewers back to the beginning five or six seasons prior. I saw how Blake attacked and accidently killed Ted Dinard, the lover of his bisexual son, Steven. Back then between 1981 and 1983, Steven was played by Al Corley. I never would've thought Blake had a violent streak. I would read years later in SOAP OPERA WEEKLY how Blake raped his second and younger wife, Krystal Grant Jennings Carrington (Linda Evans) in 1983. I couldn't believe how he raped his own wife or anyone else by that matter. I was like okay. I gagged when his ex-wife, Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter (Joan Collins), barged into the Carrington mansion to announce she was the new owner and that Blake, Krystal, and their daughter, Krystina (Jessica Player), had to find somewhere to live. Blake walked quickly to the top of the staircase and began choking Alexis. Krystle tried to stop him from choking Alexis, but she had been held tightly by Blake's wily brother, Ben Carrington (Christopher Cazenove). Blake's violent nature would always come up as an issue for discussion and debate in various episodes throughout the show's eight seasons.

When "Dynasty" went off the air in 1989, it looked like Blake was down for the count after getting shot by corrupt Police Captain Handler (John Brandon). I was relieved when he didn't die as ABC aired the two-part reunion movie "Dynasty: The Reunion" in 1991. The movie wrapped up the loose ends produced at the series finale during the 1988-1989 season.

When CBS-TV (yes, CBS-TV) aired the retrospective special "Dynasty: Catfights And Caviar" in 2004, it was great to see John, Linda, Joan, Al, Gordon, Catherine Oxenburg (Amanda Carrington), and Pamela Sue Martin (Fallon Carrington Colby). However, one can tell how John aged but he still looked great.

Although I knew him primarily from "Dynasty", I am aware of how he starred on the 1950s sitcom "Bachelor Father" where he played a man who raised his niece and nephew after the death of their parents. That was where he met Linda Evans when she guest-starred as a friend of the niece. She went on to star on the Western series "Big Valley" as the daughter of movie actress Barbara Stanwyck. Ironically, Barbara would later play Constance Colby on both "Dynasty" and its spinoff, "The Colbys". Whenever people say it's a small world, believe them because it is.

John was cast as the voice of Charlie for the hit Aaron Spelling police chick series "Charlie's Angels" from 1976 to 1981. He gave assignments to his beautiful Angels Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts.

I did get a chance to watch "The Powers That Be", a short-lived NBC sitcom on which John played a U.S. senator who learned he fathered an illegitimate daughter during his military days. I know, I know, I know! I watch television like it's no tomorrow and I've probably viewed many short-lived flops in my lifetime. The series also starred Holland Taylor, an actress who looked like she could never get a television pension because most of the television shows she was on were cancelled. Holland finally struck gold when she won an Emmy Award for her recurring role as Judge Roberta Kittleson on the defunct ABC legal drama "The Practice". She landed her first major permanent role on the hit sitcom "Two and a Half Men" as Evelyn, the snobbish mother of Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and Alan (Jon Cryer). "The Powers That Be" also featured David Hyde-Pierce before becoming famous as Dr. Niles Crane, the snooty psychiatrist younger brother of Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) on the hit sitcom "Frasier". Unfortunately, the sitcom tanked.

John Forsythe will be missed by this "Dynasty" fan for real. Like my sistagirl Sharmayne Jones remarked, he was a handsome silverfox! If I was a legal adult when "Dynasty" was on, I wouldn't have minded having a crush on John Forsythe, a distinguished White gentleman with his dashing looks. With Seasons 1-4 of "Dynasty" on DVD, I can enjoy watching my silverfox!

Rest In Peace,
John Forsythe
1918-2010

Haiti's Historical Contributions to the World

2010-06-11T16:53:00.006-04:00

When the earthquake erupted and destroyed much of Haiti earlier this year, I was saddened to think what was going to happen to my African Diasporic brothers and sisters in Haiti. I wondered if Haiti was going to get assistance from the Dominican Republic, their Spanish-speaking neighbor on the island of Quisqueya/Espaniola/Hispaniola/Ayiti, given the strained relations between the nations for nearly 200 years on the basis of sovereignty, race, nationality, culture, race, etc. I was relieved Haiti got assistance from the Dominican Republic. I was waiting to see how America was going to deal with this but President Barack Obama answered the call right away. I found it laughable when religious zealot asswipe Pat Robertson cited the reason for the 7.1 earthquake was because the enslaved Africans like Toussaint L'Ouverture, Boukman, Henri Christophe, and many others who fought back against slavery during the Haitian Revolution (1789-1804) made a deal with the Devil. We all know Pat Robertson is a man of hatred and not one of the cloth. The Ancestors did not want to be enslaved any longer so they fought their blood, sweat, and tears against the French, the Spanish, and the British. Yet they made a deal with the Devil in 1804. What ignorant bullshit! He is just mad because he can't send his right-wing religious cult-like zealot friends to Haiti to brainwash them into embracing and accepting everything Christian and White. He blames Vodou (voodoo) of course as does the mass media and the Eurocentric world. Vodou is not a religion of so-called black magic with evil spirits, zombies, the sacrificing of chickens, and a bunch of mambo jumbo. It is ancestor worship of African deities. Point blank and simple! The Eurocentric world has carried the myth of voodoo as an evil supernatural phenomenon so far to the point of every Haitian practicing voodoo. This is always used to debase, denigrate, and destroy the spirit and strength of the Haitian people. When most people think of Haiti, many are quick to state how poor, undeveloped, and backwards Haiti is. It has been poor because Europe and America are aware of the Haitian Revolution and the eventual formation of Haiti as the first Black Republic of the Western Hemisphere. The European powers and the United States of America have placed economic embargoes and strongholds on Haiti, causing her to owe France and America whole debts. This is why mostly the reason why Haiti is considered one of the poorest so-called Third World countries. As far as they are concerned, Haiti had a nerve to fight for her own freedom from France and slavery.

Haiti has been known as the nation where the father and son team of Dictators Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist with the help of their own police force - the Tontes Macoutes, which used intimidation, terror, fear, and murder against their political opponents and those who spoke out against their rule and human rights abuses. It seemed like whenever the Western media spoke about Haiti, there were always scenes of violence, political coups, widespread poverty, everything negative imaginable. That was no accident at all. The Western world has always had it in for Haiti. Like I stated earlier, Haiti has always been a political threat to Europe and America ever since the people fought back with their lives during the Haitian Revolution.

Years after Haiti became the first Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere, there was a huge fear within the conscience and psyche of White Southern slaveowners about the influence of the Haitian Revolution on the minds of the enslaved African men, women, and children. Denmark Vesey, a slave in Charleston (South Carolina), staged an unsuccessful slave rebellion in 1826. He was influenced by the Haitian Revolution.

New Orleans, Louisiana, was heavily influenced not only by the African, Native American, Spanish and French cultural expressions but that of Haiti as well. I meant Haitian cultural influence. I am aware of the French and Haitian elites and their slaves fleeing out of Haiti during the Revolution and settling in several areas of Louisiana, particularly New Orleans. When I watched the cable-TV film adaptation of Anne Rice's best-selling novel THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS about the Gens De Couleur Libre (the Free People of Color), I learned the family of Cecile Ste. Marie, a mixed-race woman who was played by actress Gloria Reuben (ER), was Haitian but she did not want to face her past. Her French slaveholding father was killed during the Revolution. She was involved in the system of placage which set biracial, multiracial, mixed, Creole, light-skinned, and mulatto women with rich or well-to-do White men who provided fot them and their offspring, some of whom were able to pass for White and live in White society. I believe the French placed the levees in New Orleans to protect the shores from Haitian rebellion forces whom they and other White slaveowners assumed were going to stage another Black revolution in the South. I feel there is a connection between the levees which broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake which decimated a lot of property, real estate, and people. The levees were planted there during the oppression of slavery in New Orleans. I wonder if the Lower Ninth and Tenth Wards were established to keep slavery in its place. I know the areas were among the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, the majority of those affected the worst and still are the African-American community, who had to relocate to other states where they weren't really accepted nor welcomed with open arms. Like their brothers and sisters during Hurricane Katrina, the survivors of the Haiti earthquake are still scrambling to resume and restart their lives. However, they are dislocated and disenfranchised until Haiti resumes soverignty once again as the first Black Republic of the Western Hemisphere.

Despite the earthquake, Haitians are strong African people and they will triumph stronger than ever. Haitians have always demonstrated their strength, determination, and perservance throughout centuries in Haiti and the broader African Diaspora. Approximately 3,000 - 5,000 Haitian troops fought during the American Revolution. This occurred years before the Haitian Revolution. Samuel Fraunces, the owner of Fraunces Tavern in downtown Manhattan, was Haitian as was his daughter, Phoebe. George Washington had his drinks there when he was a general fighting against the British Redcoats. Abraham Lincoln's barber was a Haitian man named Billy Florville. He had other African-American barbers since his hair was coarse, kinky, curly, natural, nappy. In other words, Abraham Lincoln was a BRUTHAH trying to pass for White. Jean Baptiste Du Sable was a Haitian brotha who founded the city of Chicago. He also married a Native American/Indigenous sistuh and started a family with her. John James Audubon, who was best known for his expertise on birds, particularly North American birds, was indeed a Black man who had a Haitian Creole (light-skinned) mom. He obviously passed for White and became a national treasure on the authority and knowledge of birds. Historian, activist, and intellectual W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt) DuBois had some ancestors from Haiti. EBONY covered an exclusive story about an interracial family, the Laroches, which consisted of Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche, a Haitian, his French wife Juliette Lafargue, and their biracial children, Simonne, Louise, and Joseph Jr., on the Titanic. Joseph Sr. died in the tragedy and his family survived. Director James Cameron did not interject this into his Academy Award-winning film. The Laroche descendants assimilated into White society via Joseph Jr. Many of the passengers didn't want any visible Blacks with them on board, yet many of them perished to their deaths. Abolitionist, orator and author Frederick Douglass was once the United States ambassador to Haiti during the 1870s and 1880s. During this time, the United States was looking to annex Haiti and the Dominican Republic to her territories. Interestingly, some Whites thought the African-American community could have been better off somewhere like Haiti, the Dominican Republic (many former African-American slaves were set up in a province named Samana Bay - La Samana), or Central America. Author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston researched Black cultural folklore in Haiti via her studies during the 1930s and the 1940s. Choreographer Katherine Dunham spent many years studying African dance in Haiti.

I want people to see that Haiti is not just some poor Caribbean nation with black magic, voodoo, zombies, priests, priestesses, boat people, unstability, corrupt presidents, dictators, and impoverished environments. Haiti is a huge part in Caribbean, World, African, African-American, and overall American histories. The Haitian Revolution was influenced by the American and French Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution produced a strong leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture. The Haitian Revolution spun off the South American Wars of Independence in several places against Spain. Simon Bolivar of Venezuela became one of the best noted liberators. Slavery in these areas were outlawed and abolished.

Haiti is so deep rooted in its history for being the first Black Republic of the Western Hemisphere. There are numerous Haitian-descended individuals who have prevailed in various fields in their lives, such as Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel, Maxwell, Usher Raymond, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Trina McGee-Davis, Josephine Premice, Jimmy Jean Louis, Susan Fales-Hill, Edwidge Danticat, Alex Desert, Enzo Silon-Surin, Abner Louima, Marjorie Judith Vincent, Daphnee Duplaix, DJ Quadus, Melky Sedeck, Marianne-Jean Baptiste, Dawn Angelique Richard (Danity Kane), Tony Yayo, Lela Rochon, model Tyrone Edmond, etc.

Donald Peebles Jr.
Friday, June 11, 2010
7:03 PM