Faces of Africa

After my BET rant this morning, I decided to go shopping at Barnes & Noble, and found two publications published by African Immigrants, that celebrate African culture and black beauty in all its array, JTON published by Joy Tongo, entertainment industry veteran, that brings news, fashion, and entertainment from the continent, yet is accessible to African American audience. http://jtonmagazine.com/index.asp. ARISE is a UK based African fashion and pop culture magazine.

Although we African Americans set the tone culturally, and politically for other people of colour, these publications show where we fall short.

BETs Colour Problem!

Black Entertainment Television (commonly referred to by its acronym B.E.T.) is an American cable network based in Washington, D.C. and targeted towards young black and urban audiences in the United States. Robert L. Johnson founded the network in 1980. Most of the original programming of the network comprised of rap and R&B music videos and urban-oriented movies and series, news programming

In the mid nineties, BET offer progressive news programming with BET tonite with Ed Gordon, Lead Story, featuring George Curry, Clarence Paige, Barbara Reynolds. Personal Diary, BET News. However, Where BET fell short amongst its many failings...was its continue perpetuate the ages old colour caste system, the irony is that urban is usual associated with dark skinned black folks. For ten years BET has broadcast the image of the long hair light skinned black woman as the standard bearer of black beauty. How can we challenge westernize standards of beauty when we spread the same ignorance... its time to end the tradition of the light skin vixen host. 106 & Park, co-host have continued this traditional since its inception in 1999.

The Black Womans Lotto!

What is happening to Allonzo Trier is the equivalent to child exploitation, this no different from Child Labour in third world countries, Trier's youth should be spend in his development as adolescent, and not in becoming a star athlete.

The problem I have is when Trier spends 4-5 hours on developing his basketball skills, but no equivalent time on developing his social, and academic skills, and is allow to get away with a statement like "It’s hard for me because I'm not the smartest kid".

It appears that Marcie Trier is being swayed by the lure of the Black Women’s Lotto, the notion of her child becoming an NBA Multimillionaire, and providing her a life of ease. Instead of marrying a baller, steer your child into becoming the man-child baller that you were not able to capture in your youth. Allonzo Trier experience reminds me of a manager that I had, who had flown her budding child athlete all over the country to track meets and tournaments, with the hopes of him making the Olympics and carer in the NFL, providing her the life of luxury she desired.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22basketball-t.html?ref=magazine

Harlem Heights

The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought in the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The action took place in what is now the Morningside Heights and west Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City on September 16, 1776. Hamilton Heights is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It lies between Morningside Heights to the south and Washington Heights to the north. It is the westerly part of Harlem. It contains the neighborhood of Sugar Hill. Sugar Hill is a neighborhood in the northern part of Hamilton Heights, which itself is a sub-neighborhood of Harlem, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is defined by 155th Street to the north, 145th Street to the south, Edgecombe Avenue to the east, and Amsterdam Avenue to the west. The name originated in the 1920s, when the area became a popular place to live for wealthy African Americans.
Named to identify the "sweet life" in Harlem, it was a popular residential area of rowhouses for wealthy African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance, including W.E.B. Dubois, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell, and Duke Ellington. Langston Hughes wrote about its relative affluence in relation to Harlem in his essay "Down and Under in Harlem" published in the The New Republic in 1944.
"Harlem Heights" is BET's new show that premieres at 10 pm on Monday nights. It is a docudrama, and latest addition to reality television, BETs Harlem Heights attempts to capture the hopes and aspirations of young buppie 20-30 somethings, they are the post intergrationist children that now occupied this vibrant community. Have we truly arrived, that now the post intergrationist children can engage themselves in the same type of mindless hedonism, and errant behavior as the white counterparts in the Hills
Dubbed as insight to the young, black, and fabulous crowd, the setting is in Harlem, New York and follows real friends through their professional and social ups and downs. Of particular interest is Brooke Crittenden, Kanyé West’s ex-fiancée. Feeling like she needed to lend a voice to her experience as ‘the other half to a famous person’, B.E.T. president Loretha Jones assures us that Harlem Heights is not The Hills.
The cast includes a lifestyle editor for the basketball publication Dime magazine, an aspiring actress, a fashionista, a young man contemplating a career in politics and even a young dad. It is a group of friends moving out of college and into the working world.
“This show isn’t ‘The Hills,” said BET president Loretha Jones. “The cast was friends before, so their relationships are natural and they allowed us to follow them in such a way that they were unconcerned with the cameras being there, and let us capture the real interactions.”
Jones also said that unlike some other reality shows about twentysomethings, “Harlem Heights” would explore not only emotional drama, but also professional drama and the excitement and celebrations of last year’s historical election night. After watching BET devolving into an outlet for soft-core porn disguised as music videos, I will give Harlem Heights a second viewing.

Bernie Stole Our Money...sob!

Can you hear the whispers, its the murmurs of the Madoff victims asking for a bailout or restitution for their loses and theft. These same people several years ago had a problem with us raising the issue of reparations.

A retired couple that lost the proceeds from several home sales that were invested in Madoffs fund demanded to be treated like GM and AIG, Bank of America. Requesting SIPC money, how dare these people crack there mouths for government dollars, I'm going to demand my reparations check.

A recent article in Vanity Fair, stated how persons in places like Aspen played the spread, basically gamble with there homes...many owned free and clear, by taking mortgages on a 15 million dollar house, at 4 percent interest. To get a loan for $10 million, The carrying costs on such a mortgage would be about $400,000 per year by investing the $10 million dollar proceeds of the loan with Madoff at a 12 percent return, the 8 percent difference between the carrying costs and the return would have given the owner $800,000 per year. But you think that in a down market, that some of these people would wonder how Bernie was able to get these returns.

It just comes down to simple avarice and irresponsible investing, and trust. But in the Jewish communities that were ravished by these events felt that they were getting entree into a elusive club that others weren't benefiting from. So should we empathised with their plight? More to follow on this saga.

The New House Negroes of the GOP

The GOP is attempting to attract new adherents and galvanised the masses with its newest recruits, and old main stay...More recently, Mr. Limbaugh galvanized Republican opposition to Democratic plans for an economic stimulus; saying he hopes that President Obama will fail, he derided the stimulus package as "porkulus."

Mr. Limbaugh, who is 57, sees himself as an entertainer and businessman first, not as a conservative polemicist. But his barbed advocacy of right-wing causes has distinguished him since he first emerged as a talk-radio sensation in the mid-1980’s. His idols are William F. Buckley Jr., who became a mentor, and Ronald Reagan.

Adward Bobby Jindal the beige hope is the new whipping boy for the GOP. Talking typical Immigrant Horatio Alger nonsense. Why is Michael Steele apologizing to Rush Limbaugh ass!