The Soup

Well, not really The Soup. I heart The Soup.

And because I spend my time watching more important television like Boston Legal (expect a fairly detailed blog about BL later), The Soup is the conduit through which I get the important pop culture bullet points.

Normally The Soup makes me laugh and wonder if we had met in college, would Joel McHale have gone out with me at least once. Even if it was just a pity date or because he thought I might be an easy lay.

Today The Soup made me want to kill myself.

Not because of The Soup itself but because of three stories in a row that could have been part of a new segment called "Embarassing Ethnicities."

The first gem in this segment was a clip from the I Love New York reuinion show. Yes, the ILNY reunion show. Because the apocalypse isn't coming quite fast enough.

For those of you not fortunate enough to have seen ILNY, the show was a Bachelor-style competition featuring the skankiest of the Flavor of Love rejects, New York. She spent a season auditioning man-skanks who for some reason had an interest into entering her bacteria bin of a vanana and becoming Mr. New York.

Three men couldn't join the reunion show because one had "issues" (read: syphillis), one was on crutches and one was in jail.

The second clip was from an ILNY spin off, yes, an ILNY spin off, again because those show producers just can't wait to meet up with the whore of Bablyon. This show, whose name mercilessly escapes me, features black heavyweight Mo'Nique taking girls to charm school. Because if anyone knows charm, it's the 400lb Mo'Nique who feels it's appropriate to wear sequined midriffs and that she is perfectly qualified to host a beauty pageant.

Not that I'm down with society's strict standards, either. But there's a difference between having a few extra pounds on you and being able to be divided into four well-proportioned individual people and a family pet.

So the first item of business was Mo'Nique telling this cache of women to rid themselves of their ghetto fabulous nicknames.

Because if anyone's going to judge what one calls themselves. it's Mo'Nique...with an apostrophe.

But I didn't raise the razor to my wrists until I saw the promo for the show "HollyHood." This reality show follows the classy young men from 36Mafia as they pee on Jennifer Love Hewitt's lawn and try to make it in LaLaLand.

My hatred of 36Mafia started, as I'm sure it did for most people, at the Oscars 2006 when they acted like idiots and swore into the microphone at this black tie affiar. My husband tried to calm me and said "hey, they're excited." I've been excited before, but save for this one time in college when I was totally wasted and thought that if a guy made out with you that meant he was your boyfriend (thanks, mom and dad for not letting me date in hs, leading to all kinds of misunderstandings, and thanks to david for a great night and a heartbreaking morning), i succeeded in not looking like a jackass.

Maybe I shouldn't care that this is what "my people" are doing. it's just TV, right. I'd shrug it off if that were the case. Or if at least one of the following things hadn't happened.
- Me having to defend myself in a room full of executives and peers because I didn't get my job through the minority loophole.
- Me having to sit in a car and listen as a bunch of white girls decided to try their hands at saying the n-word for the first time and then bullying me for getting upset because "black people say it all the time."
- Me being told by more than one person "well, you're not really black" as a compliment because I talk the way I do and will listen to Less Than Jake before I'd pick up a JayZ CD.
- Me being called 'articulate."

The NAACP image awards are really missing the point by rewarding "good" television. Instead, they shoud hang these other shows in effigy. There should be letters and protests. Not against the individuals, they're just people after all, with some money waved in front of them. Who wouldn't do a little song and dance for that?

But though Tyler James Williams and Tracee Ellis Ross do good by portraying interesting, complex images of African-Americans, the other shows are the things people talk about in our trainwreck rubbernecking culture.

When you flip through the pages of US Weekly (and for crying out loud, why wouldn't you?), you don't read about the celebs who go to work, go home at night, take care of their families and have a glass of wine while unwinding before bed. You read about the bad kids. The ones with shaved heads, waxed private parts and exposed sex lives. Those are the celebs we talk about. Those are the seedy things we enjoy revelling in.

And it's the same with the aforementioned shows. I was in a room and the only black person (I think there was a Puerto Rican, but that was it when it came to "color") during the 36Mafia acceptance speech. When the guys started talking, there was tittering, laughter. But when it became clear that what they were doing was not a schtick, but some unfortunate aspect of who they are, the laughter stopped and the awkwardness rose. No one looked at me, but I saw them look at each other. Polite smiles and that look in their eyes that said, "well...."

Of course very few people would go so far as to say "well, that's how they are, you know." but when you see over and over images like the three clips from The Soup, it makes it hard to believe otherwise. It's easy to think yourself out of the situation. To say "well, I know that's not true." but that's the second thought that comes to most of us. The good news is that most of us go to the second thought.

Except, apparently, reality show producers.

Drive

Just finished watching the season premier.

And really?

...The only two black characters are the first ones out of the race, were the only ones who couldn't figure out the clue and were all too easily duped by their fast talking white counterpart....

They even let the criminal Latino guy do better than that.