After seeing a barrage of “calling him out of his name” remarks on Twitter yesterday, I soon found out that a Q & A had been published on Playboy.com that made him look all kinds of foolish, ignorant and possibly even high on some strange exotic drug.

If you want to read it you can go here, but for the high level version he: 1.) compared his “maleness”…um down there to the Klan, 2.) claimed he had a “hood pass” 3.) dropped the N-word as if the I-don’t-know-where-he-got-the-pass gave him entitlement to say what he wants no matter how insulting or demeaning and 4.) spoke pretty graphically about his sex life but since it is a gentleman’s magazine I’ll let that slide.

Anyway.

24 hours later, I find out via Twitter again that he issued an onstage apology, claiming that in his attempt to be “clever” he insulted the people that he loved and loved him back, and therefore would no longer be doing any interviews.

Now even though I think the reporter may set him up for the fall, I think JM is genuinely sorry for his comments, but more for the sake of it’s not what you say as it is how you say it. Of course he’s going to apologize because he has a diverse fan base and he doesn’t want to lose that; because what’s he going to do if he can’t play guitar? Public speaking? HA!

While John has the right to his own thoughts and opinions, I’m really not all that shocked by his comments. I’m of the mindset that at some point in time, people will show and/or tell you what they’re really about and when they do so we should believe them. He had to save face, for the sake of his career, nothing more nothing less.

Here’s the video apology. for what it’s worth.

TS

Courtesy of jimiizrael.com

After giving him a Google, it turns out that the dude has been on the scene for a while. He is a regular contributor to The Root, moderates NPR based round table The Barbershop and considers himself a “Black Hip Hop Culture Expert” according to his self listed profile on Blackexpert.com.

Now I’m all for an intelligent and well spoken black man, but I think it’s safe to say Jeff Johnson will neva eva have to worry about this bird taking his job on the TJMS. After hearing his wanna be “conscious commentary” he reminded me of the one who gets beyond blazed at a party, then launches into a soliloquy of “knowledge dropping”, all the while not making a bit of sense. The more he talked, I swear I could hear the Peanuts teacher ( whaa whaa..whaaa whaaa) and yet I couldn’t seem to tear myself away from the radio.

This is what is funny. It seems as though dear Jimi is about to release his first book entitled The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can’t Find Good Black Men, due out February, 16, which sounds like a good title but we need not get it twisted.

After reading a few of his blog commentaries as well as an excerpt from his book, I started to see a pattern; and feel relatively comfortable to say old Jimi is pretty well known for making ridiculous generalizations about black woman and why we, as the title says, can’t find decent black men.

He writes:

“Black women’s unrealistic standards are probably borne of bedtime stories about handsome, rich men on majestic horses rescuing damsels in distress. Girlfriends often tell similar apocryphal tales about the friend of a friend who nabbed a rich, hung sugar daddy who saved them from a life of dishpan hands and lower-middle-class drudgery. Through the influence of popular media and the misguided advice they give each other, sisters combine these images and presumptions to draw a composite of a perfect black man. No way he could exist, but far be it for something like common sense to stop the average woman from looking. Her friends meet men who are so close—so close, girl! With just one fatal flaw, like he snores or doesn’t get DIRECTV.”

WTH?

The real deal is that we have a “brotha” who to me is severely delusional and trying to sell a book by riding off the hopes that some poor damsel in distress, as he put it, will want to hang on to his every word simply because he’s a man. Quite frankly, I am appalled by his overconfidence and find his so-called platform to be blatantly misogynistic.

There are a multitude of reasons why a significant number of black women are disproportionately single in comparison to our white counterparts but the implication that we are over-sexed gold-diggers is definitely not one of them. Even though I’m sure it will be a most entertaining read, I can’t be bothered by Jimi or his musings, and even more so find it hard to believe why we as black women would even consider his opinions relevant.

In the immortal words of many a great black grandmother, Jimi needs to get somewhere and SADDOWN. I make no excuses for my “high expectations”, and I’m certain my fellow sisters feel exactly the same.

TS

BET can kick rocks! Why? Because the BET we all knew and loved is looooong gone. Who remembers Video Soul, Rap City and Teen Summit? Classics! Today we have a hot ghetto mess of new programming with some of the most ridiculous shows in reality TV to date. Case in point: Tiny and Toya along with the upcoming why y’all doing this to us Neffe and Frankie to name a few. Wack.

I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in the mind of Mr. Bob “sellout” Johnson considering BET was his baby, making him mad cheddar, (approximately 3 billion to be exact), when he sold the network off to Viacom in November 2000. He was once noted in saying that BET “should be for black media what Disney is to the general media or what Motown was to music”, but it seems to me that vision just slipped between the cracks since he passed the baton.

Maybe I’m still in a state of shock over the coonery and baffoonery otherwise known as the 2009 BET Awards show, or maybe I’m just getting, uhmmm, old(er) because even with talks of acquiring former CW sitcom The Game, I’m still doubtful of any meaningful redemption. If I were Debra Lee, I would hang my head in shame over the mess that’s become of BET. I’m just glad we have a back up in TVOne

End rant.