Why arer ppl still watching BET?

[From the Blackberry Chronicles]

Prologue.... Once you start reading, this blog begins to date itself. It apparently fell by the wayside and I was reminded of it in lieu of last weekends Soul Train Awards show.

Why are ppl still watching BET?

Seriously??

First, let's look at one rudimentary fact......Black Entertainment Television is not even owned by black ppl!! Yeah, I'm sure there are many black avp's, vp's and svp's and managers and directors but nothing says power like ownership. Its like Chris Rock's joke: "Shaq is rich; the white man that signs his check is wealthy" but remove money and equate it to power and influence.

How authentic would we look at any other business if the owner was not of his own product?
-How would you look at "Original Southern Food" owned by Filipino or vice versa?
-Would mainstream America take seriously a Black owned Chinese, Italian or Indian restaurant?
-Would Israeli's buy kosher goods from..... Ya know I was trying to name a black neighborhood that was a notoriously infamous hood...but can't think of one that hasn't been partially watered down and gentrified in some areas.
-Should a Muslim trust a halal meal from McDonald's?

I say this bc last Sunday, news feeds all over the net from......sites that don't pay me........were flooded with commentary on how terrible the BET awards were. The phrases I recall seeing most frequently: "hot mess" "ghetto" (although yall should know by now how much I detest that word), "bootleg," "low budget," "half-assed," "piss poor...." and an armada of synonyms along those lines.

My response to them all was........"are you surprised?" Seriously!? Bc of BET, ppl all over the world (and many parts of America) think that all black ppl in America do is watch rap videos. They used to show variety and good music from gospel, to island, to soul........but someone decided "let's make a separate channel for that"....that's not even in HD for that matter.

Sidenote: why isn't BET JAZZ or SOUL in hd? And Starz Black for that matter? Why does Stars even have that channel to begin with? I swear I saw Pretty Woman and Silence of the Lambs on that channel.

We're talking the same BET who invented "Uncut". The same BET who showed infomercials on New Years Eve 2000! I recall turning to see how they were ringing in the new millennium to see infomercials.

Sidenote: I recall that new years eve quite vividly bc I spent it in Jersey City.... Clear, visible, yet very safe proximity to NYC. The news had us believing that all the lights would go out and everything from al queda, the four horsemen of apocalypse, the Internet and an army of ones and zeros were coming to kill us if we were in new york. That's what i think this 2012 crap is about. They made a killing off of batteries and canned soup. My parents still have a kerosene lantern somewhere in its original plastic wrapping.

Another common comment (looks up, thinks twice about that grammatical assonance) was that many BET pessimist watched with a common, hoping anticipation. Hoping that just this once. Just once! The mothership harbinger of black ignorance would pull it together. If for nothing else, out of a fleeting hope, that they would, at least in Micheal's name, pay decent tribute and homage to the greatest entertainer ever. But 10 yrs later, alas. Much like a battered housewife, Redsox fan (sans that one anomaly) or a New York Knicks fan who got their hopes up after a mid season trade or shift in management........no dice!

Gimme five on the Black hand SIDEnote: I think "American Gangster" is the most God awful production in the history of television...........followed closely by "Cops" but thats another conversation. When half of the world, arguably more, don't even know who Elijah McKoy is, why do we have a show glorifying and displaying criminals?!!!!

Let me tune into TV-One and cross my fingers.


Sent via Raphael  "I am Raphael Charles and I approve this message"