Reality TV: Home Sweet Home For Dysfunctional Black Women

Used to be difficult for anyone who displayed any type of dysfunction at all to be successful. Not anymore in the age of buffoonery, self-centeredness and reality television. And if you are a black woman who is dysfunctional, no doubt this is the place for you.

I must be candid and admit I have not seen too much of this, but where else can one be a wife when she is divorced, was never married and has no husband. Where else can a former stripper be called a house wife and parlay it into to working for the Donald? Nowhere in the real world, but for certain on reality television. Yes, reality television, a never never land of contrived events that would never manifest in the general public. Like an amusement park, twenty women under the ages of twenty five can vie to obtain the pretend love of fifty year old hip hop hype men with gold teeth. Or chase after some famous professional athlete displaying groupie qualities while maintain they are the epitome of womanhood.

From Celebrity Apprentice contestants Star Jones and NeNe Leakes to Oxygen’s Bad Girls andVH1’s Basketball Wives, there is not one presentation of what it means to be lady-like. In all cases, regardless if one is an ex-wives or baby mamas of a wealthy professional athlete, they parade around as if they cannot go anywhere without their weave and acting as if the only word in their vocabulary is bitch. Even worse is the appearance that civil discord is impractical and that the only way to deal with a problem or conflict others is to scream, curse, and speak down upon others with the might of all of their anger; giving the locution that violence is the only way to solve ones problems. Even shows like Keyshia Cole promote dysfunction as if it is common place among African American women.

These show are an abomination and it is evident that more destructive is the increase in viewership they gather among young African American women. I used to think hip hop videos were bad, now I’m torn between the two. I just wonder will we ever see African America women portrayed as they really are in our community, or used to be? This thought has me afraid that this may be what our women have actually become.

Show you azz & azz holes will watch.

Point of order, no more photo journalism from me. Was down and out for three days with chills, fever of 104 and swollen glands, not to mention a sore throat that did not allow me to talk (my students loved that). I was also reminded that it is very hard and even impossible to write when one is sleep – learn something new every day. Any who, was back in class and was about to cover/introduce analysis of variance (ANOVA). I asked my class why we use T-Test and the assumptions of the T-test. They did not know and could not tell me. So I asked them to tell me the name of a reality TV show, and they named about 20. On all case I asked who they were. They looked at me like I was stupid.

So I said in essence, yawl know these folks, who they dating and don’t know what we cover in class. “Tell me who stupid?” Yawl pay about this much”, I proceeded to open my arms as wide as I could and continued. “Is that not more important than some show on TV that aint even real but acting?” They all shut up and I proceeded to write and work my problems on the board. Now what I am about to say is conjecture and the opinion of folk here alone. But I do not see the fascination of looking at something on television that obviously aint real. I mean in most cases, it is merely folks, insincere folks, trying to get famous, make someone or get with some star.

Is the fabric of America so dilapidated that we no longer desire to work for self and cannot think for self and what the easiest way out to what some perceive as success. It seems that folks get on the shows and go to town showing they azz and acting a fool, as if they have no home training. As if the main requirement is to be mentally and intellectually dysfunctional. Not to mention, that many deal with the most morally abject problems in our society – going to jail, greed, and sex. Seems too that the majority of these shows, especially with women, are designed to do what I figure a woman can do without being on TV – find love. What woman in their right mind would be on a show, chasing a man that is boning and grinding and kissing every woman in the house? Women that fight each over in spectacle like the old day gladiators of ancient Rome. And I suspect the men are just as foul too.

Now all this is speculation, for reality TV for me when I was growing up was sports, especially boxing. I figure a reality show should at least be real and teach you something. I remember folks used to say wrestling was real, just as they say this stuff today is real. I have maybe seen a portion of a few of the shows when over folks houses and they would always laugh when I would ask what or who is that. I have only seen two of today’s reality shows that taught me something and close to being real. Survivor man – where I learned how to piss around sand with plastic and a cup underneath to generate water and Man versus Wild (where I learned how to cook a boa constrictor- I normally sauté snake meat).

I don’t know where we are headed, it is as if we care to admire and watch folks that show their azz on TV in an effort to either get attention or attract fame. Even if that means fighting and chasing a man and throwing one’s self after said man as if a groupie or gold digger, when we know their parents or grandparents aint teach them such, or if being a rude tough guy who is disrespectful and self-centered is what defines manhood.

Now I know some of the shows, that deal with singing, or cooking, or moddeling , or designing or home decorating are different in some respects. But still, tell me, why do student I teach care or no more about so-called reality TV than their course work? Why would they laugh at me for not knowing who the fck they were talking about as opposed to laughing at themselves for not knowing what they covered already in class? Well one thing I do know if you show your azz on TV an asshole is sure to be watching.

I, I, My

Was stuck in DC during the earlier part of this week, dark country, chocolate city; really Bethesda. Working - getting another check. My personal goal or at least one of them is to collect a check everyday. Not one a month or twice a month. As such, this is the reality I attempt to create and evince via work ethic. But that’s another corollary.

Since the shootings at Virginia Tech University, there wasn’t really much on so I searched the cathode ray tube before I overdosed on inaccuracy and conjecture in the form of personal vanity that major media networks define as news.

Any who, I flipped and flipped and I flipped through the channels. ESPN even had coverage about the horrible outcomes of Virginia Tech – such in itself was devastating. Personally, after an hour or two of incessant coverage, I do not desire to see any more on carnage. Add to that everyone is reporting something different and showing the same cell phone video, talking to the same white kid who was shot in the arm.

The first placed I stopped was some channel with Mo’nique on it with the babes who were trying to get Flava Flav’s money show. So I looked, but could only contrive three minutes worth. I went to another channel which I think was right behind it and it had another supposedly reality show. Can’t remember what it was called but it was about these women who were supposed to have real attitude problems living together.

In summary, I can tell you this. On one show the women took 4 hours to go up hill two miles and the other defined the ultimate of cackling and whining. However, I did notice a few things in the 6 or 7 minutes I watched both shows. The first is that since it is on television, its acting if it aint a sporting event or cartoon, and c-span. But what stuck out the most was the focus on I, I and my by all of the women participants. Not to single out women, but this is all that were on these shows – with the exception of one white man who ran beauty pageants, which made his gender questionable as well. I mean every one of them, constantly talking about themselves and no one else as if the universe circled around them, like the read Alexander Pope Essay’s. Talking as if they were quitters - complaining about how life is so hard. They were also leaning towards being pathetic and helpless, as if they had no control over themselves or their lives.

I hope this is acting, and not indicative of the people in this age. I hope that it does not mean, as I view it, that folks in generally are mentally and emotionally weak. Feeling as if everything is so unbearable that they cry, whimper and whine. If so, it don’t strike me unusual why a person who thought as such would do something unreasonable and drastic like cap and kill a lot of innocent people. Because in the long run, guns don’t kill people, people do. People who complain about how life is so hard and that I want to die, and that if I can’t have you I will kill you and everybody in my class. Is that what I, I, my leads too?

Both them show’s WAS weak, so I changed the channel again.