Rhythm Circus - Racist Ripoff

Rhythm Circus -- Racist Ripoff

Dwight Hobbes/MN Spokesman-Recorder

Leafing through the playbill for Rhythm Circus’ Feet Don’t Fail Me Now! — hell, just reading that title, this show is off to a lousy start. Why in God’s good name would somebody take that old, infamous line Willie Best uttered way back when as the stereotyped, bug-eyed Black man running from a ghost, and name a production after it? Because the evening features tap-dancing? Give me a break.

Can’t African Americans today reasonably appreciate our struggle? Bear in mind such progress as rendered buffoonish characters and institutionalized laughing stocks obsolete? Guess not. Well, please, at least let this not be a new, improved minstrel show. Curiously, as the crowd flows into the Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, it’s one bunch of White folk after another, a lot of ’em youngish, from teens to twenties. What are all these Caucasians doing coming to a cullud show? More to the point, where’s the Black people at?

By the time things are about to start, the place is damned near 3/4’s full and can’t be a dozen dark faces in the whole joint. Mystery soon solved. Four tap-dancers take the stage, all of ’em White. There’s a band. All of ’em White.

Playing funky R&B backup for the hoofers. Get the…outta here. That’s about the time I’m ready to go for a drink. Or three. Worse than a Black production blithely cashing in self-respect to turn a buck, you’ve got a White production exploiting Black dance culture and Black music to entertain a White audience.

Not that the performers aren’t talented. The four upfront are, indeed, light on their feet, especially one Kaleena Miller with subtle moves and understated charisma. The band, led by Alex Rossi on guitar and vocal Blackface (not just singing, also shouting out “soulful” punctuation, the whole bit), cooks. That’s not the point. The point is this two hours of Black dance and music (funk, R&B, jazz, hip hop, rapping, you name it) is calculated. A show for White folk to enjoy Black dance set to Black music without having to watch one Black face on the stage. A mere coincidence, the absence of Black attendees? Then, why wasn’t there a single Feet Don’t Fail Me Now! ad in, oh, the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder for one? The show’s producers wanted to play to a White house, that’s why. Interestingly enough, Don’t Fail Me Now! premiered a few years ago at the Ritz Theater in North Minneapolis with, I’m willing to bet, a differently complexioned crowd — paying green money.

This time, it’s Whites only. Except for a pepper speck here and there. Waaay over here and waaay over there. It’s galling that such a travesty takes place. Despicable to devise it to begin with. To hate Black people so bad you don’t want them around, don’t want to look at them performing. But, you don’t mind enjoying our dance and our music. White performers don’t mind getting up there, mimicking the magic our genius created. Whites in the seats don’t mind sitting there, contented as hell, seeing themselves reflected, putting out of mind that, were it not for Black artistry, were it not for the Black people they’re so glad aren’t there, they would all be doing something different somewhere else instead of grinning all over themselves about what a great time they’re having. In a nutshell, it’s White Supremacy waxing insidious. A slick, racist rip-off. Enough to put a starving vulture off his food.

Playwright Julia Anderson Mann's “Mixed Reality: My Multi-Racial World”

“Mixed Reality: My Multi-Racial World”

Julia Anderson Mann interview 2008

Flaxen haired, light skinned Twin Cities news anchor Robyne Robinson, who has huge hips and a profoundly pronounced posterior, relates when she was at the Minnesota State Fair for the station where she anchored the news, she had yokels walk up to her and actually ask, “What are you?” while gawking at her like one would look at a curiosity on display at the zoo.

These rubes weren’t trying to be rude: It probably seemed the most appropriate thing in the world to ask. Let’s allow the benefit of the doubt and just say they simply were ignorant White folk who didn’t realize they had poor manners.

Still, whether they meant well or not, racially mixed people are exactly that — people. Not a “what.”

Accordingly, Julia Anderson Mann’s performance work, Mixed Reality: My Multi-Racial World, should shed light on folk of mixed blood. It certainly conveys how Mann feels. For instance, there’s the quip: “The number-one sign you’re living the multicultural experience… You’ve developed a medical condition that causes your eyes to roll when someone asks, ‘What are you?’”

One way to see someone as human is to realize that, just like you, they have a family. Mann draws on hers in Mixed Reality, performing as her grandmother, her granddad and as herself. Looking to a bigger picture, the show also relates to the 1960s case of Mildred and Richard Loving, whose court case led to the U.S. Supreme Court declaring laws against mixed marriages unconstitutional.

There are those who own mixed blood and those who hide behind it. Cameron Diaz blithely confines her roles to films in which she can pretend to be white.

Tiger Woods went so far with his 1/32nd this and 2/18ths that blood count as to indignantly state he should not to be referred to as black. Coupled with his conspicuous affinity for slim blondes, it’s evident he’s in denial about a great deal of self-loathing.

Julia Anderson Mann plays no games with herself. Indeed, she speaks plainly about reflections on, among other aspects of her state in life, how Black she is and isn’t perceived as being.

Mixed Reality: My Multi-Racial World’s Minnesota Fringe Festival debut brings to the Twin Cities a tour that opened in 2008 at Luther College (Decorah, IA), going on to play small town Minnesota in Wycoff, Harmony, Laneboro and more. Since 2009, it has played community venues, among them Washburn High School, Oak Grove Middle School and Central Lutheran Church.

Mann’s acting credentials are in order: Her training includes performing in her youth (she’s 23) at Children’s Theatre Company (Madeline’s Rescue, Beggars’ Strike, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings) and Stepping Stone Theater Youth Performance Company (Buried Treasure at Old Fort Snelling).

She (JAM) spoke with the MSR at a Minneapolis coffee shop.

MSR: Why’d you create this show?

JAM: It was a way to share an affirmative story about identity, the issue of being biracial.

MSR: Tell more about those issues.

JAM: I have a hard time knowing if I’m paired with a race. I struggle with what group or path to take based on where society puts me. I don’t know if it’s a wall I need to break down [to be] in the right place with myself, accepted for who I am.

MSR: I guess it doesn’t help when people look at you like a novelty item.

JAM: Sometimes it’s just people being curious. They’re not trying to be offensive. They just don’t know any better. For me, Mixed Reality is a way to show people where I come from. That [it] is not as complex as they think.

I have a mother and a father. I came from two people. And [I've] lived a really healthy life. There isn’t any mystique.

MSR: You have trouble accepting yourself, sometimes?

JAM: Yes. I don’t think I’m covering all my areas. I have a hard time connecting with my African American side, looking [at] who I’ve been friends with all my life, how I fit in. It’s comments like when people tell me I’m not Black enough. I get shot down, made to feel like I’m not doing something right.

Or my White friends will be like, “Oh, her Black side is coming out.” Stuff like that. I don’t want to be labeled.

MSR: Has that happened professionally?

JAM: In theater, sometimes I struggle. I always get cast in an African American role, fulfilling a need or quota…. I would love to be that lead [role], but usually it’s blonde, blue-eyed. So, in this, my own production, I’m filling my own skin. And not fulfilling a role for somebody else.

MSR: You want something done right, do it yourself.

JAM: Exactly.

Tiger Woods May Just Figure It Out Now That He's Replaced By A Real White Man

 Tiger Woods Gets A Wake-Up Call

Dwight Hobbes/MN Spokesman-Recorder

Well, well, well.  Would ya looky here.  Golf fans done went and got theyself a genuine, for real cutie-pie white boy to fawn over and don’t need wannbe Tiger Woods no more.  Mr. Don’t Call Me Black Because I’m 1/32^nd this, 16/8ths that and two kajillionths  the other thing is no longer their darling.  Mr. I’m Just A Person – with a Jones for blue-eyed blondes (wasn’t enough to marry one, he had to cheat on her with a bunch of identically fair-haired, built like a stick bimbos) – has been suddenly and summarily displaced.  Woods, one of them dyed-in-the-wool, I’m the only one on my block poster chillun for social acceptance, has, in fact, been socially unacceptable ever since his appetite for Aryan types came to light (white people ain’t never gon’ be but so crazy about a colored man cravin’ after their women, not even in this day and age) and was hanging on to his special standing as one of those exceptional folk of color by a thread.  And, baby, the thread just broke.

Twenty-two year-old Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland went through this year’s U.S. Open like grain through a goose, breaking 12 records, making all kinds of money and basking in the media glow as an authentically bland superstar, complete with smarmy smile, looking so Wheaties and Wonderbread wholesome, you’d swear butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.  Sports marketing expert Kevin Adler, president of Engage Marketing, told the New York Post, "[McIlroy is] the image sponsors want for the young end of the luxury market.”  That man was not just beating his gums.  Well-heeled America couldn’t wait to finally turn its back on Tiger Woods but ain’t have no where to, well, to turn to.  They got someplace, now and you can bet the ranch on that.  Tiger Woods don’t have to lose anymore sleep about folk callin’ him black.  Hell, he’ll be lucky if he gets called at all.  That sound of rushing wind is sponsors and corporate execs who want Rory McIlroy to endorse their products tripping over themselves to throw baskets of cash at this kid.  You can already hear them in their swanky offices, swinging multi-million dollar deals to rub up next to McIlroy, talkin’ ‘bout “Tiger who?”

By the time Rory McIlroy’s agent gets done snatching up lucrative endorsement deals for his or her client, watching with a you-know-what eating grin as the young fella’s star shoots across the skies of international fame and fortune, Tiger Woods will consider himself doing well if he can get his face on a bag of Purina Dog Chow.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall as he strolls around his mansion, restlessly moving from room to room, but just can’t keep reality from settling in.  Things ain’t what they used to be.  It’s no longer possible to wallow and luxuriate in self-denial about how white he thinks he is.  Not when the real deal has come along, shunting him from stage center to the sidelines.  God, what I wouldn’t give to see the look on his face as he stares into a mirror and, for once in his life, actually sees the face looking back at him.

Celebrity Playwright Tony Kushner Resurrects Noble Black Stereotype

"Caroline, or Change" -- The Magnificent Mammy

MN Spokesman-Recorder

So, this is how we honor the death of 14-year-old Emmet Till, savagely beaten, an eye gouged out, before he was shot through the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied to his body with barbed wire – for the youthful mischief of whistling at white woman.  This is how we respect the memory of activist Medgar Evers, shot in the back walking up the driveway to come home to his wife and three children.  This is how we honor four Birmingham, Alabama girls who, while worshiping at church, were bombed into the next life by the Ku Klux Klan.  A generation fought for civil rights, struggled to be treated like human beings, refused to be denied education and the right to vote with the brave and the innocent dying cruel deaths.  It is honored as the backdrop for some privileged playwright entertaining audiences with his ersatz saga at the Guthrie Theater, Caroline, or Change, which may as well have been titled The Magnificent Mammy.

      Caroline Thibodeaux, a Southern Jewish family’s maid, is the lead character in this plotless fluff by Tony Kushner (book and lyrics) that barely stops short of amounting to a contemporary coonshow.  Right off the bat, singing as she washes and dries clothes in the basement, Caroline is accompanied by, of all things, an animated, spiritedly singing washer, dryer (cloned from Teen Angel in Dreamgirls) and radio.  Bad enough, but the radio is represented by three women in snug, hot pink, shake-and-shimmy dresses, rolling their hips, jutting out their butts – every time they perform a number.  It’s not the least bit surprising when we learn how Caroline came to be a single mom.  She had to get a divorce because – okay, everybody say – her husband, what else, drank like a fish and beat her like she was Job’s mule.  The requisite, cliché heartwarming tug comes with Caroline having befriended the family’s young son, helping the grade-schooler sneak a smoke and thereby standing as his rock of Gibraltar.  Naturally, the closest thing she has to a worthwhile black man is daydreaming of Nat King Cole. 

      This romanticized stereotype debases the heart and soul that kept maids and laundry women getting up each day to work their hands raw looking after their families (many of which actually included husbands who never raised a hand to them, whether they drank or not).  These mothers and wives dealing with day-in, day-out drudgery were about a great deal more than this script’s dilemma of whether Caroline was given whatever change was left in the absent-minded kid’s pants pockets.  It’s a galling insult that the climax arrives with our heretofore honorably heroine turning petty enough to appropriate a $20-bill from the child’s pants, argue with him over it, give it back and, then, walk off the job in a self-righteous huff, depriving her family of a living because of a spat with a little boy.  Don’t worry, though, the ace up Kushner’s sleeve is that, after Caroline goes to church, we get to speculate that God intervened and got her job back for her (there’s no other way to explain the happily-ever-after-ending).  One more slap in the face comes with the closing number’s smarmy bilge about succeeding generations being “children of Caroline Thibodeaux”. 

       The Ordway Center had The Color Purple this season, so, artistic director Joe Dowling had to have The Guthrie Theater step up with its own Lawd-them-coloreds-sure-can-sing production.  In fact, sing they do, a phenomenally gifted cast (the white performers acquit themselves admirably as well) doing Janine Tesori’s splendid music fine justice.  It’s just a shame Kushner’s there, palming off a slick, bald-faced travesty as homage to an era’s valiant women who stood as a cornerstone in black communities during a tragic time.

       

Congressman Keith Ellison, slick opportunist in crusader's clothing

 Ellison Ought To Worry Less About Egypt and More About Minneapolis

Originally in MN Spokesman-Recorder

Dwight Hobbes

Ever the slick opportunist in crusader's clothing, Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) waited until the tide in Egypt had fully turned and then, in characteristic grandstanding fashion, hopped on the bandwagon to call for you and me to stand in solidarity with the protesters in Cairo who, as of this writing, were on the verge of ousting President Hosni Mubarak.

Ellison used the issue of a proposed center and mosque near the site of the World Trade Center to proselytize for his religion, which is Muslim. He later jumped all over Juan Williams with cheap shots in order to, again, stump for his faith. Now, the styling and profiling cloaked in a cloying device is perpetrated to polish his profile as a supposed man of the people.

In the course of a few days, after it was safe to speculate on Mubarak's impending demise, Congressman Ellison out-poped the pope, as we used to say. With well-timed posturing that hit the mass media Feb. 3, he showed up President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who both had been pussyfooting around in the press with periodic statements that, at most, hinted it was time for Egypt's ruler to realize that his number is up.

Ellison elbowed his way to a sweet spotlight with his comparative daring, declaring it is time to "stand with the blooming [people's] movement in Egypt." When it comes down to it, Ellison, Clinton and Obama are all missing the same boat.

Hillary Clinton gave an arrogantly presumptive address, telling the media, "What's going on today — recent events in Egypt and certainly in that broader region — remind us all how crucial it is to have top-notch leadership on the ground and how quickly the ground can shift under our feet." Under just whose feet? The Egyptian people don't seem to have a problem with anything shifting under their feet. Who in the hell is she to get on a high horse about how somebody else should run their country?

As for Obama, the best he could come up with was to say, "An orderly transition…must begin." This, incidentally, is a man who Really with a capital "R" ought to mind his own backyard more, the mess that is America, and stick his nose in other countries' business less.

And then you have Keith Ellison, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, pushing for change in Egypt. Pushing — let's speak plainly — to influence what that change will be.

North Minneapolis Minnesotans, a strong, unsung cornerstone of the foundation that launched Ellison to political stardom, has problems they need him focused on a hell of a lot more than they need to join him in minding someone else's business over in Egypt. Gangland's insidious destruction of communities, holding one's very humanity as well as physical safety hostage, steadily worsens.  Doing something about that, though, isn’t the same as jumping up and down on a soapbox about being Muslim. It sure doesn't get national headlines.

Keith Ellison can be called a great many things. Stupid is not one of them. He is a shark who sized up the political waters with razor-sharp insight and a world of acumen. Ellison ran for office — and sure seemed to be the real thing — as a humanitarian. He turned out to be, surprise, a politician.

Congressman Keith Ellison Opportunistically Prosletyzing

Originally in MN Spokesman-Recorder

Each September, scores of Americans climb back up on the cross, wallowing in the conceit that this nation, by God's personal anointment, was, is and always will be above such a tragedy as took place with the destroyed the World Trade Center and took nearly 3,000 lives.  Other countries have suffered horrific assault on innocent civilians, not the least being Japan, which saw more than 100,000 innocent citizens ruthlessly murdered by, in fact, America's infamous weapon of mass destruction, the atomic bomb.  You don't see, every first week of August, an indignant ramming down the world's throat of what a wretched deed was done and a self-righteous recounting of the toll it took on Japanese hearts and souls.  The U.S., though, is incapable of coming to grips with its catastrophe and wants everyone, everywhere on Earth to know it. 

A lot of people in this land to need to get over themselves and the idea that by divine right this country's suffering is more important than that of others, that it is somehow a singular, incomparable crime and ultimately the most heinous sin to ever be perpetrated against anyone on the planet. 

Americans need to place themselves in perspective as yet another nation tragedy befell.  This includes that nitwit Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters who actually voiced plans to burn copies of the Qur'an on 9/11 because it was Muslims who flew those airliners into the Twin Towers. 

There is no point insulting every member of the faith.  On the other hand, this business of a proposed Islamic center and mosque near the site of the terrorist attack is hardly a sensible way to go about things.  It is arrogantly insensitive to people who lost loved ones in the attack to choose that very place to put a mosque.  Not because there's anything wrong with being Muslim but because it goes out of the way to rub salt in people's wounds. 

This is not anti-Muslim thinking, it's common sense.  In the name of common decency. Congressional representative Keith Ellison ignores that in his melodramatic posturing all over national television that those who are against the proposal are "proponents of religious bigotry."  He told a Twin Cities newspaper, "This series of events has given me a renewed commitment to make sure America's doors stay open, and we won't ever say we have somebody we want to throw under the bus. Not the Japanese, not the Catholics, not the Jews, and now not the Muslims. We're not going to do that. We're going to stay a country that prizes its diversity."   He is being deliberately obtuse, refusing to respect people's sensibilities in order to peddle p.c. double-talk: what the hell does any of this have to do with folk being let in America or anybody being tossed under a moving vehicle. 

He's also seizing the chance to opportunistically proselytize, stumping for his religion as a Muslim.  Ellison claimed, "Somebody's got to say it's not OK. If we start setting up these are 'the OKs' and these are 'the no goods' in America like this along religious lines...I'm going to be found speaking against it."  Hogwash.  There is a huge difference between religious persecution and reasonably deferring to the fact that more than few Americans quite understandably see as a slap in the face that, of all places to erect an Islamic center and mosque, this is the site that was chosen.

As for President Barack Obama strongly supporting the proposal, well, it's pretty hard to take Obama seriously about anything, anyway.  If there's a social issue to be discussed you can count on him to be on the politically correct side, trying to be all things to all people.  The closest he's come to going against the accepted grain was to call that Boston cop on being "stupid" by racially profiling Henry Louis Gates, hauling Gates out of his own house for no good reason.  At that, Obama chumped himself with a punk's apology which he had Gates co-sign as the three of them sat down to make nice in the backyard at the White House.

America truly ought to realize that reality strikes and, sad a blow to humanity as 9/11 was, our suffering is no deeper, no more immortal than anyone else's.  It doesn't mean, however, that insult should be added to injury.

Battle of the Alamo - Setting The Record Straight

SIS/Battle of the Alamo

MN Spokesman-Recorder

Wonder what school kids in Mexico read every year at this time when American students are handed hogwash about Texan heroes who martyred themselves at the historic Battle of the Alamo.  Hopefully they aren’t subjected to the same brainwashing bilge.

One thing’s certain: Mexican American youngsters here in this country would be well served, when studying that piece in class, to go to the public library and get the real facts, not what passes for truth as the teacher tells it. God knows they get enough White supremacy thrown at them in daily life without having to swallow a lie about themselves and their history.

School books have it that for almost two weeks in 1836, from Feb. 23 through March 6, a couple hundred or so noble defenders faced the thousands-strong horde of evil Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Santa Anna, this fiction goes, sought to oppress those who wanted and deserved a land of the free, a home of the…well, you get the idea. Sorry, not so.

He was dealing with a colony of land-grabbers who’d agreed to work the soil, raise cattle and otherwise make themselves useful in exchange for a place to live. Then they decided they were entitled to be permanent squatters on lush acres of grass and timber, free of charge. The Texans were also mad as hell because Santa Anna, president of Mexico, had outlawed slavery.

So, the American heroes at the Alamo weren’t freedom fighters courageously standing against oppression and tyranny, blah, blah, blah. They were barely legal immigrants, opportunists hell-bent on taking from Mexico what did not belong to them.

As for the famed battle itself, what generation after generation of school kids viewing film dramatizations see is, plain and simple, a crock. The movies portray the Alamo defenders as brave souls who, not caring that they were badly outnumbered, stalwartly gave their lives for the sake of freedom. Horse manure.

For one, there was no holding off, valiant or otherwise. It took Santa Anna 13 days to get his whole army there. Early on there was a minor foraging skirmish to test the makeshift fort’s defenses (it was a converted mission). Later came the onslaught with the full force of the Mexican Army finally on hand.

William Travis, David Crockett, James Bowie and company spent the rest of the time fearfully waiting, fervently praying for reinforcements until it was too late and they found themselves trapped, unable to run. Which Bowie very much wanted to do from the beginning, hoping to wage a guerilla campaign in the woods that would’ve helped with the odds instead of being butchered out in the open.

There’s no denying the loss of lives was tragic. Any senseless slaughter is. Doesn’t change the fact that they were in the wrong.

The only defenders at the Alamo who had a right to be there were the 23 Mexican men led by Capt. Juan Seguin. This was, after all, Mexican territory. They were the ones in revolt. Everybody else there was dying for the sake of the great White delusion, an inherent right to Manifest Destiny.

While we’re at it, what happened to Seguin — and escaped Hollywood’s notice — is disgraceful. He survived because Travis dispatched him to summon aid from Sam Houston.  Houston didn’t have help to send and figured, quite sensibly, that Seguin would do more good commanding Mexicans in Houston’s camp than dying at the Alamo.

As thanks for Sequin and his men helping Houston win, once the war was won, White Texans promptly kicked every last Mexican Texan who risked his life, including Seguin, right out of the newly free country. About which Houston, no longer general, now president, didn’t do a damned thing. You have to wonder whether Juan Seguin had been shooting at the right folk.

After the battle at that church, Texas did not become a state because a still-outnumbered, largely rag-tag army ran around enraged, shouting, “Remember the Alamo” at the Battle of San Jacinto and miraculously prevailed on the strength of sentiment. Texas became a state because Santa Anna was a lousy strategist and Houston was wily as a cornered fox.

Santa Anna got out ahead of his main body with a relatively small force that amounted to a big scouting party. Houston picked his spot, had some fellas go burn a bridge to cut off Santa Anna’s retreat and block reinforcements. He caught the overconfident generalissimo with his britches down.

Not much of a fighting man himself, Santa Anna, caught unprepared, ran. He had to be tracked down and, in exchange for his life, signed Texas over to Houston while there were more than enough infantry, cavalry and cannons to wipe out Houston plus three times his men. They just were late getting to the fight, still trying to catch up to Santa Anna when they got there and found out he’d surrendered.

The Texans didn’t gallantly win so much as Mexicans, in fact the good guys, stupidly lost. But the propaganda that gets peddled in American schools is not going to say that. Hell, according to those books, the U.S. has never been a bad guy in any war.

‘Tain’t so. In this case you can look it up. Just don’t go to a school library to do it.

Something I Said/White Looking Black Women

Something I Said

Dwight Hobbes

Archives

In America’s high-profile world of big-time entertainment, cosmetics are as important as talent, if not more important.  That’s how this country’s mindset is put together in being propagandized by that ever-shallow, all-pervading, influence, mass media.  The music industry is no exception.  Image is – we’re talking black images for the sake of this instance –imperative.  Specifically for black female stars: black men can get away with not being super-handsome or without being light skinned, but look at CD covers and billboards; you find successful black women generally have a strongly Caucasian appearance.  Right or wrong, society – black as well as white – never quite embraced the idea that black is beautiful.  At least, “black looking”, anyway.

Enter this flap over multi-platinum singing star Beyoncé, whose B'Day album comes out Sept. 5.  Gearing up for the release, her publicity machine sensibly made sure her mug was plastered on magazine cover possible.  Oddly enough, the campaign quickly drew wailing complaints. 

The flap over February’s Sports Illustrated cover for this year’s Swimsuit Edition reveals how determinedly ignorant and bigoted this supposedly evolved society remains.  White supermodels had a fit, allegedly because she’s not officially a model.  One insider at an agency– on condition of anonymity -- was quoted as grousing, "The cover spot is supposed to go to the top model in the industry. This year it went [to] Beyonce. It's an insult.  There isn't a model alive that doesn’t find [the] choice offensive."  Well, maybe not a white one.  Despite names like Naiomi Campbell, Iman and Tyra Banks, the industry long has closed ranks against black models.  The “offended” models are bent out of what little shape they have because Beyoncé blew every last one of them and their swimsuits right out of the water – no pun intended.  Readers of the magazine showed how backward they are, griping on Internet message boards that the SI issue, which also showcased Kanye West and Cee-Lo, is the "ghetto issue."  How much would you care to wager that men griping out loud about Beyonce didn’t snatch up that swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, surreptitiously adjourn to the basement or bathroom and, in the privacy of their imaginations, singled-handedly indulge such libidinous delight as they wish they could with their girlfriends or wives?  Yours truly is not a faithful Beyoncé fan, but readily acknowledges she’s hot as a sunburn.

More insidious is the whooping and hollering, early this month, over how Beyoncé looks in an ad campaign by cosmetics giant L'Oreal.  It resurrects the ridiculous flap that arose in 2005 when she was on the cover of Vanity Fair:  people are popping out of the woodwork to claim L’Oreal lightened her skin and tinted her hair to reddish-blonde.  This to promote the Feria hair color product line.  One publication, The Voice, carps, “It is offensive to Beyoncé. It is trying to distort who she is."  Baloney.   Movie cameras, rather Hollywood make-up artists, have been literally hiding for years the fact that Sigourney Weaver (run into her on the street sometime) has more freckles than the old TV puppet, Howdy Doody.  No one ever said Weaver’s been distorted. L’Oreal, for the record, denies having, as it were, brightened Beyoncé.  Let’s speculate, for argument sake, that L’Oreal is lying.   So?  Is it some sort of secret that the woman, from her ascendance as lead Destiny’s Child singer, embodied the old term, “light, bright, damned near white”?  Realistically speaking, Beyonce and her blonde skin stole an entire audience from darker, once-reigning pop diva Brandy who, truth be told, sings better.  If L’Oreal took license, all they did was hedge their bet in appealing to prevailing tastes. 

Being a media sustained superstar is not about racial integrity: file that under Life Ain’t Fair.  Or just get over it.  But, do not cry “Foul” when the reality of America’s preference for white looking black women stares you straight in the face.