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The A List: 03.14.03
Compiled by Africana Staff

This week on the A-List:

1. God Bless Black Hollywood Mediocrity!
The A-List wants to be a little less negative, seen? So we've been trying hard not to attack Queen Latifah for making a huge pile of loot by starring in and executive producing a single bad film. The way we see it, that the eye of history has captured (now indelible) images of the Queen of Self Respecting Hip Hop ("Who you callin' a sell-out?!") shucking, jiving, singing and carrying-on for white folks in the box office record-breaking Bringing Down the House is hardly an injury to the race. If anything, those images are racial advances. After all, the true measure of equality for black people in places like Hollywood (or your average corporation) isn't the freedom to succeed, it's the freedom to fail and still get paid the same way white people do.

The burden of blackness has always been the burden of having to be better than the white counterpart in order to succeed, but in Hollywood the rules of the playing field are perverted and then inverted by the fact that words like "success" and "better" have no functional relationship in the entertainment biz. In order to succeed, black Hollywood rarely needs to be better, but it usually needs to be worse on the daily: more craven, more desperate, more willing to prostitute itself, more eager to win at the dirty Hollywood game -- more, more, more, and all of it adding up to less, less, less in terms of enduring black film culture. Consider how many rich black people there are in the film business and how few great artists. Consider how the awfulness of House becomes an asset in Latifah's Oscar quest for Chicago, Latifah's willingness to fall on her racial sword in order to protect Hollywood capital during troubled economic times an indication of her "seriousness," "staying power" and mogul-potential. With the exception of maybe Spike Lee and a few independent directors you'll likely not heard of, the mission in life of every black worker/player in Hollywood is to fall on that sword over and over again, and the ones who survive then proceed to chop each other to bits in hopes of being the one anointed to serve black audiences (and white executives) their next helping of the re-hashed, warmed-over movie mediocrity that fills black screens small and large every hour of every day -- chiltlin' circuit comedy, Arabesque-esque romantic comedies, fake ghetto realness straight outta 1989, feature-length music videos replete with vide-hoes, stupor-inducing black history docu-dramas destined for Lifetime and other cable burial grounds, de-sexed and emasculated black buddies, hyper-sexed inter-racial love interests, manipulative tear-jerkers and so on, not a frame of it worth the celluloid it's been exposed on and yet still able to support vast infrastructures of self-congratulation from here to the NAACP Images Awards.

In such an environment the true heroes aren't the innovators but the one-hit wonders and the persistent hangers on, the folks who day in and day out do nothing more than earn a living. (And we all know there's no sin, no form of cultural suicide or self-degradation that black folks won't forgive as long as the offender ambles up and swears up and down that they were just trying to earn a living, like there's something special about doing what everyone else has to do, only with much better looking people and for millions of dollars.) From Jaleel White, to Halle Berry, to Cuba Gooding, Jr., black Hollywood is a kind of moral and creative swamp of such low standing that its only possible analogue could be the cesspool that is white Hollywood, making dream factories of LA ironically enough the only places in the country where black and white are in the end, truly equal. So, we're not mad at you Latifah; in fact kudos for bringing us one step closer to Dr. King's dream of a colorblind America!

(Next week, the A-List will present: "God Bless Black Hollywood Mediocrity, Part 2: The fall of Cuba Gooding, Jr." Keep an eye out!)

2. Wubacked ubout pubedubophubile
Haven't read, seen or heard enough bizarre stories about Michael Jackson? Us neither! That's why we quite literally ran out to buy the April issue of Vanity Fair which, besides dissing Denzel, (see A-List item #3), also contains a lengthy expose on the alleged precariousness of MJ's finances, sanity and nasal organ. Among the article's many, many WTF?! moments, the one that particularly struck us was the revelation that little Michael Jackson regularly denigrates other black people using his own personal racial slur -- "spabooks." Now, maybe it was the recent passing of Mr. Rogers, or maybe it's the particular brand of spring fever that sets fire to the A-List's collective brain each year about now and leaves us as antsy as a schoolgirl (44 days and counting!), but for some reason that one-word window into Wacko Jacko's complex matrix of internalized racism/self-loathing tickled something in the part of the A-List's brain that stores memories of kiddie TV. Last week the A-List asked, "what the hell exactly is the derivation of spabook?" a question that rattled around in our heads all week along with the word itself -- spabook, schwa sound, roughly rhyming with "cahoot" -- until out popped the time-misted memory of a younger, more innocent A-List lying on a shag rug with our siblings, soaking up television rays while watching PBS's Zoom. And then it hit us: "spabooks" is none other than the curiously retro slur "spook" rendered in Ubbi Dubbi, the Zoomers' native tongue! For those of you too young, old, or unlucky to have been edutained by the kid-produced public television show, Ubbi Dubbi is like a post-hippie Pig Latin, a lingua franca for Zoom fans looking to talk over, under or past their parents' comprehension. Translating English into Ubbi Dubbi is easy -- you just insert the syllable "ub" before each new vowel sound in a word. For example, "Michael Jackson" becomes "Mubichubael Jubacksubon," whereas "spook" becomes "spubook," or, in the case of Vanity Fair's hearsay transcription "spabook!" Another pressing cultural mystery solved by the A-List! (And you better believe it: Michael would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for us meddling kids!)

But, in the way of all Jacksonia, our new understanding of yet another completely bugged aspect of Michael's life only opens the door to more troubling questions: Why use a kids language to transmit racial slurs unless you're cracking wise with Macaulay Culkin about the cuboluborubeds? Did a young Emmanuel Lewis ever hear Michael use the word during sleep-overs? And what of Bubbles -- or, as we now know him post-Ubbi Dubbi decryption, "Bbles" -- was he silenced to prevent him from sharing what exactly he knew about Michael and when? Rest assured the A-List is on the case, and as for "prubomubise nubot tubo tubell thube pubolubice whubat hubappubened uband Ubi'll gubive yubour pubarubents uba nubew hubouse uband uba mubillubiubon dubollubars!"

You're smart; you can translate that one all by your lonesome.

3. Vanity No Fair
Wanna know the longstanding conventional wisdom that drives the covers of your favorite mainstream magazine? Put a black man on the cover and stand back as newsstand sales plummet, what with all the myopic, middle-aged white folks mistaking the title for Essence or Vibe. (Black women fare marginally better on non-black magazines, although the statistics are likely being queered by the phenomenal success of the all-Oprah-all-the-time O Magazine.) As a cynical old media whore, the A-List knows the score, but we were still truly disappointed by Vanity Fair's April cover. Hollywood heavyweights Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford mug for the camera, but reigning Best Actor Denzel Washington is conspicuously absent. The cover is a triptych fold-out and while Sam Jackson and Don Cheadle hold it down on the middle panel, the whole thing is just too damned white for words. Rumor has it the magazine offered Denzel a spot in the middle panel, but the Academy Award winner and director declined. This is not the first time Vanity Fair has done Denzel wrong. Back when he and Halle won Oscars last year, neither made the cover, and the last time Denzel graced it was in the '80s. Curiously, Denzel is also absent from the April Essence cover dubbed "Box Office Chocolates" which features Don Cheadle, again, as well as Omar Epps, Morris Chestnut, Mos Def and other black luminaries. Whubat's ubup wubith thubat?

4. Welcome to the US of A! Would you like freedom fries with that?
It's not enough, we guess, that we have had to endure, lo these past months, our unelected president's endless posturing in pursuit of illegal oil war. Nor that prior to this year's saber-rattling we had to watch as our Oilman-in-Chief snubbed our global neighbors in the matter of the Kyoto accord. No, America wasn't quite an embarrassing enough place to live, world-community-wise. Not yet, at least. Like a burger sitting alone and bun-less on a plate, our deepening depression needed the perfect side dish to make it complete, and this side dish arrived right on cue this week with the bizarre decision by Capitol Hill eateries to angrily rename French-fried potatoes something more...stupid in protest of France's refusal to play ball on the American overthrow of Saddam. That's right, we want some "freedom fries" with those massacred Iraqi babies and disgustingly bloated oil profits! Like Soviet communists airbrushing out the photos of the discredited (and deceased) from group shots of the Politburo, the Congressional cafeterias (with the help of two idiot Republican congressmen) have plunged us all into an Orwellian nightmare by deciding to "ix" the French out of their greatest cultural partnership with America: the burger and fries. Now dubbed "freedom fries" by morons everywhere, the new form of politico-gastro-intestinal distress is by far the craziest thing the A-List has ever heard of this side of, well, Mubichubael Jubacksubon!

5. Theft is the sincerest form of flattery, we swear!
The other day the A-List was walking down the street, past our local Crate and Barrel store. As our gaze lingered on the overstuffed chairs, the leather ottomans, and sleek bookcases, we indulged our favorite fantasies of home-ownership (we often think about home-ownership as we make our daily journey from cramped, cluttered apartment to cramped, cluttered cubicle, and back again). Our eyes then fell on this -- the "harvest" rug from the store's new collection of floor coverings. The colors were so interesting, the pattern so inviting, it was all somehow familiar --then it hit us. Those concentric squares, set just slightly off-kilter, eerily mimic the "housetop" quilt pattern seen recently in the glorious "Quilters of Gee's Bend" show at the Whitney Museum (and the accompanying coffee-table book) which detailed the stunningly beautiful work of African American quilt makers. We of all people know good ideas come from everywhere -- shoot, every story in the A-List is ripped-off from somewhere; what did you think? That we're reporters or something? -- but then again, the A-List isn't a hugely profitable purveyor of middle-class comfort and style. (Yet.) We also aren't ripping-off the idiosyncratic yet communal aesthetic products of a historically powerless community in order to sell them to Dockers-wearing, Wall Street Journal-reading urbanites (...yet), people who, for just $899, can enjoy a knockoff of a folk art that distills centuries of poverty, isolation and pain without ever having to confront the historical context that makes the whole thing possible. Now, that, friends, is progress!

6. Racist domestic terrorists moonlighting as cops in Georgia
What's a black person in Georgia to do when the Klan comes a knockin'? Can't help you there (we live in Boston). But we can tell you the answer to that question is absolutely not "run to the cops!" The FBI is charging that a 42-year-old Georgia dad and poh-poh Chester James Doles, along with a whole rack of his fellow local law enforcement officers, are proud members of the -- yes, you guessed it! -- Ku Klux Klan. That's not so surprising considering the history of the South, but it is hard to explain how a felon with convictions for burglary and assault on an interracial couple manages to serve in law enforcement in post-9/11-background-check America. While the men, described by the arraigning judge as "domestic terrorists," sound nothing like the fine southern police officers the A-List is familiar with -- Carroll O'Conner's William "Bill" Gillespie, for example, as well as Enos and Roscoe; maybe Boss Hogg -- our soft, televisual side was genuinely touched when Doles, being led out in handcuffs, barked to his wife and two young sons, "You know what's on trial here! Step up to the plate! You boys got to!" (Which roughly translates as a message to the boys to grow up fast and kubill lubots ubof bluback pubeopuble. His wife, God bless her, responded, "they will!"

7. Give me Your UN Votes -- and maybe I'll give your hungry, huddled masses (yearning to eat free!) some grub
As voting members on the United Nations Security Council, the African nations Angola, Cameroon and Guinea probably got more western press this last week than they've gotten since the end of their various civil wars and wars of independence. With the Bush administration in need of Security Council votes in order to legitimate its Iraq attack, the trio of very poor countries find themselves in a precarious situation between the dueling Americans and French, both of whom provide them with foreign aid. Not above buying votes (witness the aid promised Turkey if only their legislators would allow US forces to use their country as a giant staging area) the United States has made it clear that it will be very grateful for any assistance the countries may offer.

8. Supreme Court Stays Texecution
Delma Banks had just ten more minutes to live -- literally, just enough time for one hand of Texas Hold'em -- when the US Supreme Court ruled late Wednesday night to stay his pending execution. His lawyers had argued that Banks, who is black, didn't get a fair trial after being charged with the 1980 murder of his coworker Richard Whitehead, who was white. Given the blatantly racist machinations of Texas-style justice over the years, the Court has had its docket full lately just trying to correct injustices (another black inmate, Thomas Miller-El, was taking off death row just last month after the Court found he had been convicted by a racially skewed jury). File this all under "things we are not surprised by," although the Court's willingness to reprieve Banks makes us hopeful that we as a nation may be moving away from the barbarous, unjust and morally bankrupt system that persists in places like Texas. Pass the freedom fries, Tex, and free that man before you fry him!

9. R. Kelly's Bedtime Story Book
Back in 1998, the R. joined a growing list of entertainers who have -- to varying degrees of success, been involved in the publication of children's books. The list includes Will Smith, Doug E. Fresh, L.L. Cool J and Spike Lee. Hell, even Michael "spabook" Jackson penned a Moonwalker Coloring Book. Well, amazingly enough, Fuzzy-Feelings Books saw fit to re-release I Can Fly: The R. Kelly Story -- due to popular, sex-scandal driven demand. Appropriate for 4-8 year olds, the hardcover book tells the life of R. Kelly in rhyming verse from his humble beginnings as an impoverished shortie crooning songs into a broomstick for an audience of imaginary invisible little girls to a bigtyme star. The book tells kids to believe in themselves and make their dreams come true. Now the A-list is all for telling kids to believe in themselves but this is just too much! Suspected child molesters should not be allowed to have children's books written about them unless they are cautionary tales.

10. Youssou Crazy!
If you didn't know, the A-List is international, mama. When Miss Dynamite and George Michael remixed "Faith" with an anti-war angle at the Brit Awards last month the A-List was there running recon for the American Grammys. Confident we would use the week in between the two shows to prepare a proper AMERICAN comeback, the A-List was positive that our former colonial masters wouldn't be able to out-do the home of rock and rap in terms of outspokenness. But after the only stateside artist brave enough to even mention the you-know-what was Limp Bizkit front-man Fred Durst, well you can imagine the A-List's disappointment.

Last weekend, though, our faith was restored when Youssou N'Dour, Africa's best-selling musician, cancelled his US tour in protest of the nation's -- sorry -- the president's planned you-know-what against Iraq. The A-List would like to take this moment to salute Youssou for choosing courage over currency. If Youssou can sacrifice the funds from 38 scheduled tour dates, then the A-List thinks a few American acts can do the same. These acts abuse drugs, make music about their awful mothers, and even get caught on tape sexing children and the records still sell. Protesting the war N'Dour style would/can only help their careers.

That's it for the A-List, so check back next week for more. (And if you liked what you read, make sure to forward it to 10 people, or else our voodoo priest will get you!)

About the Author: Feelin' on the booties of consenting adults!