"What do you do if you find out that someone that you know is dating a racist?"

I'd talk to national television, too!


.

"I'm nobody's sassy black friend."

Nor am I "part of a 'niche' audience" called "women".

Okay, so, in reality, I am a few people's sassy black friend. However, new friends (hello, and welcome!), please do not describe me as "sassy". Also, when pointing me out to other people, do not let your first adjective about me be "black". I encourage you to employ phrases including "that funny lady" or "the one with the book" or "some weirdo" when painting the whimsical picture of insanity that is me.

Here is my inspiration for the day:

Diversity in Entertainment: Why Is TV So White?, by Jennifer Armstrong, Margeaux Watson, at EW.com via Racialicious.

and

Hollywood 'Shocker': Women Go To Movies, by Mark Harris, EW.com.

Overall, both articles totally get me and what I'm about. Until I reached this self-congratulatory mess in the first one:

That kind of color-blind casting is something teen-focused networks seem to have down pat: Nary a show has passed through ABC Family or The N without an interracial coupling or a naturally integrated cast. [Nary? Haven't the writers of this article seen Whistler? Neither have I; that's why it got cancelled.] (ABC Family's Greek even has an interracial gay couple.) Those networks' execs say it's a simple matter of economics, that their Gen-Y viewers accept — nay, expect and demand — such a reflection of their multi-cultural lives. "They're completely color-blind,'' ABC Family president Paul Lee says of younger viewers. ''We've done a lot of things wrong as a nation, but we've clearly done something right here. They embrace other cultures.'' Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the most high-profile minority casting for the fall is on another teen show — The CW's 90210 remake, where African-American actor Tristan Wilds (The Wire) will play the central white family's adopted son. ''When we talked about how to make it more contemporary, diversity was a big part of that,'' Ostroff says. ''It feels as if it's a very modern family scenario.''

I'll dissect this pile of colorblind-crazy later. Because wow. There's nothing like two powerful white network executives (I'm assuming they are both white from their pictures) educating reporters about "diversity" and "embracing other cultures". What other cultures are you talking about, Paul Lee?

Though I do appreciate that the writers pointed out the glaring inconsistency of these statements with the facts:

That said, 8 of the 10 regulars on 90210 are white (in addition to Wilds, Ecuadorian actor Michael Steger will play a student at West Beverly High).

Michael Steger-- who is actually of Ecuadorian, Austrian, and Norwegian descent--will be playing Navid Shirazi, who is allegedly Iranian. So, good going Dawn Ostroff and friends, who follow in the steps of The L Word by killing two ethnic birds with one stone.

.

Same story, different day.

Update on the Dirty Girls Social Club Movie, and Lessons in Latinidad Real for Hollywood - Part One, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, via Racialicious.

If you can't watch the video, Alisa talks about the difficulty of getting her bestselling book, The Dirty Girls Social Club, made into a movie. To sum up the situation, the white, non-Hispanic males who run every major movie studio don't think the six educated women in the novel are real Latinas. Because they're not "street". Plus, there isn't an A-list actress attached to the film yet. Why? Because the A-list Latina actresses have been advised by their management teams--more white males--not to play Latina roles. Nice.

None of this surprises me at all. However, every time I hear a story like this, whether in person or in print or online, the women telling the stories are usually shocked and hurt. These women have worked hard, played by the rules, paid their dues, achieved above and beyond their peers in their field, proved their talent, worth and potential. And still they get shot down. Every time. Just like they did at the end of my book. So weird that Alisa mentioned WWII movie Schindler's List, too. Hmm. Maybe I have The Shine. Either that or I can see the blatant, continual racism and sexism that persists in Hollywood.

I can't turn my head without seeing a story about how the success of Sex and the City: The Movie has proved that women can open big-budget films. Quoi? I didn't hear the same clamoring over Indiana Jones and the Senior Citizen proving that old white guys can still open action films. I actually had to hear Tattoo on Big Boy in the Morning whining about how terrible Sex and the City was--even though he went to see a completely different movie this weekend--because women who were over the age of 40 and/or overweight went to see the movie in groups and then talked about it. Also, Tattoo didn't like that the movie starred four "old" women. Thankfully Liz and Big Boy totally called him out on his insanity, considering Tattoo very recently had LAP-BAND surgery to combat the 280+ pounds of fat on his own body.

Back to Dirty Girls. I love this book so much that it has been my signature gift to all of my closest friends, who have also loved it. It clearly has an audience in multiple countries. Yet, the movie can't get made because the characters aren't "real Latinas", "we don't get the whole Latino thing", and "nobody would want to see the fat girl get the guy", even though about 15% of the US population is Hispanic, and (allegedly) approximately 62 percent of female Americans are considered overweight.

So what kind of woman is acceptable for mass consumption? Last Comic Standing's Esther Ku. I knew I wasn't the only one who didn't like her.

"Chopsticks"! "Ching chong"! Even though she's Korean. Ha! "I don't want to marry an Asian guy; I like regular people." The hilarity!

Ugh.

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Sex and the City turned me into Miranda.

Just like Daria turned me into Daria. And Will & Grace turned me into Will.

Except not. I was already uptight and introverted and meticulous, respectively, when I began watching those shows:

'Sex and the City' Fiend: Show Turned Me Into Samantha, by Sheila Marikar, ABC News via Yahoo! News.

. . . ["Lisa"] got hooked on "Sex and the City" when she was a 14-year-old growing up on Long Island, N.Y. It was the same year she lost her virginity. She soon graduated to ordering cosmopolitans at bars she snuck into and cheating on her boyfriend with up to seven other guys -- in one week. "When you're that age you try to emulate people on TV. Carrie smoked, so I smoked, Samantha looked at hooking up with random people as not a big deal, so that's what I did too," said Lisa, now 22. "It wasn't 'Sex and the City's' fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior." . . .

. . . Lisa left her "Samantha" ways behind at 19, when she moved to Utah, became a Mormon, married a man within the church and gave birth to two children. For the first year of her marriage, her husband forbade her to watch "Sex and the City" for fear that it would lure her back to her habits of sex, drugs and one-too-many cosmos . . .

I wish my husband would try to forbid me from watching a TV show. I doubt he would make it out the front door alive.

Some apropos comments followed:

For the love of God almighty who prints this crap?!?!?! ABC should be ashamed of itself, but like most corporate entities it's only ashamed when the ad dollars dry up. This is journalism. People dying due to fascist regimes in and out of our country and this is what you print? To hell with your news department ABC. I'm taking my business elsewhere.

- NightEmber79

and

So SATC wasn't around when I was 14 and I had sex. Who should I blame? LOL

- sarahthewitch

LOL indeed, sarah. LOL indeed.

Also, where does Ms. Marikar get off printing the line, "To be clear: "Sex and the City" can't be blamed for creating a generation of sluts." What self-respecting journalist, and woman, would make that kind of backwards, judgmental statement in a "news" article. Probably the same kind of writer that would include the quote, "It wasn't 'Sex and the City's' fault. I love the show, but I think it made it a little easier to justify my behavior.", and still choose the contradictory title, "'Sex and the City' made me have sex at 14".

~

In other "Oh, really?" news:

Boy band creator [Lou Pearlman of Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and O-Town] sentenced to 25 years in prison, by Travis Reed, AP via Yahoo! News.

It's about time. [Update: Defamer, I re-reported this story first. Again. Yes, it might be my only post this week compared to your "27 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS", but no matter. Victory is mine!]

and

American to charge for 1st checked bag, cut flights, by David Koenig, AP via Yahoo! News.

Boo.

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There are times when I should stop myself.

And yet I choose not to.

It started with my friend sending me a link to this article called I'm Just Not Attracted To Her, by Michael Lawrence. Goodness knows if there is a piece involving Debra Dickerson, Wedding Crashers and Christianity, I'm all about reading it. Which I did.

The article was on a "webzine" called Boundless, which is "a website of Focus on the Family." This is when I should have stopped reading, because I have heard of Focus on the Family, and none of the reviews of their organization have shown them to be positive or progressive.

I clicked on the home page of the site, scrolled down and found, Ten Things Now To Stay At Home Later, by Heather Koerner. Below the title was the description, "Think you want to stay home to raise your future children? Think you don't? Either way, you should read this." I thought it might be an article similar to Leslie Bennetts' book, The Feminine Mistake. It was not.

Then I clicked on the Boundless "Best Of" tab and scrolled down. Of course I had to click on the "SEX" link. Theophilus was mentioned twice,; I should look him up at some point. I scrolled and found your basic Modesty Revisited ("More than a Victorian-era hang-up, modesty is a part of human nature that protects true love, empowers women and preserves culture."), and your Subversive Virginity ("In a culture of easy access, virginity is where real sexual power lies."). Then I found So-Called Marriage, which argues homosexual unions are irrelevant to marriage laws because they are effectively sterile. Marriages are supposed to be between a man and woman because the primary function of marriage is to breed. Hmph. Then there was Abortion and Rape: "Even after a rape, abortion is never the answer: Choosing life is best for both mother and child."

There is one article I actually liked (meaning I somewhat agreed with it) called BA: FEARING INFERTILITY: "The girl he's interested in may be infertile. Should he avoid the potential struggle of childlessness and just find someone else?" The advice guy John Thomas pointed out that infertility is just one of the many struggles that married couples face, and if the two of them are compatible in every other way, then he should continue the relationship. I, on the other hand, would have referred the fearful young gentleman to the Charlotte-focused episodes of Sex and the City, in which she spends so much time, money and energy to defy her 15% chance of carrying a baby to full term. Her fervor leads to the dissolution of her first marriage, a miscarriage during her second marriage, a botched adoption attempt, and it almost ends her friendship with Miranda who has her own baby issues. Watching Charlotte's heartaches would give him an illuminating example of the difficulties of both marriage and infertility.

I know, I'm a depraved heathen whose excessive TV watching has caused me to hold "permissive attitudes about moral issues like divorce, extramarital sex, homosexuality and abortion." What's wrong with that? At least I'm not James Dobson.