Sir Marcus on Television

Hola Blogosphere, Sir Marcus here

Does anyone else notice the crap that's on TV nowadays? The shit on Viacom's channels and its subsidiaries alone (BET, MTV, Vh1) is enough to warrant this post, so we'll just tackle those today.

"Frankie and Neffie?" "The Wendy Williams Show?" "Tiny and Toy.a?" What are the requirements to get a fuckin reality TV show? Having seen small bits and pieces of these shows, I can assure you all that having ANYTHING interesting about yourself must be one thing that is absent from the list of prerequisites, because between these five women, not ONE of them would be able to convince me that they should even be in the same building of the set of my TV show (watch out world, it's on the way), much less have their own shows. But hey, that's just my opinion

For those who are unfamiliar with these characters (trust me, you all are the lucky ones), "Frankie and Neffie" consist of the sometimes crazy ex-crackhead mother and just regular-strength crazy sister of R&B star Keyshia Cole (of course, if you don't know her either, then my explanation doesn't really help). We unfortunately "met" the 2 of them on the show that BET gave Keyshia awhile back and I, for one, have been trying to eradicate them from my memory banks ever since. Of course, because BET doesn't care about showcasing some of the
more stereotypically "ghetto" aspects of black culture, Frankie and Neffie's eradic, loud, boisterous, and bizarre antics, if shown in small doses, were guaranteed to get the powers-to-be at BET thinking that this somehow warranted them getting a show of their own; it was only a matter of time.

Wendy Williams is just ur typical know-it-all, mostly wrong-opinionated shock jock radio host. All you need to know is that she sucks on the radio, so giving her a show is basically just bringing a sucky radio host and personality to you in 3-D; Now you hafta close ur ears AND your eyes.

"Tiny and Toya" is a show about the respective baby mamas of rappers T.I. and Lil Wayne. And because they are associated with those 2 guys, they clearly deserved their own TV show. Apparently, BET is in talks with ANY FEMALE WHO'S EVER HAD SEX WITH ANY RAPPER, AT ANY TIME about subsequently getting TV shows for them as well. To be fair, those girls have certainly earned it; chasing rich men can be exhausting, I'm sure.

The worst part about all of this stuff is that my friends and I agree that all of these shows and most of the television that BET has been trudging out for a few years now are just perpetuating most of the stereotypes that are thrown around about black culture. Now, chances are, if BET is doing such a great job of turning off FELLOW BLACK PEOPLE to their programming tendencies, what reason will white/latino/asian have to stop associating black people with the shit they see on a television station RUN BY BLACK PEOPLE? That, my friends, is called shooting one's self in one's foot.

Now, are any of these people even REMOTELY famous enough that they should get their own show? Of course not. But, in BET's defense, television stations are as much apart of a copycat league as the MLB, NFL, NBA, etc, and unfortunately, there has been a precedent set for this sorta thing. BET sees E give Kim Kardashian - a beautiful and by all accounts truly nice girl, but let's face it, she's a nobody - her own show, and soon her two sisters - in all fairness to Kim, two MUCH bigger nobodies - their own show. Flava Flav and Bret Michaels are somewhere smiling everytime VH1 gives someone a spinoff show from "Flava of Love" or "Rock of Love" (there are literally too many to count at this point), and even those were pseudo-spinoffs from The Surreal Life. Shit, MTV even gave MySpace sensation (a joke in itself these days) Tila Tequila her own dating show and when they figured out that she was either A) not interesting enough, B) not pretty enough, C) not stupid enough, D) not quite irritating enough or e) All of the above (backhanded compliment?), they made the obligatory sequel show and replaced her with the Ikki Twins (who I certainly didn't know of before then, and have since then, as Mike Tyson would say, "faded into bolivion"). Did I mention that one of the guys from Tila's show had his own spinoff that I swear could only have been on TV for 3 weeks? What's the matter, Dominico? Did the women that MTV handpicked for you get tired of ur schtick as quickly as America clearly did? Damn son, that shit is wack.

My point is that when BET sees their main rivals doing this sorta stuff, why wouldn't they do the same thing? Except they could do everybody one better and make black people feel bad as they continue to enforce some of the stereotypes that are associated with them, and other cultures feel bad for associating those stereotypes with blacks? A rarely-seen trauma/shame 2fer!

In closing, we gotta do sumthin to stop all these regular-ass, clown-ass people from getting their own TV shows. But since that doesnt look like it's gonna stop anytime soon, I might as well put in a bid for me and my boys. I guarantee you all that if someone sent TV cameras to just hang around me and my boys back home, they would get an infinitely better reality TV show outta the deal then "Frankie and Neffie." The gauntlet has been laid down, BET; your move.

Until next time, this is Sir Marcus T. Williams signing off...