Last week I told you about Stephen A. Smith aka “Screaming A.” saying we shouldn’t even be allowed to blog. Before that, I brought you the story of Michael Baisden trying to savage online Black activism with his direct false assault on Color of Change, and indirect implication on the rest of the world of socially minded black websites that he roundly refered to as untrustworthy. Now Gabrielle Union has jumped into the frey.
Black celebrities are losing their shit over bloggers being non-corporate media controlled, and because were eating into their elitist pie, that they think they’re entitled to.
The Essence interview with Gabrielle, Nia Long, and Sanaa Lathan starts off just fine:
ON BEING IN-BETWEEN JOBS AS A BLACK ACTRESS
Essence: What kind of year has it been for you?
Sanaa Lathan: I’m happy to have gotten a job this year. You know one of the things I decided early on in my career—especially because I only have me to take care of—is that I don’t want to do anything just for money. As a result, I can be very annoying to my agents and pass on everything. To a fault. But something came along that I’m really excited about. I’m playing a Senegalese woman, and it’s the first time that I’ll be able to do some real accent work. It’s a small, really beautiful film. Other than that, I’ve just been living my life. Living the life that you live as an actor between jobs…
But some how the convo turns to the Black Bloggoshpere when Gabbie chimes in:
Essence: How do you deal with the 24-hours-a-day gossip that comes out on the Internet?
Gabrielle: Just last week somebody gave me a baby. This isn’t Perez Hilton or the White gossip people, these are women of color, specifically Black women who, for whatever reason, don’t like the company I keep.
Sanaa: She’s talking about the gossip sites.
Essence: The blogs.
Sanaa: That are run by Black women.
Gabrielle: And now because everyone is clamoring for celebrity tidbits, the bigger gossip sites and even mainstream entities are picking up on it. No fact-checking, no nothing. And in one week’s time, there were like five different dudes, a baby—I’m a homewrecker. In literally seven days. I can’t point the finger at the White media. They don’t care about us. Paparazzi are not staked out in front of any of our houses. They are not going through our garbage because they don’t care about us in that way. So when you hear crap about us, it is coming from our own community, which hurts.
Nia: We are some of the few Black actresses whose passions are rooted in our community.
Gabrielle: There is this idea that there is integrity in journalism; if it’s written it has to be true. But that’s not the case. When blogs or any of the magazines get it wrong, there’s no accountability. In the next breath, they’ll complain on the blogs that we don’t have enough Black stars. Well, you rip us to shreds every two seconds from our nose to the weave to the clothes to the shoes to the ashy ankles.
Courtesy of Essence via I Like Her Style
Oh, but little miss Gabbie wasn’t finished there. She followed up with Vibe Magazine:
It’s like if you wrote for a major newspaper or a major magazine. If you can’t substantiate your claims, you don’t write them. We don’t have enough black voices, [and] we certainly don’t have enough people in entertainment who are trying to do good things for our community, so anytime you try to attack someone’s character, you negate their voice for all the things that they’re trying to do.
True! Well accept for the part that you necessarily don’t right them. What you don’t do is state it as fact and you note that its unsubstantiated. And the fact is, major magazine print unsubstantiated facts all the time. Ever heard of gossip columns? Ever heard of tabloids?
Like Stephen A Smith, Gab starts off rightfully pointing out what journalism should be, and like “Screaming A.”, unfortunately she kept talking:
If you look at what Perez [Hilton] does - and I don’t advocate for Perez, you know, he can write hurtful things about a lot of people - but what he does as a man of color, as a Latino, is he never dogs Latinos, ever. He actually breaks artists on his website. They can go from “Who the hell is that?” to Number One on iTunes in a day, just from what he says. So he’s trying to uplift his own people. I mean, he dogs everybody else, but as a man of color, I applaud you. I can’t dog you for not dogging your own people. He never says anything negative about Latinos, ever, and I just wish that we had more of that kind of “raise up” mentality and pulled each other up instead of dragging each other down. Especially like… If I got arrested, say whatever you want to say. If I had kids and left them in the car while I partied, or I got out of cabs showing all my private parts, you have every right to dog me. If I came out and dogged my own people, kill me in your blogs. But don’t make things up! I do enough, and if you really got spies everywhere you’d know what I was doing, you wouldn’t have to make things up. And if you don’t know your facts, then just don’t print them.
– Courtesy of Vibe Magazine Via Urban-Hoopla
*stares* *blinks* *blinks* *stares*
WHAT?
Okay, let me go back to the beginning and break this stuff down.
First to Nia Long’s comment — Are you sure you were talking about everyone in that interview being deeply rooted in our community? Wasn’t it Sanaa Lathan who told the AP after doing her interracial dating movie that black women “have to look at other options” other than Black men “if you want to have a family” and if “you want to be married”? Because apparently the white man was right all along, and the black male is a mindless savage.
Anyway, back to the main point- is Gabrielle Union really saying she should be above reproach? Wait a minute, really, are you serious?
What’s really funny is that she rails off on this whole spiel about how black people shouldn’t criticize black people (which on the face of it is absurd) and the whole time all she’s doing is criticizing other black people the same way she’s proclaiming the bloggers shouldn’t do.
Well you’re about to get criticized by another Black Blogger for being a HYPOCRITE. You lose credibility with me for saying this fork-tongued shit; not because of any gossip I ever heard.
Look, I’m not a fan of the gossip sites, other than a few celebritie sites that do more than the average with the content of their site; because I think it’s a waste of time and space to write about you people daily. But savaging all of them, and putting them all into one basket is foul on your part.
Next, it’s just inane for you to hold up an ass-hat, low down and dirty clown like Perez Hilton as a model for black people to aspire to; and equally inane to say that black people shouldn’t be criticized or critiqued by black people no matter what they do. This type of attitude is what leads to black thugs like Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatric, Former DC Marion Berry, and a slew of other black politrick-tians and so called civil rights leaders to be empowered to exploit and rip-off their own people. They’re black, so we should just give them a pass to do and to say anything. This is why R. Kelly gets to molest black girls and stay jail free and multi-platinum. It’s despicable!
Next thing I guess you’re going to loc up with Camron and the Dip Shit Set and do a Stop Snitching video.
We here in the Black Bloggosphere do a lot of great work too, speaking up and organizing on the same issues that you mentioned and a great many more. But it hasn’t stopped you and your buddies in mainstream entertainment for attacking us whole-sale lately; in an attempt to diminish our collective credibility instead of going after just specific Bloggers who may have done wrong.
You may not want to scold us about integrity until you demonstrate a little of it yourself first. In your own actions you don’t practice what you’re preaching.
Congradulations Gabbie, you hopped out of the frying pan right into the fire.
