Deception is the New Reality

While channel surfing recently, I heard a statement that couldn’t be truer as it applies to reality shows:Deception is the new reality.

KEEPING IT UNREAL

From the unReal Housewives of Atlanta comes new-nosed Nene. Though not nearly as unique as she’s often credited, sistah hood recently followed the footsteps of her predecessor housewives with surgical reconstruction. For reality TV’s popular fag hag, membership in the plastic surgery club must mean everything.

However, if she failed to work a gratis deal for services rendered, those funds might have been better spent enrolling her son in somebody’s college since he supposedly flunked out of Clark University during freshman year. Duh! He never went ‘off to school’ as she claimed in an episode. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt if Mother and son got schooled in tandem either.

The 'Mama Nem' Negro may be named Jones but truly, even with an altered honker, she can’t keep up with the elite.

TRUMP CARD

Where’s the fork because I’m done with Omarosa? The last time I heard, The Apprentice vixen had packed her hobo bag for a monastery and now, with the new reality show’s promos in swift rotation, the woman allegedly fired from the Clinton administration four times is seen toying with a fine brother in a bathtub. Talk about opposite ends of the lifestyle spectrum. Honey, money never walks to a bullshit beat.

Though not the first time the infamous O and the coiffure-challenged Trump have crossed T’s in reality show team, The Ultimate Merger is the debut of Mac Daddy Donnie’s big pimping venture. Although awaiting rumors that the pair has merged in more ways than one, I’ve already peeped the Donald’s ultimate fantasy in reality: seeing his chocolate sidekick kicking it with her own kind and getting paid. As the youngsters used to say, 'that's straight up Gangsta.'

Atlanta, Georgia On My Mind

No where in the cosmopolitan south can one chow down on shrimp and grits and get a fresh cut 24 hours a day but in the ATL. Yes sir, yes ma’am, that’s the kind of flavor I’m talking about – well seasoned southern hospitality. On the regular, black-owned restaurants like Landon’s, (the owner is the former Executive Chef to the Bishop Eddie Long estate) in the Cascade Corridor and Paschal’s at Castlebury turn up the heat and rock the pickiest palates.

BLAME IT ON THE ALCOHOL
Of course, the right ambience and alcohol is everything and amazingly, Moet and Chandon can be copped at an Atlanta University Center Chevron gas station for $44. I guess those Spelman girls and Morehouse boys can’t get enough and J. Roget certainly won’t do for their discerning champagne tastes. When I spotted a young African-American man with a gun holster strapped to his saggy pants at the same hood-based gas station late one night, my mouth flew wide open. Yepper pepper, state law sanctions “open carry” with a permit.

GEORGIA PEEPS
Georgia’s largest peach of a city, flanked by rolling hills and high rise homes, combines a population of buttermilk country bumpkins and a bursting at the seams bourgeoisie. As a former Houstonian and current Atlantian peeped, new Mayor Kasim Reed, who told it like it is at Clark University’s commencement, could be the city’s last colored mayor if black flight to outlining areas and urbanism’s appeal to whites continues to mark a new trend. I doubt if the sudden incursion will dent the African-American flock rate, though.

STUCK LIKE a THROWBACK CHUCK
Although I missed hopping a ride on MARTA (‘Moving African-Americans rapidly through Atlanta’) and experiencing the famous butt clap where girls with names like Leilani and Frosty perform at Magic City, fashion marching men in cropped pants and miniskirts provided suitable entertainment. Plus, as much as it is a mecca for all things hip and gay, Atlanta is also home to black folks stuck in a soulful strut.

So much for cellular technology’s overrated GPS such that I was forced to make a call to a Georgian transplant to pinpoint Gladys Knight’s and Ron Winans’ Chicken and Waffles’ Lithonia location. While enduring what felt like an hour wait, I was grateful my famished appetite was diverted by two old throwbacks, one decked out in a peach ensemble with matching leather lace-ups and another in shiny lilac gators.

Had it not been for these colorful characters, straight outta Hustlersville, I would’ve been denied the “Midnight Train,” a plate of plump wings and a buttery waffle drenched with pecans because the rest of my crew was ready to bail for Chick-Fil-A.

WTF? The NBA Just Got Whiter

For the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, owned in part by the hip hopperati king, Jay-Z, it’s come down to this: a billionaire Russian playboy principal. To diehard sports fans, I suspect the new white Russian ownership will raise few brows, given the infusion of international athletes perched on NBA benches today, including the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming, the great yellow hope.

According to the WSJ, Moscow-based Mikhail Prokhorow shelled out $265 million to snag majority ownership of the fledging east coast team. And although billed as the first foreign owner, Prokhorow isn’t exactly alone since Lebron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers sold a 15% stake last year to Chinese investors. So, what’s got me so riled?

More than Wall Street’s buckling, outsourcing has been the bane of the American economy with a slew of unrecoverable job losses. And don’t think for a minute that these governments of foreign stock aren’t netting handsome payoffs. In some instances, global is good but ‘H to the no’ when China is the keeper of American debt to the piercing tune of $755.4 billion: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20100303/158082088.html. What, if anything, is American owned in China or Russia?

Like baseball, which is no longer as American as apple pie, the NBA seems headed in the wrong direction. Call me old school, however, the sports teams that we were once proud to call our own should continue to be reserved for American hands. I’m just not well with a foreigner making bank off of the backs of my African-American brothers though most suffer from an acute case of swirl syndrome.

Sorry, boo, but modern day slavery, despite its lofty financial benefits, is far from dead. Forget Arizona and let’s add Brooklyn, the city in which the Nets are expected to land, to the boycott list.

Will Texas Pull the Anti-Immigrant Trigger?

Compared to the rest of the country, the feds are tardy to the taco party with its threat to challenge Arizona’s illegal immigrant law as unconstitutional. President Obama had successfully dodged the controversial political bullet for the longest until John McCain’s home state forced the pesky issue. And now, since a Republican representative is set to introduce similar legislation the upcoming January session, will Texas be the feds’ next target?

As clashing public and political opinions continue to gain steam, I suspect all jalapeno hell to break loose should Texas follow the Desert State’s lead. Although the state where everything is bigger may be on the verge of inviting political backlash, I’m one of many Texans who are accustomed to shrugging off our infamous reputation for ravenous appetites and Governor Rick Perry’s anti-Washington shenanigans. However big and bad, Texas, like other states, can’t afford to pooh pooh revenue and I hear Phoenix’s projected losses in tourism could topple $90 mil.

Maybe something good will come from what has been surmised as Arizona’s bad turn. At least, the enough is enough message has brought Georgia’s unfair practice of allowing those without citizenship to register as students to the forefront. The pass recently given to one of them after a traffic stop is mind blowing. See http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/undocumented-kennesaw-state-student-525038.html.

In the larger scheme of things, both racial profiling and legality arguments hold water; however, let’s flip the fairness coin: if the throngs of undocumented Latino immigrants who flood Home Depot parking lots daily seeking quick cash in exchange for labor had been African-American, they would’ve been removed more swiftly than Hurricane Ike’s debris. Now stuff that in your taco shell and wash it down with an ice cold Corona because it’s definitely getting hot in here.