Bob Johnson: Apology Unaccepted

[Warning: This diary is about black stuff, is politically incorrect and I am unapologetic.]

Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson apologized today for the remarks he made concerning Senator Obama. Johnson apologized in a letter to Obama which stated:

"I'm writing to apologize to you and your family personally for the uncalled-for comments I made at a recent Clinton event. In my zeal to support Senator Clinton, I made some very inappropriate remarks for which I am truly sorry. I hope that you will accept this apology. Good luck on the campaign trail."

In the same article, the Obama campaign responded that they have accepted the apology and were going to "leave it at that."

Well, I don't accept the apology and I will tell you why.

I played the statement for a very close friend of mine. An African American man, aged 29, raising his nine-year-old daughter and working at a printing company, his response was utter disbelief.

"Guyyyyyyyyyyy," he said, a substitute for God, when he heard the words come out of his mouth.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me. Where they doing that at?" he continued in disbelief. "I used to look up to that dude, you know. Everything he did, building BET and all."

He paused for a second, looking at the screen that had completed the video and then said, "well fuck him too then."

Individuals like my friend aren't concerned that BET was peddling soft porn and damaging our community. He sees an African American man able to be a success story without playing ball or in the movies/on TV.

We don't have a lot of Bob Johnson's in the African American community -- someonne that the average teenage or young adult cat from the streets can say that if he can build a multimillion dollar endeavor, maybe I can build something without rapping. Again, never mind that BET turned into a vacuous pit of thongs and braggadocio, something I wouldn't let my nieces and nephews watch period, Bob Johnson was a black success story. For him to then turn and denigrate Obama is unforgivable. As Riley, the kid street soldier from the cartoon Boondocks would say, "Stop with the hate crimes."

In Bob Johnson's controversial statement, he said

"As an African-American, I'm frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that -- and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book -- when they have been involved."

There is the injury for me, plain and simple. He spoke for the black community, that mythical 'we' that were insulted. Funny, I didn't hear a single African American say that they were insulted by an Obama implication that he never uttered in the first place. Then, adding insult to injury, he goes back and says that what he was referring to, what Obama was doing in the neighborhood was community organizing. Talk about insulting my intelligence.

Bob Johnson, speaking for the African American community and being insulted, is no different than when Fox News trots out some BISON (Black In Skin tone Only Negro) to give cover to some statement about how will African Americans know that they earned it when affirmative action gives it to them. The concern is disingenuous and an act. We no more buy it when Sean Han*ity says it as when Armstrong Williams does. Or Elder. Or that other California jackass whose name escapes me (not Watts, the other one).

Furthermore, the other portion of his statement has received less attention.

"That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, ‘I want to be a reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And I’m thinking, I’m thinking to myself, this ain’t a movie, Sidney. This is real life."

There was the color diss right there, the Obama and blackness combined with the fairy tale implication. So Obama is out there trying to be 'likable', trying to utilize standard English, be passable and come off as not too black so that he can palatable to America? Then, there was the America diss. We are changing when it comes to race but is America ready, both whites and blacks, for a black president? And let me telll you something else. If Bob Johnson would have said "this ain't a movie, Sidney" to me, I would've told somebody to hold my bail money and smacked him in his mouth.

And one more thing, Mr. Johnson. When Dr. King was in the streets, there were plenty of individuals out there, rocking and humming, talking bout y'all need to quit all that. There were plenty of our people, now claiming they were in the streets, that were calling those kids irresponsible, were agitators, that they didn't understand. That is the exact same thing you are doing and twenty-five years from now, you'll be a revisionist historian and claim that you did X when you actually did Y.

I said that I wouldn't be politically incorrect but I have restrained from using the term in our communnity for your actions. The unwritten rule is that we don't air our dirty laundry in the street and you know that. It isn't enough that we have to hear Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley case every time Kramer or Imus steps into it, that we have to hear about Jesse Jackson's illlegitimate child, blah, blah, blah, when anything tangentially black makes the news cycle. Et tu, Brute?

Finally, I find it interesting that Senator Edwards nor a single Edwards affiliate or proxy has said anything remotely close to that of Shaheen or Johnson. Wonder what that is? Aww yeah, integrity.