Written by David Morgan

 

BET's new show Hot Ghetto Mess has been getting some criticism and losing some advertisers recently. Specifically, BET is being attacked for perpetuating negative stereotypes of African Americans. The LATimes is reporting that State Farm Insurance and Home Depot have pulled their ads from Hot Ghetto Mess, feeling it to be "inappropriate."

 

The series was inspired by a website of the same name which features "outrageous and socially incorrect behavior, mostly by blacks," such as, "overweight, tattooed people in revealing outfits, a dog with cornrows, babies drinking out of beer bottles and a pregnant teen wearing a prom dress with a hole cut out for her protruding stomach."

 

Wow, that sounds like it's worth checking out.

 

Okay, I just checked out the site a little. It's pretty clear that the site is intended as a social critique rather than as a glorification of "ghetto behavior." The motto of the site is a Martin Luther King quote: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Also, there's a letter from the editor asking the black community "where have our standards gone?" and claiming that "our communities are going to hell."

 

If the show follows in the same vein then I don't have any idea why the advertisers are pulling out. Then again, insurance companies and hardware franchises aren't necessarily the best judges of satire.

 

Charlie Murphy, who appears on the show, attributes this uproar to "hypersensitivity and an undercurrent of phoniness" in the wake of the Don Imus and Michael Richards scandals. Then (astutely) he asks the LATimes, "Where are these people when it comes to shows like Flavor of Love or Maury, when the 25th man is being tested as a baby's daddy?" I couldn't agree more. Thirty years from now, people will look back on Flavor of Love with the same kind of disgust that people today look back on the films of Stepin Fetchit.

 

That said, Flavor of Love is really funny in a terrible way. I know I shouldn't enjoy it, but a part of me does. I hope that doesn't make me a racist.