Business…here’s an education on the Atlanta Braves for the 85% out there.
So I got up at 4 in the morning to write that, and I’ve been worn out all day. However, I must play that new NCAA!!!

Last night’s Chappelle’s Show wasn’t funny. No other way to say it. Had to put the other one on TiVo to make sure I wasn’t just gassed about the last one because I was just yearning for the show. The last one’s still funny, so it’s all good.
Except it’s not.
Last week, I asked whether Charlie Murhpy and Donnell Rawlings were selling out by hosting the show in Dave’s stead. They gotta eat, so I’d never be too critical. Plus, I don’t know if they’re Dave’s boys or were just his co-workers (employees).
After the last show, I’m comfortable saying it’s the latter.
Here’s the story–Comedy Central decided to televise a sketch where Dave plays mistrel-like pixies that pop in people’s heads when they’re in situations where their races make things uncomfortable. For example, a sambo pops up when Dave is trying to decide whether to order chicken on an airplane.
I think it’s a pretty good premise. I actually wrote something about it a few years ago. Anyway, the sketch wasn’t bad.
But see, the sketch is also infamous. This is the sketch that Dave says made him reconsider what he was doing on the show. He said he saw someone laughing in a way that made him uncomfortable, so it was time to jet.
It didn’t seem like the sketch that would make someone quit over racial conscience. This was not nearly as close to the line as Reparations 2003. That was the one that made me worry if white people were going to miss the point (but when it comes to reparations, most people of all persuasions miss the point, anyway). But Dave chose to quit, as is his right. Not my place to say anything about how he should or should not feel. As a rule, I have little to say about people having hypersensitive consciences unless said conscience adversely affects my sex life. Beyond that, be what you want.
So Comedy Central decided to show that sketch. And since they’re having the damndest time filling up full half-hour episodes, they decided to follow the sketch with audience discussion on the sketch and whether they found it to be offensive.
What followed was utter bullshit. First, the audience responses were very carefully edited. Not a single person in the audience, that I remember, had a problem with the sketch. I didn’t either, and I have no doubt that no one in hte audience was offended. There’s a selection bias that comes from polling that audience. They come for stuff that’s off the hook.
But Comedy Central tried to play me, you and anyone else watching with that shit. First, no non-black person offered any important societal discourse on the issue. A Jewish gentleman said that he always pays double his share on a dinner bill so no one assumes he’s a cheapskate. That’s pretty funny, but it doesn’t really touch on the issue. He simply expressed what it would be like to be a person in the sketch, but it didn’t really touch on what it was like watching the sketch.
For Comedy Central to touch on what concerned Dave, it would have to talk to some regular, run-of-the-mill white folks and ask them why they found the sketch to be humorous. After all, those are the people that worried Dave. Instead, they asked a bunch of black folks, just about all of whom commented on how we can’t worry about what white people think and how the show was funny and how you just need to be funny and stuff like that.
Y’okay.
Comedy Central can’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining. The network tried to play it as though it was simply trying to encourage some discourse on a controversial topic. But what really was going on? An attempt to discredit Dave for leaving the show, an attempt to show that he was off in his assessment of the sketch. And it was done in a way that anyone with a quasi-decent ability to see through rhetoric could tell was bullshit.
Comedy Central really irks me here because there’s no need for them to run a PR offensive. Dave’s gone. He’s not coming back. It doesn’t really matter why he’s gone. He’s just gone. Why try to play him as though he’s unreasonable?
He had to right to leave the show and he did. He didnt’ feel comfortable with it. And since it’s not my place to say what he should be okay with, I say nothing more than that such a sketch wouldn’t bother me a bit. That’s also colored by the fact that I’ve reached the point where I almost am totally unconcerned with the opinions of white people. It makes me uncomfortable when they’re overly concerned with mine, so I don’t worry too much about theirs.
(The worst anyone can think is that I’m just like the rest of the niggaz, which is the truth. Different from ’em, too, but we’re all different. Just not sweatin that too hard, so long as I’m just being me.)
But to keep running a PR campaign this long after Dave left is positively absurd.
And for Charlie and Donnell to sit there passing the mic around like Phil Donahue and Oprah? Shameful. Absolutely shameful. As artists, they know Dave’s got the right to mold his own vision and decide how he wants to be received. For them to be complicit in this, to question Dave’s motives even though they would have done the same thing in an analogous situation is selling out. Period.
At root, this issue is between Dave and Dave. It has nothing to do with any of the rest of us. They should have a certain respect for that. And if they don’t, the need to take it to the back and say nothing about it in that setting.
Also, please remember that I don’t say this as a media outsider. I write about sports on what might be the biggest sports outlet on Earth. I also like to write about race and spend a great deal of time thinking about it. I have to make decisions all the time about what angle to take when I write about race because I have to be entertaining, interesting, informative, and clear. I am loyal to my thesis and little else when I write.
I offend black people all the time when I’m critical of black people. I had black folks from all corners hit me up when I wrote about Vince Young’s Wonderlic because I wasn’t representing him in the proper light in my piece. It seems that by criticizing his choice of an inexperienced–and, conincidentally, black–agent I was reinforcing notions of black inferiority. The humor in that case, of course, is that the same racism they fear is the one that forces them to look at every black person as a representative the rest of us.
I say that to say this–I understand what Dave was worried about. He felt that the ideas he wanted to convey were not being received in the way he wanted. He sees his work as being subconsciously intellectual, but he felt like it was being taken as a joke on black people. It wasn’t just that people missed the point. It was that he feared people would never get the point. So he walked away.
I respect that.
I’m not quite at that point. People miss the point of my work all the time, so I’ve come to expect it. I just make my thesis as clear as possible. Since the logic I write with doesn’t allow for as much personal interpretation as comedy, I don’t have to deal with what Dave’s dealing with. Lucky for me, shit.
But the long of the short–this wasn’t the network’s call and this wasn’t Murphy and Rawlings’ places to be. CC needs to run the shows and shut the fuck up. Let Dave have his stand, especially since it’s too late for anyone to take it from him.

No record has been more omnipresent in my life than The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I’m not saying it was as big as Thriller. It’s just that I was 2 when it came out, so I didn’t experience the hysteria. However, I was a student at a black college with Lauryn dropped her record.
Here’s how everywhere it was–I knew just about every word on the record without ever having listened to my own copy. Didn’t remove the plastic from mine until 2000.
No need, man. The damn thing was in the air. Out of every dorm window. Out of every car. Just everywhere…until Aquemini came out.
Anyway, I was blown away the first time I heard it. Thought it was the best record I’d heard in years. But I honestly could say that the record got worse to me with each successive listen. It sounded so different, but I was starting to point out weaknesses much more easily. The masterpiece started sounding more like a helluva good job. That’s a feat, but not epically noteworthy.
So eight years after its release, I decided to check the record out agin. It was a really interesting experience.
Even when I talk this album down, I never disacknowledge that the great moments are absolutely spectacular. “Lost Ones” is incredible. “Doo Wop (That Thing)” is perfect in every way. “Nothing Even Matters” and “Ex-Factor” are also flawless. The cover of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” is also absolutely incredible. “Forgive Them Father” slams, if for no other reason than the track and the writing. The rhyme on “Everything is Everything” is amazing, and “Every Ghetto, Every Street” is cute–in a good way–even if it’s a little too derivative of a Stevie track. I mean, the highs are high as GP.
But see, there’s a few other songs…
“To Zion,” no matter what people try to tell me, is boring. And don’t even get me started on how those guitar parts weren’t enough to justify employing Carlos Santana. That’s like getting Wolfgang Puck to make Pop Tarts (and the same can be said for Eddie Van Halen on “Beat It”). And it’s six minutes long? You gotta be kidding me.
“Superstar” is as tired as the cats she claims to have issues with. “Come on baby, light my fire/everything you drop is so tired/music is supposed to inspire/how come we ain’t gettin’ no higher?” Well, it doesn’t help us get higher when that’s the best encapsulation of your view that you can provide. “I Used to Love Him” doesn’t do it for me like that, either. Just kinda boring.
And there’s one more thing that can’t be ignored–Lauryn masqueraded as though she produced every song on the album, and that was later proven to be false (and addressed on Wyclef’s “Where Fugees At”). There’s a lot tied up in that situation that I can’t speak on because I don’t really understand it, but that was a sucka move.
But at the same time, there’s no denying that Lauryn had a serious level of input on the album. And therein lies the problem, if you ask me. It’s not that she’s incapable of doing great work without help. It’s that people frequently need someone else to say, “yo, that’s boring.” There appeared to be no one there to do that. You know damn well the label had no idea what to do with this album, but they were in no position to really tell her what to do after the success of the Fugees rather uncommercial sounding The Score.
This is the curse of self-production. If you don’t believe me, check out some of KRS-ONE’s albums from the late ’90s. No one was there to check him. For that matter, check a lot of Prince’s stuff. It’s important to have someone to bounce these things off of, someone that’ll tell you about your shit with little concern for how you feel about it. In my job, we have a name for those people–editors.
But this album is very, very good. It’s personal to the point where it can make you uncomfortable at points, but not like that Unplugged album. But is this the be all, end all album? Is it a 5-star classic?
It’s damn close. But it’s not. The lows are just too low for me.
Now, proceed to tell me what a moron I am. I know it’s coming.

I’m in a rush, but I wanted to let you know that the radio brodcast is at 2:25 EDT today. I’ll update again today with Take It Back–The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.