Even after all my logic and my theories, I add a mutha f@!&#, so you ignorant niggas hear me. -- Lauryn Hill The Score 1996
It’s an overcast warm April day in the “A.” Most of the half black/half “other” in the poor man’s version of Chocolate City are probably out spending their direct-deposited earnings on items that underscore why we wake during the weekdays to... fight traffic, engage in water-cooler conversations about the weekend, file paperwork, attend meetings answer phones, send emails, then break for lunch. After lunch we attend more meetings, answer more phones, and send more emails only to conclude by fighting traffic to get back to our foreclosed-riddled neighborhoods. We do this only to wake on Mondays (if you are lucky) to do it all again. We do this for the better part of our weekday lives and on our ironically touted "off days" one has to wonder is this ritual going to be the symbolic meaning for the dash on the stoned headboard, once we are laid to rest? I wonder.
The clouds will probably hide the sun for most of this spring Saturday, so I plan to buy some music, thus drowning my modern day slave wages in beats and rhymes until the gridlock forms on Monday morning. I can’t really fault my southern MASTER for this one because, unlike 200 years ago when that boat docked, I agreed to these terms, for better and for worse.
When I heard Tavis Smiley was leaving the Tom Joyner Morning Show my conflicted emotions concluded with…, hmm, didn’t Tavis agree to Uncle Tom’s terms? Besides, how bad can the traffic going to and from his Los Angeles studios to conduct a 10-minute soliloquy twice a week? It can't be much worse than being strapped to a tracking device of a 9-to-5? I sometimes wonder why corporate America spends so much time and money monitoring and recording what I do at work, when I am seated in an open cube. As usual I digress. 
You can record Tavis’ commentary in an open forum around 8:24am EST on Tuesdays and Thursdays (until the ink on his resignation dries in mid June). Word on the wire is, Smiley got tired of Joyner’s empty-headed audience throwing darts at his Obama theories. Smiley’s tireless efforts to get his people (my people) to start using their heads for something other than a hat rack drove him to resign from his twice weekly moral monolog, according to Joyner. Smiley's open criticism of Barack Obama’s illusive attendance at the Tavis' black agenda revivals and townhall meetings drove a wedge between Tavis and the black audience from Joyner’s jovial congregation. I imagine nothing hurts a parent more than a life-long commitment of protection only to find out your child touched the stove once your back was turned. That pain accelerates when the child grows up and questions the parents’ intent from the start. That must hurt more than slavery itself.
Brotha Tavis, I think it is important to note that your agenda goes against the very grain of the media platform on which you stand. The reason your broadcasting check has so many zeros is the financial advertising rewards from the black radio format that is sweeping the country like toxins in meat. For a minute, forget the Ringling Brothers Circus you resigned from (at least J. Anthony Brown is funny). Take for example, “The People Station” in Atlanta. This V-103 morning show staff consists of 2 chimps and an unfunny cross-dresser — the latter being slightly redundant. You can fill Phillips Arena 20 times and New Birth twice with the sub zero IQ levels in that Peachtree booth. V-103's illiterate news, the retarded rhetoric, and the poisonous music rotation makes Tom, Sybil, J, and Ms. Dupree seem like Cornell West students. I cannot tell you how many people have kicked me out of their black community forums for expressing my disdain for V-103. And, I will never resign from my commentary until black radio begins to address: real musicians, the housing crises / predatory lending, the origin behind the AIDS virus, world banks (not just the one’s that financed 911), immigration, cloned cows, chicken shacks, check cashing booths, bar coded currency, V-Chips, recording contracts, healthcare, reparations, and Hollywood---and this is just my Black History Month agenda. It'll be hard to listen to a Chingy song after that conversation, huh?
The black radio apathy doesn't stop here, my brother. Travel to any city in Black Town USA and you’ll find the same black radio ritual with a Hot so-and-so, a Quiet this-and-that, Kiss what-not, or a Smooth jazz joint that rotates Kenny G residuals.
The one commonality with all of these stations is, some rich, fat white guy named Bob reclined in a long-back, leather swivel seat setting the black agendas and ignoring my black history demands. This man reaches WAY more black people than you or I combined. Furthermore, he pays some of these hot air personalities 10 times what Uncle Tom pays you. How else can you get a conscious black person to play a song like "The Hoe Is Mine" 30 times and never play a joint by Pharoahe Monch or Mos Def or Donnie or.. 
The fact of the matter is Mr. Charlie autographs the bottom of the checks and is controlling the strings on the top of this Universal Soul Circus called black radio. Mr. Charlie is kind enough to beep-out the “N” word from most of the Hoe songs.., ‘cause, he wouldn’t want to offend you. Naturally, Tavis, if you come to the black radio meetings on Tuesday and Thursday questioning or upsetting the white man’s agenda (which includes Barack), well you are going to face some hurdles. Not from the white man, but from the black man.. like the one who pulled the trigger on Malcolm. (see why I am not invited to cookouts anymore?).
Tavis, if you are listening black people love Barack and there is nothing you can say to change that fact. Those minds are made up. Period. The only time you will see any progress is when the burn from the hot stove fries their flesh. Just imagine the pain when our people find out that a parent's hug or kiss and a handful of coco butter won’t make that four-year ailment disappear.
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1 love,
Ray Lewis
