dang, aaron!

has everyone that's black and american seen this boondocks episode that aired last sunday entitled "pause" except me? in it, aaron mcgruder skewers tyler perry to the hilt. from what i understand, he lets fly with so much insider information that supposedly mr. perry fired his entire staff. when you're rich and famous, getting ridiculed in the media goes with the territory. that's why they pay you tens of millions of dollars -- to soften the blow. but apparently, this was quite a blow indeed. did mr. mcgruder strike a nerve, perhaps?

first of all, let's look at the genre. adult-themed cartoons have been all the rage for quite some time, thanks to south park. with a cartoon, you can put any celebrity on blast, lampoon them to smithereens and call it social commentary. satire in adult cartoons are a legitimate way to delve into controversial subject matter that a sit-com would never touch. sometimes the stuff they come up with is nothing short of jaw-dropping. its interesting, it's inspiring, it makes you think -- all the things that television should do, and usually doesn't. that's why i LOVE adult swim.

simply put, that boondocks episode was scathing, brilliant television. i am in awe of aaron mcgruder because basically, he's his own entity and he can pretty much do whatever he wants. there's no way that tyler perry can destroy him or ruin him or fix it so that he never works in this business again. mr. mcgruder has established himself and he is his own man. i think that's tremendous.

i don't like it when anyone in hollywood stereotypes us. it doesn't make it any easier to take when black people do it. as a matter of fact, it makes it harder for me to ignore. i'm as uncomfortable with stepin fetchit as i am with tyler perry's madea but what makes madea especially toxic is the way his popularity outside of the black community has given (black) comedians permission to parade around in a dress and behave the way that they do.

my grandmother is nothing like that. is yours?

no, tyler perry isn't the first black man to put on a dress for comedic effect. but flip wilson's geraldine wasn't a black female stereotype. geraldine was a cute chick with a boyfriend named killer, a job and a life. every so often, you'd get a glimpse into her world -- but she was herself, and that was that.

here's another tidbit: not very many people know that buckwheat was a girl initially, played by a boy. remember buckwheat? so yeah, we've been listening to this one note samba for quite some time.

i mean, really. someone or something in media is always and forever on a mission to emmasculate black men and denigrate black women. the inference that it takes a black man to portray a black woman is now commonly accepted in our collective cultural subconsciousness. a black woman has her own strength, and there's absolutely nothing that's especially masculine about it. don't believe the hype.

a few days after this episode aired, mr. mcgruder tweeted: Tyler Perry has mastered the Evangelical-Christian-Afro-American-homo-erotic genre of entertainment. Good for him!!

good point.

i get the feeling that mr. mcgruder doesn't like the hyprocrisy of a gay black man using jesus to justify his cross-dressing antics or the success of his mediocre work. i could be wrong, but i'm not so sure that he's anti-christian. more on that later.

i've included the entire episode below for your viewing pleasure. enjoy!