Fri Sep 7, 2007 — by Michael Davis

MICHAEL DAVIS: Reading is Fundamental

Straight, No Chaser #30

My friend Tony Isabella has mentioned that I give a good rant, Tony; this is about to be the rant to beat all rants!

I am soooooo pissed. I had two columns ALREADY written so I could get ahead on my ComicMix deadlines. I have a great deal of work to do with my comic book line, a new project called The Adjuster (you will hear about that soon enough) and The Underground from Dark Horse, so I wanted a few S-No-C’s in the can so I could deal with those projects but then…

LAST SATURDAY I WATCHED THE TV SHOW CNN’S NEWSROOM!

I have no idea why they call this show CNN’S Newsroom. News is supposed to be reported fairly. This show was SO biased that it reminded me of the McCarthy witchhunts of the 50s.

The host of any news show should be impartial. The host of this show was about as impartial as a Jewish mother who has the choice between saving her child or Hitler from falling off a cliff.

The show focused on Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) hard-hitting satirical video Read A Book that asks the viewer to (wait for it) read a book. The key word in all of this is satirical, as in satire.

The creators of the video were on the show but were never given a chance to complete a thought. The host kept cutting them off. He would ask them a question and not let them answer. That’s real journalism right? They should change the name of the show from CNN’S Newsroom to Shut up while the host talks.

The “panel” consisted of concerned parents. In another journalistic milestone, there were NO parents on the opposing side. All the parents on the show hated the video. I told Reggie Hudlin when he first showed me Read A Book some months ago that some people would have a issue with this. I said some people.

Little did I know that the chorus CNN choose to sing would only include parents that hated the video? How fair is that? Let’s see, let’s have a new show debating the war in Iraq. Our panel will be George Bush, Dick Cheney and… that’s it! All you will need for CNN’S Newsroom.

The parent “panel” ripped the video apart. They kept saying that it sends the wrong message. Not one of them said anything about the intent of the piece. There is a whole generation of inner city black teenagers who think reading is a waste of time. BET addressed THOSE people in this video. This video was intended to reach those young adults in a language they speak.

That language is not pretty but it’s what they understand. This panel and the host missed the point BIG TIME. I guess if these same young people were hungry and KFC gave them some fired chicken the panel would say “Why did you give them fried chicken; that sends the wrong message.”

All this BS from a satirical cartoon telling people to read a book.

There was an idiot on the show that says little kids (whom this video is NOT for) won’t get satire.

What?!

KIDS INVENTED SATIRE!!!!

Hey idiot, you ever hear any of these catchy phases:
    What…ever!
    As If!
    Loser!
    I know you are but what am I?

Well those are all very popular satirical catch phases that all originated with KIDS. Not that it matters; as I said the BET Animation short Read A Book is not intended for little kids.

Again not that it matters to the parents or CNN as the panel kept saying that animation is just for kids. To underscore that they showed clips of Sesame Street and other kid programs. That’s fair eh? That’s like trying to adopt a dog and the guy at the shelter writes Michael Vick fan on your application.

Hey, parents! You let your kids watch Family Guy? American Dad? The Simpsons? King of the Hill? Futurama? Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Or maybe you just missed the whole animation is not just for kids and satire explanation in school that day.

Every single parent on that show was black and woefully uninformed about the state of animation on television or even what is available on NETWORK TELEVISION!

Did you parents hear me? The shows and the movie I just listed are on NETWORK TV. FREE TV. Not pay TV where you would think if you were a parent you would be monitoring your damn kids.

If you were monitoring your damn kids then you would have known that the BET video was NOT INTENTED FOR LITTLE KIDS. There is something that really bugs me about certain black people. Why are some of us so damn close-minded when it comes to how white people perceive us?

Any reasonable white person who looks at this video will know that this video is satire. Any white person who sees this video as a true representation of all black culture is an idiot and you will not change their minds anyhow.

Now the people on this panel and the host took a rather grand and enlightened view of the video. They clearly held themselves to a higher standard with the unspoken implication that BET is run by and for a bunch of niggers.

That’s right. I said that.

Now at one point a panelist looks right at the camera and says that the person responsible for green lighting this and the person who produced this should hold hands and kill themselves.

Yep, he said that.

This moron goes on CNN (the WORLD’S most respected NEWS NETWORK) and he talks about up lifting the black race and looking out for black kids. He talks about how BET should be ashamed for putting this video on the air. Now with all the black-on-black crime that exists and the negative stereotype of the black man as an animal, this IDIOT calls for two people to kill themselves.

BET tried to covey a real problem in the inner city black community with a satirical video. OK this guy did not like it and said so, that’s his right. But to tell two creative productive black people to KILL THEMSELVES because of his dislike well that was really uplifting and responsible.

Or to put it another way: who’s the nigger?

Maybe the real problem with the panel is that they did not understand the word satire.

Maybe they should read a book.

Michael Davis is a comics creator and the founder of the Guardian Line series of comics as well as being a television producer and writer. He was a co-founder of Milestone Comics and his artwork has appeared in Wasteland, Green Arrow: Shado, Green Hornet and The Question, among others.

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