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THE PENCOPAL PROJECT

2004-07-14 - 10:37 a.m.

BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

As I mentioned before, I'm watching Sex and the City again, starting at the beginning. The other night, I realized something cool: There were a lot of black extras in season one. That�s right, at every party, every social situation, there were at least two black people in the crowd. It struck me because I seem to remember thinking, during season five and six, there�s usually one black person each season who figures centrally into one episode. Then the writers pull a Friends. Maybe I'll send "Pull a Friends" in for the next edition of the McSweeney's dictionary. Pull a Friends: In a country where 13.3% of the population is black, writers create a television show set in a metropolitan city completely devoid of black people, except for Aisha Tyler. Anyway, back to SATC, it was all downhill after the episode where Samantha slept with that soul food restaurant owner�s brother. There were like 80 black people in that episode, because Sam accompanied her boyfriend to hip hop clubs. Test audiences were probably all, ooh, too much blackness, interracial sex, MY GOD! After that, see no black people, hear no black people. The writers never entered that territory again until Miranda started fucking Blair Underwood. Oh, and that black sailor Carrie flirted with in the Fleet Week episode of season five. Perhaps I�m talking out of my ass here. I could be wrong. I�ll have to undertake a sociological television data collection study called Count the Black People.

Speaking of black people, what the fuck is going on? My analyst once told me that when people have a shame response, they either attack self, or attack other. The media love to broadcast stories about African Americans attacking self, that self being the group as a whole. The NY Post (bastion of reliability that it is) quoted Spike Lee bashing a bunch of African American entertainers. Everyone�s still talking about Bill Cosby�s dressing down of poor, uneducated black people. Get an education, teach your children to use proper grammar, he says. And while I wholeheartedly agree that our community has some issues, I don�t see rich white people running around hick towns and trailer parks, yelling at their poor and uneducated. And if they do, it�s not a top story on every fucking major news outlet.

EXTRAS

* Is it just me, or is Sean Penn starting to resemble Rhett Butler?

* Four days until Prince. The Philly Inquirer wonders, who can fill his shoes?

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