UI Meme of the Day, a Daily Series…

Moment of Truth.

There was a time when Tyler Perry actually challenged the generations of Black people of our history into our futures, but in his quest to become the first Black billionaire movie producer, he has formed an alliance with a ‘black*ISH’ female by the name of Oprah Winfrey.

Who can blame him? If this is what he wants, then he has to get with the people who can hand it to him on a silver …excuse me, PLATINUM platter. Winfrey has apparently advised Perry to “give the people, give the people what they want.” (O’Jays, 1981)

Feed the Black folks the chit’lins and ham hocks and fish grits that their generation craves the most if you want to make real money in this business, and that is just what he has apparently done. Like everyone else, these Black folks have learned to put a siphon, or “feeder vein” into the Black community in order to suck out money so they can go get what they want and cater to whites.

“For Better or For Worse” is definitely for the “Worse”. Get a divorce, you’ll be a-ight. Trust.

“If Loving You is Wrong,” aside from the obvious pilfering from Luther Ingram’s 1972 classic hit record, can leave people wondering what kind of super hyper-histrionic overly-whiney elevated way oversexed …. slobby spitting … gestationally egotistical television show with a cast of top weaved-up high-pitched screaming ‘nails on chalkboard’ feministas “tossing it all over the place” and what stereotypical for-whites-only entertainment cast Perry will come up with NEXT that is named after just ONE MORE old-school soul or r&b classic.

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This is what happens when white folks get their hands on what was once some pretty good isht coming from Perry.

He had us, his own Black people, pegged to a “T” at first.

It’s what got him off the streets and into riches and fame, but somehow, when white and Black*ISH folks get involved, we turn into a twisted nearly unrecognizable kind of people … non-genuine, disingenuous, and inauthentic … something they made up in their heads instead of what we know about us and who we, intrinsically, really are. Something about their hands on our shyt simply doesn’t ring true. It muddies the waters and makes us unclear, cloudy, and Jim Crow Museum over-exaggerated.

Perry used to know his people, and nearly all of us knew “Madea.” If Madea wasn’t related to us, she lived and loved on our streets in Black Small Town USA. I saw Tyler’s original plays and supported them, and I saw the first movies he did that delved into the sophistication and the psyche, as well as the humble too-100% authentic superficiality of unlayered Black people, as well.

It has become ALL superficial and so over the top formulaic, that even the comedy parts are not funny any more. All for the sake of money, as if he isn’t rich enough. This television show, If Loving You is Wrong, can be more appropriately named “Freak Me” (by old school r&b masters, “SILK” – 1992), or “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” (R.I.P. Major Harris, 1975) – definitely ‘prime time porn’.

Martin Lawrence already tore up the floor with a fully adult and mature version of the old school r&b classic “Thin Line (Between Love and Hate).” (The Persuaders, 1971). Nobody is going to whup Lawrence on the movie rights to that song, so if Perry could write like that any more, it might be possible -as Black women- to take him seriously again.

But money is money, even if it all counts for nothing wonderful in the long run and even if it puts us right back to where we were in TV and movies before Perry came on the scene and initially redeemed us from it.

Right back into the whorehouses, the criminal element, and the drug dens, except this time wearing suits and ties, living in suburbia Tylerworld, and “speaking articulately.”

Outside of that, there is -for a hook-  always some typical big bad white man’s “Tyrone” gangbanger type with his po’ hardworking too honest single mama stuck some place in a low income apartment or single-wide trailer and jacked between a food stamps and a predatory housing loan if she ever wants to move into a real home of her own.

Then, of course and for good measure, we must have (just to keep it fair and balanced and all things being equal), the “Mighty Whitey” Dirty Harry type with his little tiny trick-off weapon who is holding it down with six or seven men bigger than him with seven even bigger guns, and their “godfather-ISH” uncle ask-really-telling for apologies. Yeah. Keep ’em honest and nasty, Harry.

The 45-single hit recording “If Loving You is Wrong” by Luther Ingram was derived by a full grown man in a full grown man’s dilemma and sensitivities, sorry I can’t say the same for the tune’s namesake television show.

“This generation?” Mr. Tyler Perry. Thanks for helping contribute to the delinquency of Black folks’ mental state and identities as a race of people in America.

Your television and movie scripts now read like the Worst of “Nollywood.” (or is that “Ghanahood“?)

But, of course, there is always an audience out there who indulges in unnecessary lunacy. Particularly that white-ISH audience with boatloads of money who can’t seem to get enough of visualizing their own fantasies about Black caricatures and their stereotypical antics.