DID YOU JUST SLAP ME?!
by
Anthonystjoseph
For about the last year my reality television fixation has taken an ugly turn… I have been a fan of this new form of entertainment since I was a young kid and the first version titled ‘Real World’ appeared on the scene with seven kids in New York who were my age… I later ran into Tami Roman of ‘Basketball Wives’ fame in California when we were both young sprouts and she was filming or had just finished her season of ‘Real World’, I’ll tell you about our encounter later. This new turn my ‘reality’ palate has taken is what some would call ‘ethnic’ shows like ‘Love & Hip Hop’, ‘Basketball Wives: Los Angeles’, and ‘Basketball Wives’ itself. All these shows are similar in the fact that you have these UGLY WOMEN attacking sometimes smaller women, sometimes prettier women, and sometimes wealthier women, but it’s always stemming from a basic jealousy that is attributed to something else that is clearly not a reason to strike somebody… She stopped talking to me, “I’m gonna slap HER!” REALLY?!
I had gone through a couple of years of hearing about ‘Basketball Wives’ and easily, as everyone has, grasped the fact that it was a popular show. I don’t like watching anything that I haven’t seen from the beginning so I decided to jump into the fray when ‘Basketball Wives: Los Angeles’ premiered… It was a banal and silly show with women I could develop no affinity towards. There was one interesting character on the Los Angeles version that was very attractive and clearly outshined the other characters as far as entertainment quality plus her supposed history with Chris Brown after Rhianna. The other women were having none of it and then decided to put this little ninety pound girl in a ring with an overweight bitter societal castoff who proceeded to beat and pummel the little ninety pound beauty within an inch of her screaming ‘UNCLE’! She took that beating like a trooper though. I did say she dated Chris Brown didn’t I? Just checking.
Lord, I promised a friend I wouldn’t write about these shows but sometimes I can’t help it… Something has to be said! So after the ‘Throw momma from the train’ character on ‘Basketball Wives: LA’ beat up the little teenage beauty queen I was done with that show and disgusted with the obvious misplaced jealousy. I hadn’t had enough… I decided to check out this ‘Love & Hip Hop’ and it drug me in...
On ‘Love & Hip Hop’ the big bitter betty is this girl named Chrissy who has everyone on the show scared of her. This woman named Chrissy who’s married to some rapper named John, or something, I don’t know who he is, but he IS an interesting character; this Chrissy walks around like she will beat up Mike Tyson if he says something wrong to her. It’s almost comical the way she looks at EVERYONE when they’re talking to her as if, ‘SAY THE WRONG THANG!’… She’s mentally inebriated in her own masculinity and genetically confused by some misplaced chromosomes. She’s got some serious issues and I have no affinity for any of her editions.
All in all, the ‘Love & Hip Hop’ show was entertaining with the Chrissy-don’t-worry-me attitude of Yandy Smith, an upwardly mobile entertainment manager and entrepreneur and very bright personality. There was a tinge of violence on ‘Hip Hop’ but sometimes things happen… And for once it wasn’t a bully beat down. It was like the simple cat fights that originally occurred on ‘Real World’ but here again we are dabbling into violence on others which we should NOT celebrate, condone, or laud because kids are watching.
So after ‘Love & Hip Hop’ didn’t totally turn me off, I decided to watch the first and original of these three, titled plain and simply, ‘Basketball Wives’… There was ol’ Tami Roman who I watched on the show ‘Real World’, where she let herself be manipulated by the ‘Evil Beth’, as we called her in my circles. Tami, with the help of Beth, was taking out people’s careers back in those days as well (Meeka ~ where she go?), poor David on the ‘Real World’ and his bad prank never had a chance with Beth’s diabolical mind around; where did HE go?! The first and last time I actually saw Tami Roman in person I felt like an antelope in Africa that had been separated from the herd and was being circled by a killer lioness who didn’t know if she wanted to bed me or eat me and I was scared of both prospects.
I was about twenty one, twenty two years old when I walked into a building for a business appointment I had and all of a sudden I felt a warm HOT sensation in my nether lands and looked over to the direction of the psychic energy beam and it WAS Tami Roman from the ‘Real World’ and future ‘Basketball Wives’ star eyeballing me and making no bones about it… It was like she lost all focus on anything but ME! I kept eye contact, which seemed like a smart move, as she ignored all around her and honed in on her intended target, or as I was starting to feel, INTENDED PREY! She was a pure predator in raw form I kid you not. She was a skinny little thing back then. She didn’t have on any makeup but she was clearly a VERY beautiful woman… She looked like she took trophies though and I was her potential next trophy.
She walked away from the woman talking to her who I think she no longer even heard as she slowly came towards me as a Cougar approaches its prey, as in not wanting to startle it, the prey(me!)… I think if she would have made a quick move I might have tried to run and make a break for the door thinking I could get away and it probably would have proved fruitless; she looked pretty quick. Even though she was younger than me by a year or two she still had me frightened… There was something in the look. She finally got to me as we were the only ones in the main room. She then circled me as she looked me up and down as if my name was Kunta Kinte and I was on a block up for bidding. I think I heard her say, “Show me your teeth”. I stood there praying that master wouldn’t sell me to this mean lady because she didn’t look like she had good intentions… She had me covering up my junk and trying not to tinkle on myself.
All of a sudden the Jungle music faded as she let out a huff and a sniff and then walked off. I sat there wondering what had just happened and wiped the sweat off my brow as I realized I had just had some type of encounter. I think she saw me shaking and realized I wasn’t worth the kill. A baby fish she threw back in the water until it grew more. Say what you will but I was thankful for another day.
So, I’m watching my first season of ‘Basketball Wives’, which is most people’s fourth season, and I am finding it enjoyable. Apparently Evelyn and Tami (go figure) are the two figures on the show that everyone is scared of because they are capable of violently attacking you at anytime. Tami announces regularly that she cannot control herself and if you get too close or say the wrong thing or don’t say the right thing or don’t do the wrong thing at the right time or… There are so many rules that she tells the girls will get them ‘POPPED’ that they are all scared to chew and talk at the same time around her… It seems that the Evelyn Lozada character has survived a round with Tami and so this gives her ‘street cred’. From what I see, if Evelyn found herself in a true ‘street’ situation, she would be in serious trouble. Stop with the antics and all the ‘fronting’ Evelyn, you’re not that tough. YOU are not about THAT life.
Then there’s another woman on the show named Jennifer Williams who has a listed net worth on Celebrity Net Worth of Twenty Five Million Dollars so you know there is some deep seeded juvenile feelings of envy towards her which are disguised under other titles. Jennifer is the ex-wife of some guy named Eric Williams and I don’t know who he is either. OH! He plays basketball! DUH! Jennifer sent letters from her attorney to Shaunie O’Neal (Producer), Tami, Evelyn, etc… informing them that she would SUE anyone who attacked or touched her. In a lunch gathering that was designed in the ‘get-jennifer’ theme, all plots and plans were put in place to pull a serious mean girl event. Evelyn Lozada’s assistant is all up in arms over the fact that ‘Jennifer’ won’t talk to her anymore… The assistant then decides that this behavior of ‘Jennifers’ warrants a beat down. How dare you not talk to me ANYMORE! Wow, really! She proceeds to get up and walk around the table and SLAP Jennifer Williams with all her might. Jennifer Williams then, without missing a beat, utters one of my favorite lines of the year, she says, “Someone needs to put a number on this b*tch and let her race around the track because she’s acting like an animal”.
Jennifer Williams has now become one of my heroes for 2012. She has pressed criminal charges against the woman who slapped her for the sake of the cameras and has also filed a civil suit. The violence perpetuated on these reality shows is teaching our kids the wrong thing and clearly sending out the wrong messages as in this type of behavior towards your fellow man is acceptable when in fact it is NOT.
There has been much mention on the internet of a contract that these women signed to be on ‘Basketball Wives’ and in that contract that they sign it states that they are accepting that they may be hit or experience violence as a result of ‘participating in the project’… That may be true but what is definitely true is that Jennifer Williams sought LEGAL COUNSEL and I’m sure she told him of signing that disclaimer… What Shaunie O’Neal needs to understand as she seemed not to at the ‘get-jennifer’ luncheon when she said, “Why did she send me a copy of the letter?” She, or better yet her attorney, sent you that letter telling YOU she would sue because you are the executive producer and that letter SUPERSEDED any previous legal statement from her in regards to ‘TOUCHING HER’. Jennifer Williams’s attorney amended that contract and the slapper is going to get SLAPPED in court. I am thankful to Jennifer Williams for her courage in standing up to bullying and the possible ridicule she’ll get for acting like what some would say is a punk. I think she is one of the most courageous people I’ve seen on one of these reality shows.
The bottom line for us all in this new phase of our entertaining ourselves is that we seriously need to pull back on the violence in all areas of our lives; sports, television, music, literature, & thoughts. We are leading mankind down a path that will do us all harm in the end. We should try to leave the ‘Thunder Dome’ in the movie of the same name and not drag our future generations unsuspectingly into it.
by
Anthonystjoseph
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