Empire-The New Minstrel Show on FOX

  

Last year ABC started the Minstrel craze on television with the launch of its hit show Scandal. And after seeing Disney have success with an entire block of Minstrel shows degrading the image of Black people on Thursday with TGIT and Wednesday’s night’s Black-ish, FOX has decided to jump on the bandwagon with it’s own Minstrel show called Empire. At the rate the sellouts in Black Hollywood are going to prove their loyalty to Massa, I expect to see some washed-up sold out Negro actors like Taye Diggs Halle Berry or Wesley Snipes put on  some Blackface and start singing mammy when NBC and CBS, and the CW join the fray and put on their new Minstrel shows.

Empire does its best to out-coon all the coons currently buckdancing and bojangling, on ABC. Produced by Lee Daniels the ringmaster of Minstrel shows such as Precious, Monster’s Ball, and the Butler, Empire follows a bunch of shines in the music business not unlike the coons on the short-lived UPN series Platinum. However, with a family as dysfunctional as this it’s a miracle these people could make a family picnic work let alone a record company.

The Patriarch portrayed by Terrence Howard is supposed to be from the streets. But this dude is so moist and sugary Betty Crocker cakes get jealous. Supposedly we’re supposed to believe that this effeminate lame is supposed to be some hard-core dope dealer at one time but I doubt it. With perm in his hair and an affinity for the soft clothes I just know dude is in the closet.

Supposedly 17 years ago in the 1990’s he had his wife played by Taraji P. Henson take the fall for him on some dope rap and now she’s out fresh out of jail and ready to take her portion of his company. Personally I think we better check her Adam’s apple. Taraji’s character dresses and acts like a drag queen and acts so masculine I think she swings a dick better than Terrence Howard’s character. I’m thinking she’s the dom in the relationship and he’s the fem.

The Empire is supposed the Rap Empire Terrence Howard’s character built up while his woman took the rap for him in prison for the dope they both slung. He’s supposed to have built up his incredible music business while being a single dad. Now you’d think a single father would raise strong Alpha males ready to helm their father’s business. But Empire is a show produced by Lee Daniels, not Shawn James. So Mr. Effeminate’s sons are guaranteed to be the biggest pair of the most FUBAR males to ever grace a television screen.

The first of the two princes in the Empire is an openly homosexual artsy type dating a Hispanic Man. When mama gets out of jail she goes to their house, and pretty much justifies their homosexual relationship so she can have a place to stay. Then she eats herself some chicken. Because Black folks love themselves some fried chicken.

The second is a clean-cut self-hating Uncle Tom married to a White Woman. He’s supposed to be a little more refined, with more of business acumen. But dude oozes the same self-hatred as every other member of this dysfunctional family.

Now Terrence Howard has ALS and is dying. And he’s supposed to choose between which one of these two lames will be running his empire before he passes. I really wish I could root for the Empire in a galaxy far, far away. I’d love for Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin strike back at Hollywood with the Death Star so they’d stop producing hot garbage like this.

Other minstrels in this freakshow include Lee Daniels Alumnus Gabourney Sidbe and Malik Yoba. Poor Malik Yoba…I think he’s just here for the paycheck. Oh Malik, how far you have fallen since New York Undercover! Damn, brotha, you can’t need the money THAT BAD! Tyler Perry was breaking you off with a slice for a minute! Where the money go!

In Empire there are secrets, secrets and more secrets. Deceit. Lies. And more lies. Stud Mom gets her cut of the company and wants to push a homosexual rapper. And at the end of episode one, Dad winds up murdering one of his hangers on who just decides to blackmail him because he ran himself into debt. And homosexuality is pushed to the forefront. Why? Cause it’s Lee Daniels show of course. And Lee Daniels is all about pushing the Gay agenda down the Black community’s throat.

Because Gay means ratings. And big ratings mean big money for Lee Daniels. Fuck promoting more important shit to Black people on a TV show like oh, Group Economics, a model of an INTACT FUNCTIONAL Black family or Black pride and Black self-Awareness. That doesn’t profit the White Supremacists at FOX. But promoting the feminization of Black men on Empire means Lee Daniels gets to sleep on a bed of Rupert Murdoch’s dollars at the expense of the Black community’s dignity.

Empire comes across like a circus. And most of the characters act like oddities in a freakshow. Every character comes across as some strange, bizarre creature instead of a human being. And we feel like we’re watching the strange oddities in a circus tent, not people trying to build and maintain a business. Every behavior on display is just odd and somewhat…disturbing. Instead of us viewing a drama about a music business it’s like being a voyeur into the window of an odd and perverse place where you wait to see whatever deviant behaviors the characters will participate in.  

If Empire reflects what the Rap and Hip-hop part of the music business has become then…Good Gravy. The Rap game is truly FUCKED UP. Damn, this is NOT what good men like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambataa envisioned when they started Rap way back on Creston Avenue in the late 1970s. In their rhymes they talked about Black self-Awareness, Black empowerment, Group Economics, and Knowledge of Self.

How did we get from consciousness raising songs like The Message to this hot garbage? All I can say is Rap took a wrong turn Straight outta Compton with those NWA coons hit the scene back in 1989. From there it’s been a slippery slope to Empire which is probably …what rap probably is like on the seventh level of Hell. From what I saw in the first episode of Empire the show seems to have a satanic vibe to it. All the perversion, deviancy, debauchery, deception and deceit, on display just disgusted me.

Empire is Lee Daniels ultimate PIMP SLAP to Black folks, one with a pinky ring, powder and a white glove. This Sellout openly insults Black people by comparing them to oddities in a freakshow and creatures on display under a circus tent. Unfortunately, because most of the Negro masses lack critical thinking skills they think this affront on film is actually entertainment worth watching. Sadly, Like Scandal, and No Good Deed before it Empire is a SMASH hit with the Negro masses. The number one show of the 2014-2015 season.

*FACEPALM*

As I sit in my South Bronx apartment I just shake my head. I have two seasons of All About Nikki, a Black sitcom with some of the most humanized images of Black people on it ready to go. And If I did a Kickstarter for it, I bet I wouldn’t raise $5 for it from the so-called Black community. Why? Because this generation of Negroes are so brainwashed to hate themselves by sociopaths like Lee Daniels they think being a minstrel is just what a normal Black person is supposed to be.

Damn. Just Damn.

 When Amos N’ Andy and the Bula show hit the air in the 1950s Black folks wrote letters. They told the networks they’d refuse to watch the show or buy any of the sponsored products that were featured in those shows.

And in an instant they were GONE.  

And when Angel Heart came out in 1986, Black folks came out and protested. And thanks to their protests the movie BOMBED at the box office.

But today Negroes all over the United States have made Empire, a TV show that features some of the WORST stereotypes about Black people and presents Black people like oddities in a freakshow the #1 TV show for the season. Just when I thought the Black race had fallen as far as it possibly could, most of these Negroes start breaking out the shovels and digging that much deeper on their race to the bottom.

Good Gravy.

I just don’t get it. The Negro’s fascination with watching the most degrading, destructive images depicting them. Images again, that their grandmothers and some of their mothers would have picketed and protested against, this generation supports and embraces with open arms.

And while this freakshow plays in households across the country we’ve yet to hear from Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, the NAACP the Black fraternities and sororities or any of those Pro-Black Back to Africa AFROSIMPTRICK Negroes so concerned about the state of the Black community. Hell, we haven’t even heard from most of the Pro-Black contingent on YouTube that are so critical of issues in the Black community. All are silent as rats pissin’ on cotton.

I watched one episode of Empire and have NOT LOOKED BACK. And I will NEVER watch this show again. Right after I watched the pilot episode of this HOT MESS, I made one of the FEW videos speaking out against this Minstrel show and posted it on YouTube. Again, I see this show as an affront to Black people and the Black community. The kind of show any SANE Black person would be protesting. But the state of Black America is the most FUBAR that I’ve seen it in the 41 years I’ve been living in it. After Empire’s success I’m just wondering where the bottom is. I’m just wondering when Black people will just WAKE UP.

*Okay, enough ranting about the dysfunction in the Negro community. I’ll be going back to comic/fantasy related blogs in a minute.