I finally saw my episode of Black Men Revealed. Damn I was weak.
The experience of having a discussion and making point between brothers face to face and that being good television are two different things. I'm not going to get into a whole big discussion about it, but the bottom line is that soundbites work. The way to come off great on television is to make short declarative sentences and digs after every pause (whether or not it's your turn), or to hog the camera. What is totally offputting and obnoxious in person works perfectly after editing.
One of the freaky things I noticed was that when I was talking about the separation of church and state, I said I would take the Constitution, then Zo made a completely off the wall comment which actually sounded credible. If you listen, you'll find that he said that I was basing my argument premised on the idea of the Church and State based on the Constitution which made me a hypocrite, which is completely dumb because I was defending the Constitution in the first place. My point was that black ministers and congregations have a history of getting played by slick politicians and campaign masterminds and that blackfolks cannot be effective in politics by following church programs.
I also noted that I came off looking like I made an excuse for not going to Church, and I was generally of the position that I'm cool. My killer point should have been the one that I made here at the blog which was black churches, as much money as they make, haven't done squat in terms of building schools. In that, they have a lot to learn from the Catholics. But that would have made it sound like there are no Black Catholics which I was trying to represent myself. It's a subtlety that doesn't make a difference for TV, I should have taken the reverend's head on that. I also should have taken Zo's head for just being a psuedo-mystical skeptic. Tre self-destructed so taking his manhood wasn't mandatory.
Lessons learned for my media career. Next time you hear me, I'm going to be caustic.
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