Since the Secret Council of American Negroes conception we have been at war with racism, intolerance and the "agents of ignorance," the buffoons, the Coonery Class who are willing to degrade blackness in order to gain financial status and fame. These individuals flout the laws of SCAN and are considered "enemy combatants" in the long standing War on Ignorance. SCAN is not powerless in this fight and in fact, since 1910 has maintained a covert, counter-ignorance team known as the Nat Turner Brigade, also known by contemporaries as "The Drop Squad." The Nat Turners infiltrate businesses and organizations gathering intelligence and clandestinely sabotaging the efforts of the Coonery Class.
The following is a correspondence from our greatest war, the one within, written by a double agent who has been embedded in cable network Black Entertainment Television since 1996, before SCAN broke all institutional ties with BET in 2005 after they destroyed the last half-hearted visage of public interest on the network - its nightly news program. That along with the canceling of Tavis Smiley's show demonstrated to SCAN that former BET owner Robert Johnson and BET's parent company Viacom had no interest in making BET anything more than a 24 hour coon show, denigrating women and spreading ignorance to our impressionable youth. Because of these crimes against blackness SCAN has had no choice but to declare war on BET.
Here is a report from Agent "M" of the Nat Turner Brigade.It has been eleven years and 12 days since I was dispatched to infiltrate and bring down BET as a junior executive.
Though my spirits are low, mind is steady. Every day I'm more convinced that at the demon who is Debra L. Lee knows no bounds in how far she will go to make blacks look as witless as a drawing of a thick lipped mongrel savoring a watermelon. I saw her slip those yellow "grillz" to him as a present before he entered. Like many in the Coonery Class he greedily put them on either unaware or a cognizant actor in his own degradation.
I still maintain my quest to thwart BET's success while gaining usable intel. My goal is still to stop ignorance before it happens. But it is a hard fight not for the weak stomached.
Many of my fellow Nat Turners have been broken by the mind-numbing buffoonery and the "Cash rules everything around me. CREAM, get the money! Dollah, dollah bill, ya'll" mentality of BET's management. I've watched some of SCAN's best minds go insane from the hours of watching "106 and Park," fearing their brain cells that they worked so hard to develop under the writings of DuBois, Lourde, Hughes and our founder, FD. Minds from great black institutions like Howard University and Morehouse College, would die. After seeing pictures of Trina, half naked again to sell another record I would find them shaking and rocking back and forth at the safe house from having to listen to "Back That Azz Up" and "I'm in Luv Wit A Stripper" hours upon hours a day.
Recently, at the safe house I tried to console my fellow agent and friend, "N," who was beginning to crack.
"How many days a week can those monsters eat fried chicken!" he cried. "And I had to take a bite of it because Debra Lee was looking right at me. I knew that if I didn't eat that chicken my cover would be blown. I'm a Vegan, (redacted), dammit! And that chicken was from Church's. Who the fuck knows what was in that chicken?
"I don't know who I am anymore!"
Agent N grew up in an environment very different from mine. I was raised around ignorance, drunk uncles who bragged about masturbating to Jet "Beauty of the Week" photos and listened to
Pigmeat Markham records. N was from (redacted) and attended Morris Brown in Atlanta. His father owned an auto dealership and could afford to send him to SCAN's private school, the
Frederick Douglass Academy of Little Negro Achievers in Prince George's County, Maryland. He's such an intelligent, sensitive man. In a way, I think maybe his mind would be better utilized if he'd remained in the Drop Squad as an intelligence analyst.
"Do you know what's in malt liquor," he yelled at me from the bathroom where he was forcing himself to vomit the non-vegan, greasy chicken. "Do you? It is the nectar of the insipid. The poison of the Negro mind."
"(Reacted), you're starting to scare me," I said.
He hugged the toilet and looked winsome and lethargic.
"You asked me why I was crying the other day," he said wiping his mouth. "I think I'm ready to tell you know."
N let go of the toilet and washed his face the sat on his bed, looking up at me with blood red eyes.
"It was the BET fashion awards. Debra Lee wanted me to cater to the ...
needs of the celebrities. It wasn't that big of a deal. I've done it before. It was easy to blend in and converse with them by keeping conversation as minimal and as ignorant as possible."
Then N's head suddenly jerked and he looked to the ceiling and shouted, "Making it RAIN ON DEM HOES!"
He shuddered at his own words, then said, "I said to Flo Rida. I gave him his complimentary bottle of Cristal and did the head bob. He never suspected a thing. It's so easy to blend in. I was back there ferrying fried chicken dinners, condoms and liquor for so long I wasn't even thinking anymore when Pharell Williams approached me about an after party Snoop was hosting.
"I texted to (redacted) to get approval to continue surveillance to the after party and, of course, they approved. I rode in the back of Snoop's limo. He immediately 'sparked one up,' as the parlance goes and told me to 'pass, puff, give' to his entourage in the limo. It was odd that for all Snoop's wealth he had no real interest in supplying his proxies with their own marijuana. After I passed the rolled cigarette, Snoop produced a 'bowl' to smoke on his own, leaving the Bishop Don Juan to fight with Flo Rida over who was hogging the joint.
"When we got to the party, it was at a nightclub rented out by Cornell Hayes, aka Nelly. We already had a preexisting relationship from when I infiltrated his and Fat Joe's tour a few years back. Nelly recognized me right away, offering me a bottle of champagne to pour on some young woman who appeared to be not of age. I didn't know what to do. She was just standing there talking to another woman about which jeans made her posterior look better - Baby Phat or Apple Bottoms? I don't even think she was aware that Nelly was behind her, goading me on to denigrate this otherwise innocent person. I smiled, my fake gold tooth starting to slip from my incisor, I tried to think of the most 'hood' thing I could say, but my mind froze. Fortunately, Rihanna and Ciara showed up, distracting him. He gave me the bottle of 'Cris' then headed towards them. I went to my observation position where I could keep an eye on Snoop, Flo Rida and T-Pain, all sitting with several young women. I had a bug in the Bishop Don Juan's 'pimp cane' so I could hear most everything through my remote-less ear piece.
"Just as the Bishop Don Juan was suggesting that Snoop take an offer from McDonald's to do a remix of their 'I'm Lovin' It' incorporating the words 'it's the dizz dollah, dollah menu, a shake and fries, get the taste in you,' the young woman Nelly wanted to douse in alcohol approached me, asking me if I was with 'Snoop n' em.' I said that was affirmative. She looked at me confused. Then I remembered and burped out a 'sho nuff.' She giggled. She seemed pleased that I knew the rappers. I realized that she looked no older than 16, like my sister. I wanted to protect her, but knew that would be difficult as she wanted to be here. She wanted to be exploited by the hedonism and misogyny around her.
"She talked about brand name clothes and growing up in Mecham Park. That she wanted to be a 'dancer' and had already been in a few music videoes, but so far her face hadn't been shown in them. She said twice the video director said her 'ass' was even better than her face. She didn't appear to be offended, more hurt that she didn't get to play the girlfriend in the video. She was convinced that she was turned down twice in auditions because she wasn't 'creole' looking. Losing my objectivity, I told her that I thought she was quite attractive. She smiled. It was obvious she craved attention, positive or otherwise.
"She asked me how well I knew Snoop and others at the party, pressing on about my connections. I mentioned I worked at BET. Her eyes widened as if my face was made out of Versace. It was then Nelly returned with another bottle of champagne and a grin. He was going to douse that young woman without her knowing. Against my better judgment I tried to push her out of the way, causing Nelly to poor the champagne on me.
"Everyone laughed. Even the girl who then flashed her breasts at T-Pain who then poured liquor on her as she danced. And Nelly patted me on my back and gave me a bottle. They were all looking at me. I couldn't blow my cover. The girl smiled the whole time so I shouted out, 'Makin' it rain on dem hoes!'
N couldn't look me in the eye as he stared at the floor.
"I'm a monster."
I tried to reassure N that he was not. That he was a good person who was doing the right thing for the War on Ignorance. To remember the code of the Nat Turner Brigade. N put his head in his hands and wept.
"I have a law degree from Harvard!"
N then pulled out something from under his bed. It was a small bottle. He looked at it intently.
"What is that, (redacted)" I said.
"What does it matter anymore?" he said. "I'm one of them now ...
Nigga," he said with his voice trailing off and cracking. "I'll pistol whip you, flip you, then dip you, then dance to this mutha fuckin music we crip to."
"Give me the bottle," I said.
"Some the hoes, I'm Florida the foes and for the most I'm steady sippin' on some ..." he then took off the top of the bottle and tried to drink its contents. Wrestled it from him and I smelled it.
It was codeine and promethazine -
Purple Drank. Sizzurp.
I yelled at him, so angry that he would try to intoxicate himself with the very drug we were fighting so hard to combat. But I realized I was yelling at a broken man. After I poured the bottle's contents down the bathroom sink I looked at my fellow officer, devastated by the ignorance.
I am normally not one to show displays of affection, but I put my arms around N and held him as he shook and cried for the worship of the Coonery Class pained him so much.
I will put in the paperwork requesting his reassignment tomorrow.
BET is no place for a Martha's Vineyard Vegan.
From the editor's desk:
