Nicki Minaj on The Late Show with David Letterman

Nicki Minaj performed on the David Letterman show last night. As soon as I find video of her performance I'll post it. These photos are of her arriving in the rain for the taping. Nicki looks beautiful as always.


Update: As promised, here is video from Nicki's performance last night on Letterman with Will.I.Am.

Question de Jour: Do you think White people would watch TV if 99.999% of the people on TV were People of Color?

I don't have cable TV. I haven't had it in a couple of years. It's one thing to be ignored and not pay for it but another to pay for being ignored, as people of color are on TV.

As the new fall television season nears I have noticed that nothing much has changed, at least on network TV, as far as diversity is concerned. There are three shows on NBC, one with Boris Kodjoe, one with Blair Underwood and another with Jimmy Smits. I'll give NBC its due for that but NBC is also the network that will air a show about a call center in India that from the promos looks dangerously racially offensive.

Other than that the new TV season seems as lily White as ever. It gets so bad sometimes that I find myself just scanning channels looking for a person of color on the screen. And when I see one I stop and watch. It doesn't really matter whether it's a commercial or an actual show I'll watch it. Well except for anything produced by Tyler Perry.

I can remember hearing older people talk about how back in the day they essentially did the same thing, looked for a person of color on TV and then if they saw one they watched no matter what it was about.

So it seems that in the new millennium, as the world changes by leaps and bounds, some things never change. Namely, television is as White as ever, heck even more White actually. In the 80's and 90's there were quite a few People of Color on network TV. So TV is actually going backwards.

PBS even seems to be less diverse than ever.

According to people who are supposed to know; African Americans and people whose ancestors hail from Spanish speaking countries (sorry but I really hate the word Hispanic*) watch more TV then other groups.

Which makes me wonder; if most of the people on TV were People of Color would White people watch?




*I hate the term Hispanic because it tells you nothing about a persons heritage. People whose ancestry is from Spanish speaking countries have very different cultures and histories. So the use of the term Hispanic seems like a way of ignoring a persons culture and lumping everyone in a cultureless pot. This country has already taken away most of African Americans pre-American history and culture and now its trying to do it again with the term Hispanic.

Photo de Jour: TV

This photo is saying a lot of things.

Holly Robinson Peete Celebrity Apprentice

Actress Holly Robinson Peete lost last night on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice to rocker Bret Michaels. As you may recall Bret Michaels suffered a brain hemorrhage recently and other health problems which received a lot of news coverage.

I certainly wish Bret well but I really must say that it was his illness that won him the Apprentice tittle last night. Holly was the better competitor throughout the show and raised, for charity, more money than anyone in the history of the show. But everyone seemed to feel Bret should win because he made it to the final show despite his recent illness.

Oh well. Congrats to Holly for a great job on the show. And you can show your support for Holly's charity, the HollyRod Foundation by purchasing Snapple's CompassionBerry Tea, which she formulated on the show.

Must see TV tonight on PBS

If you have a chance please check out the documentary Food, Inc. which airs tonight on most PBS stations. I've seen it and it is a very informative film about our food supply and who controls it. Check out the preview below.

Val Recommends

When is the last time you watched a comedian who was so funny you laughed so hard that tears were rolling from your eyes? Can't remember? Well for me it was a couple of days ago when I watched the Sinbad: Where U Been? dvd. Sinbad, is case you have forgotten, was a very popular comedian in the 90's. He made a few films and starred in a few TV shows. Most recently he made a short appearance on the current season of the TV show The Apprentice on NBC.

Sinbad's dvd is hilarious. Also it's free of all of the profanity and gutter language that most comedians use as a crutch for cheap laughs. He covers quite a few subjects from aging to relationships and more. So if you really want to laugh and enjoy yourself I highly recommend you check out Sinbad's dvd.

Here is a preview

What happened after the quake

A while back during the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti I made a comment, on CactusRose's blog I think, hoping that at some point the PBS show Frontline would do a report on why it took so long for aid to get to the people of Haiti. Well my wish has been answered. Airing tonight, on most PBS stations, Frontline looks at that very issue. It airs at 9pm here but check your local listings for the time in your area.

The Good Wife is good TV

Michael Boatman

If you want to check out a really good television drama with a relatively diverse cast then watch the CBS drama The Good Wife. The show stars ER's Julianna Margulies. The cast also includes Joe Morton, Michael Boatman and Archie Panjabi who plays Kalinda Sharma who I think is the most interesting character on the show.

Archie Panjabi

The Good Wife airs at 10:00pm tonight on CBS. If you check it out let me know what you think.

American Idol where is the diversity?

I first watched American Idol several years ago during its first few seasons. During those years the show was incredibly diverse. There where Black people, Boricuas, Asians, Mexican Americans, people of Middle Eastern decent, Hawaiians, people of mixed ancestry and more. it was great. American Idol was the most diverse show on network TV.

Fast forward to last night. The ladies were performing and out of eight women there was one Woman of Color. A Black girl who I think is about 16 or 17 years old. The rest of the women were White.

Last night's contestants

I don't know the ethnic make-up of the men since last night's show was the first I watched for more than 5 minutes. But I just have to wonder after auditioning thousands of women from all over the country how it is they could only find one Woman of Color to make it this far? Or is this some sort of intentional thing done to get a ratings boost? Did they do some sort of focus group thing and found that people had a problem with so much diversity?


What ever the case I am really disappointed that a show that was so wonderfully diverse now looks like almost every other show on network TV.

Sade on TV

Sade will appear and perform live this morning on NBC's Today Show. Her album Soldier of Love is released today as well.

Who killed the Miss America pageant?

Can you name the winner of the Miss America pageant from last year? Of course you can't and neither can I. In fact the only Miss America winner I can name is Vanessa Williams, who won in 1984. So who killed the Miss America pageant? I have no idea but who ever it was did a great job of it.

For decades September was the month the Miss America pageant aired on NBC and was broadcast from its then home Atlantic City, New Jersey. This year the pageant airs not in September but in January, tonight, and on cable TV's TLC. It's home is no longer Atlantic City, it's now Las Vegas.

So did you know it was coming on tonight?

Anyway I suppose with all of the reality shows and other craziness on TV it's really hard for Miss America to compete. Then again all it takes is a little bit of controversy and the Miss America pageant may make a comeback.

It's déjà vu all over again in Haiti

Two themes I've noticed this week watching network coverage of the earthquake aftermath in Haiti. The first, telling stories relating to Whites who have loved ones living and working in Haiti. I've seen this on the three networks more and more as the days pass. I'm not saying that those aren't stories worth telling but I think they are getting just a bit too much air time at the moment.

The second, the looting narrative. Just as with Katrina the mainstream media is starting with the reports about armed gangs roaming Port-Au-Prince looting and wreaking havoc stories. We are walking down the same racist journalist road again and no one seems to have learned anything from the crazy racist MSM reporting during Katrina.

If you have no food, no clothes, no water, no anything and you break into a store to get those things you are NOT looting. I suppose the MSM would rather people sit and do nothing until the cavalry comes?


Diane Sawyer, ABC's new evening news anchor, talked on the Friday broadcast about how frighted she was while walking around the city. Apparently people were mad that no food or medical care had gotten to them since the earthquake. Imagine the nerve of those people, being angry about that and scaring poor Diane.

Here we go again.