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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Pot callin' the Kettle Black

Sheila Johnson, the ex-wife of Robert Johnson and co-founder of BET(Black Entertainment Television) stated that she's ashamed of BET. Here's a quote of what she said in an article from The Daily Beast, dated April 29, 2010.


“Don’t even get me started,” says the 60-year-old Johnson, who has since divorced and remarried (charmingly enough, to the Virginia circuit court judge who presided over her divorce). “I don’t watch it. I suggest to my kids [a twentysomething daughter and a college-age son] that they don’t watch it… I’m ashamed of it, if you want to know the truth.”

“Society and government really believe [the AIDS] problem has gone away. People don’t know that this disease is still around.”

Johnson—who was at the Tribeca Film Festival this week for the premiere of The Other City, a searing, but ultimately hopeful documentary she produced about the AIDS epidemic in Washington, D.C.—says BET is making matters worse, and potentially contributing to the spread of AIDS, by promoting promiscuous, unprotected sex in raunchy late-night rap videos.

It wasn’t always that way. “When we started BET, it was going to be the Ebony magazine on television,” Johnson tells me. “We had public affairs programming. We had news… I had a show called Teen Summit, we had a large variety of programming, but the problem is that then the video revolution started up… And then something started happening, and I didn’t like it at all. And I remember during those days we would sit up and watch these videos and decide which ones were going on and which ones were not. We got a lot of backlash from recording artists…and we had to start showing them. I didn’t like the way women were being portrayed in these videos.”


This coming from a husband and wife, whom chose to eliminate the positive programming and focus on negative, violent, and sexist music videos before selling BET to Viacom. Viacom sought after BET because of it's huge viewership. Within such influence, lies a power to say no to negative imagery, music, and entertainment. Just imagine if BET focused on it's news and educational programming, music videos that catered to creativity instead of negative stereotypes, and simply entertainment that uplifted the viewers.

So please do not blame the monster for its problems that you created. The emtire article can be seen here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-29/sheila-johnsons-fight-against-hiv-in-dc/

I want to hear from the masses.......

Saturday, July 24, 2010

What is the MeltedPOT? It's not the Matrix...or is it?

To know what the POTty Mouth is all about one needs to know what is the MeltedPOT. The MeltedPOT is a satirical comic strip started by myself (A.M.Frasier) Emmanuel Rumph and Ted E. Bear. Everything we use in the MeltedPOT is inspired by the melting pot. What is a melting pot? It's a metaphor for the conglomeration of cultures and people living together as one in vanglorious harmony. Living in harmony are the key words in that phrase. Our beautiful nation the United States of America has often been referred to as a "melting pot". Now...we here at the POT are far from pessimist, in fact we are the complete opposite, but we do however understand the fact that many of these people and cultures tend to bump heads a bit. Everyone has their own ideas and opinions as to what should be happening in this place called the U.S.A.  Everything that happens in the MeltedPOT has been gathered from the headlines and directly from the people that are a part of the melting pot (USA). We have transplanted these topics into the characters of the strip. Thus the  "MeltedPOT" is a metaphor for the dysfunction, disconnect, and bumping of heads that often occur here in these 50 states.


The MeltedPOT is 1-part comic strip 1-part comic book. That simply means that some of the strips are self contained jokes that's don't go past that one day. Some days the strip may not contain the main characters but just one panel (i.e. like Far Side).  The strip does have an underlining linear story. Some story arcs will be longer or shorter than others.
Primarily the posts here will be an explanation of what inspired different strips. We will also post articles that will inspire future stripes and story lines. POTty Mouth is also a place for comments on topics you as readers may want to vent about.


and remember
Whether you like it or not your in the POT