Columnist

Not too long ago, BET (Black Entertainment Television) aired an animated music video featuring the song “Read a Book” by Bomani Armah. The song features the following chants:

“Read a book!”

“Not a sports page! Not a magazine! But a book!”

“Raise your kids!”

“Your body needs water! So drink that!”

“Buy some land!”

“Brush your teeth!”

“Wear deodorant!”

“It’s called Speedstick! It’s not expensive!”

At first glance, this may appear to be a simple emphasis on the concerns of education, parenthood and personal hygiene — but think again. These chants are laced with frequent profanity, including that menacing n-word.

If that isn’t enough, the African-Americans in the video are animated as behaving very brutish and animal-like, some even bearing a striking resemblance to gorillas.

This is a sad attempt to make a socio-political statement. The negative elements simply outweigh the positive ones. It is in the same vein that BET also green-lighted the project “Hot Ghetto Mess,” a half-hour show hosted by Charlie Murphy from “Chappelle’s Show.”

Before the program even aired, its title was not well received and was subsequently changed to “We Got To Do Better.” The premiere of “We Got To Do Better” was supposed to promise some insight as to what could be done to counter the plague of negative images of African-Americans in the media.

Unfortunately, though, all it actually offered was a clip show in the likeness of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” only depicting embarrassingly stereotypical actions being carried out on film by African-Americans.

It was easy to see right through this pointless project disguised as a cultural self-examination. However, the disappointment wasn’t at all surprising. It was on BET after all.

Of course, this isn’t BET’s lowest point. Anyone who has witnessed the disaster known as “Uncut” (which has since been cancelled) can attest to the true ignorant madness that the station is capable of.

Rapper Nelly once received flak for a video of his that aired on “Uncut,” In it, he slid a credit card down the back of a woman’s… well… common sense can fill in the blank.

But no worries, all the misogyny and debauchery are compensated for every Sunday when the station airs a marathon of religious programming, right? The clashing of moral content is almost as contradicting and ridiculous as the idea PBS programming taking over weekends on the Playboy channel.

Don’t expect to see Jenna Jameson and Elmo occupying the same schedule anytime soon. Ever since BET canceled its own nightly news it has been a complete and utter joke. The only show that gave BET any integrity it might have had was “BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley,” which they also took the axe to. Shame.