Essence: LHH-ATL Is Too Far Gone for Help
Monday, June 25, 2012 at 10:21AM I said to myself, “ Self...” (because that’s where I start all my internal dialogues) — “Self, you will not write about Love & Hip Hop Atlanta.” I knew I was lying, because I’d already told myself I wasn’t going to watch it. I ignored the pleas from top-notch marketing machine Vh1 — say what you want about the programming, but they know how to spread the word about a show. I intentionally stayed out of my house when the show came on, and I stayed off Twitter during the initial airing. I tried and I failed.
I got home in time for Single Ladies, which I also don’t watch and which airs the hour after Love & Hip Hop Atlanta. But even then, it seems those who had tuned in were still aghast. According to Twitter, the ladies of Single Ladies were smack in the middle of some bourgeoisie ball and guest star “Shug Avery” was looking like she hadn’t aged a day since The Color Purple originally debuted in theaters in 1985. But amazingly, that was just a blip on my timeline. Everybody was still talking about Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and how it practically made a pox like Basketball Wives look like a classy affair.
Near everyone in my timeline was typing about whether the person who presented herself as a woman was actually a woman. Then there was somebody’s grandmama who was an ex-pimp and suggested to over 3.5 million viewers that some poor girl, an ex of her son’s, get some Massengill (that’s just wrong… and cold). Then there was chatter about some desperate, lost woman begging her man not to walk off from her and leave with another woman. (Why a man would have his woman and his next woman in the same space baffles me.)
I tweeted that I was tuning in to see what all the fuss about and to evaluate for myself. Several people told me not to; one suggested I have a strong drink beforehand. How I wish I had listened! When my grandmother, may she rest in peace, used to spot some of God’s children behaving in ungodly ways, she would grunt and say, “Lord, that is somebody’s child.” That popped in my head in the first five minutes of the episode, in which miraculously no fists or bottles were thrown.
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