If you ever have the opportunity to watch The Boondocks (Cartoon Network, Sundays at 11), I highly recommend it.

It is the animated version of Aaron McGruder’s nationally syndicated comicstrip. It is a satirical social & political commentary about the behavior of the goverment and african-american culture. It has caused a lot of controversy over the year mostly because it is so true. And as we all know, the truth hurts.

A few of my most favorite episodes would have to be the “Itis” episode which basically pokes fun at the nature of “Soul Food”. It explains how most of the things that many black people eat are just parts of the animal that noone else would be willing to eat. Things like “pig’s feet”, “chitlins”, “gizzards” and what have you and how the consumption of these particular parts of the animals harkens back to the slave days when they were given the parts of animal that the white slave owners refused to eat.

In this episode, Grandad starts a restaurant that serves the “Luther”, named after Luther Vandross. Luther’s Ingredients: 4-pounds of beef, covered in cheese, fried onions, 5 strips of bacon, all smothered between 2 Krispy Kreme donuts. The sandwich induced a phenomenon called the “Itis” which caused people to fall a sleep after having eaten a heavy meal. The sandwich was incredibly addictive. People started to lose their jobs and began to live in the park across the street from the restaurant. The quality and safety of the park diminished and the area around the restaurant became an “offical” bad neighborhood as a result. Which the manipulative white man, Mr. Wuncler, who provided Grampa with the funding for the restaurant used to his advantage to buy up the land that the park occupied since it had no longer become safe.

The other episode that I absolutely love was the “Return of the King” episode. Al Sharpton took particular offense to this episode. This episode is about a scenerio where Martin Luther King wakes up from a 40 year coma after being shot. He is labeled a traitor after vocalizing his “turn-the-other-cheek” attitude towards the 9/11 attacks. After being shunned the bands together with Huey to start a coalition to bring the fight back to D.C. After hiring an “Urban Event Planner” to organize a coalition event the resulting event become a typical urban “celebrity” party and when King gets up to speak and is drowned out by the party he decides to tell them all what they really need to hear:

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Is this it? This is what I got all those ass-whoopings for? I had a dream once. It was that little black boys and little black girls would drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression. But lo’ and behold, some four decades later, what have I found but a bunch of trifling, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggas; and I know you some of you don’t want to hear me say that word. It’s the ugliest word in the English language. But that’s what I see now–niggas. And you don’t want to be a nigga. Because niggas are living contradictions. niggas are full of unfulfilled ambitions. niggas wax and wane. niggas love to complain. niggas love to hear themselves talk but hate to explain. niggas love being another man’s judge and jury. niggas procrastinate ’til it’s time to worry. niggas love to be late but hate to hurry… …Black Entertainment Television is the worst thing I’ve seen in my life… …Usher, Michael Jackson is not a genre of music… …And now I would like to talk about Soul Plane… … I’ve seen what’s around the horizon and I promise you, you niggas have nothing to celebrate! And no,I won’t get there with you… I’m going to Canada.

And finally I loved “Grandad’s Fight”, in the beginning Huey provides an informative explanation of the “Nigga Moment”:

Huey: “Webster defines a ‘Nigga Moment’ as a moment when ignorance overwhelms the mind of an otherwise logical negro male, causing him to act in an illogical, self-destructive manner. I.e.: like a Nigga. Nigga Moments are unpredictable, but they all end up bad. If they had their own category, Nigga Moments would be the third leading killer of black men, behind Pork Chops and FEMA. It’s a fact.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 2:15 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.