And it ain’t me.

I have a very interesting relationship with Vanity Fair magazine. I love it for its size. When it comes in the mailbox, I see myself in the bed with snacks, wearing my reading glasses (if I remember) and devouring almost ALL the articles, sad when I get to the Proust questionnaire because it’s all over then.  Sometimes the BF clowns me and he should. It’s not like Vanity Fair ever reached out to me directly. In fact, they bypass me and give me the stories I yearn for: there’s always a political story, a social story, a scandal story that may or may not be historical but still relevant, an art/architecture/fashion story and a bunch of bits that I either swoon over or bypass (I mean who doesn’t read the My Stuff with great detail? I do care what soap other people use - I’m crazy what can I say?).

Yet once I wrote them and told them that their cover (it had a few chocolate and cinnamon girls in it that month) was more diverse than their writing staff (George Wayne may or may not count - depending on the scandalous questions he asks).  They neither published my letter nor reached out to me. (On the contrary, Glamour magazine’s Editor in Chief responded to an email I wrote to them and Instyle published one of my commentaries on the endless bashing of Michelle Obama - FLOTUS who can do no right by those who look for only wrong).

So imagine my surprise when they did a spread on the Hamptons and found this black girl (she has a name: Christina Lewis - WSJ Hamptons reporter) in it…looking literary…in a house that’s hers with some of MY favorite flowers. What? Okay she inherited it but that makes it that much more interesting because most times we are just regulated to Martha’s Vineyard. Who knew there chocolate folks with old money in the Hamptons? The last time I went there (I was a guest of course) the only person I saw who looked like they were from my tribe was Russell Simmons himself. And he didn’t even blink at me. Despite us being the only chocolate people on the whole beach. Not even a curious “how did YOU get here” glance. Maybe I was acting wrong. I think I was supposed to BE there and not be there with my big huge old eyes.

Whatevs.

I hatelove you, Vanity Fair.

I suppose we should’ve seen this whole thing coming…the one where the President is always to blame for everything. I mean President Obama saw it coming. He did keep saying stuff like “the buck stops here” and “this is my job” but some of us really didn’t understand what that meant until the weird complaints started coming in. You know…like the death threats from so-called Christians. The impatience from those who have been fighting decades long battles and had expectations that there would be a magic wand waved and all our problems would disappear. Majority of the country who hadn’t pretended to read the constitution since they were in American History class, now reciting bits and pieces to fit their agenda. The ones who forgot this is a democracy and we have other people in government who are responsible for their jobs and that the President doesn’t do EVERYTHING. I mean we’ve never expected the President to do EVERYTHING before so why now?

It’s a blessing and a curse to have a  historic President. On one hand, we’ve done something we’ve never done before. On the other, we are now doing everything we did before and worse (economically, socially, culturally - we should come up with new deadly sins) and expect one person to wipe up after us.

Today I’m annoyed because people are pissed at Obama for coming to LA and making traffic bad. Really? Traffic in LA is always bad and none of the local politicians seemed to ever care. If we had a city where things on the road ran smoothly, the whole world wouldn’t collapse because Olympic is shut down. Now I know the Secret Service is part of this ring (and they have a helluva job guarding a historic President given there are people who aren’t happy about his skin color in 2010 - real talk). But how come nobody asks Villagrosa to clean up the HORRIBLE traffic on a daily basis? How come we never find out about the protests that close off streets until we are in the middle of them (I mean I’ve learned more about the Armenian Genocide sitting on Wilshire than I ever did in school and don’t even get me started on the Day without Latinos)? How come the Hollywood Bowl area is a always a clusterfuck no matter which way you go since they hold the lights so people can go stack park their cars for $20?

All this has made me read the news less or get soundbite news. I can’t stand how we present actual facts nowadays. There’s always a sly twist, an unsubstantiated tangent, a rash process of judgment, a disregard for humanity. There is no news anymore. There’s just tone - a sarcastic tone, an angry tone, a defensive tone, a judgmental tone…we’re going so fast that we can’t even hear ourselves anymore. I suppose if I was more tuned in, I would find all of this fascinating but I don’t. I find it exhausting. I’m tuning out.