Dear Oprah,
You need to leave the white boys alone. Jonathan Franzen turned his nose up at you and your audience, pandering to literary elites and saltine hipsters who envy your media power and snicker at your audience. He snubbed your recommendation by hoisting himself above you. Above you, Oprah. Asshole. And James Frey… Wow. But the smack-down you gave Frey on your show – tossing your most bone-straight white-girl weave (nice choice), and mean-mugging your hardest, “Muhfucka, please… I will fuck you up” facial expressions. Much respect. Rwanda, or Rolonda… Whatever her name was, could’ve never pulled that shit off.
Oprah, middle-aged white women love me and I love them. Well, I can learn. I will learn. I would never disrespect you or them. And, Oprah, there are no lies in my new book, Blood Beats Vol. 1: Demos, Remixes and Extended Versions (Red Bone Press; $19.95). There are no passages lifted wholesale from other books. (I am many things. An overachiever is not one of them.) I will submit to urine tests, blood samples and semen analysis. Stool samples available on request. Whatever it takes to prove my honesty to you. As a Modern Negro Writer (that’s Latin for whore), I am used to soul-crushing degradation. I’ve written for the Source and for Vibe.
For real, Oprah. This is who you can trust in this world: Me, Stedman and Gail. Well, me and Gail. How is she? She’s so pretty.
Make Blood Beats Vol. 1 an Oprah Winfrey book club choice. This boy (below) was unable to walk just a week ago, and look at him now:
He read the book and was instantly healed. Like one of your Angel Network success stories. And now, he’s the Blood Beats mascot. (He’s legal. We checked his papers.)
It’s true, I am not a DL-brutha and I wouldn’t fuck Terry McMillan with your dick. I am also not some wealthy closet case peddling hetero-fetishizing, Negro status-quo consecrating, Christian propaganda while dressed in drag and wielding a gun. So, I know that means that I – like most (relatively) sane black men – am completely off your radar. But we do exist. And some of us write books. Some of us even know how to read. Four reel.
Look, somewhere out there is a long-suffering white girl who is waiting for me – her own, angry, bitter and under-employed Negro writer/lover – to come into her life and treat her badly while she supports me and our three mulatto children: Denzel, Malik and Mariah Finkelstein-Hardy. (Denzel’s jealous of the twins, but fuck it; they got the good hair.) None of this can happen if you don’t hook me up, thrust me in the limelight and start the wheels of fate turning. I am your own creation myth, waiting to happen. Make me.
Much love (and even more heartfelt respect),
Ernest Hardy
