ByronCrawford.com

Racist Tonight Show Sketch Mocking African-Americans

In 1977 the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson ran a hideously unfunny and offensive sketch called "Hang a Darkie," that ridicules a black cast member of the classic '70s TV series CPO Sharkey as a "black man" who should be hung from a tree by Don Rickles. It was played on NBC, which is currently owned by GE, but back then was probably still owned by the Chinese.

It's featured on the blog panopticist, towards the bottom of the page. (This is a direct link to the video).

Here's a choice excerpt from the show's script:

*Johnny sees a black man*

Hey, a black man!

*Johnny walks over to said black man*

Hey, yo, black man, how's it going, daddy!

*Johnny says to Don Rickles*

Hang him.

Uhh, yeah. Har de har har.

You may know that one of the Burbank Studio's janitors, Big Daddy's Trash, is African-American. He voiced his displeasure with the skit and got into a heated off-air argument with Don Rickles about it. But so far NBC hasn't acknowledged that there's anything wrong with it, and Johnny's corpse is resting safely beneath the earth's surface rather than above the ground in a wet cardboard box on an abandoned lot in an ethnic ghetto, which is where it belongs.

As an African-American, and as an avid watcher of television I am ashamed and disgusted that NBC once allowed this to broadcast on their airwaves. If you feel the same way, you can let them know here:

NBC Television
505 8th Ave 19th Floor
New York, NY 10018

(212) 279-0707

nbc@nbctv.com

And if you really want to send a message, and make NBC hear it, you can contact their advertisers about this. I may try to put together a list of sponsors, or if anybody else has one please pass it along.

And here is an online petition you can sign:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/dontbury

Hot 97 Controversy: Not the Jigs' Fault

It was the spics' fault!

I had my Jig Radio Affairs Bureau Chief, Princess Rock, do some investigating, and here's what she found out:

I am an informed insider, and employed at Hot 97.

I feel compelled to tell what is actually going on.

Ms. Jones and Todd Lynn had NOTHING to do with the writing or production of the Tsunami Song. The song was written and produced by Rick Delgado, who is the producer and supervisor of the morning show.

Everyone involved in the production participated under duress.

Ms. Jones is not the singing voice. The song was voiced by Rick Delgado, DJ Envy [ED NOTE: DJ Envy is an hispanic.], and the production assistant Tasha Hightower, who initially objected to performing the song, but were coerced by the producer to participate in the project.

This is actually what happened. The truth is Todd Lynn may have made a mistake in his shooting Asians statement, but he nor Ms. Jones had anything to do with the written production of the Tsunami song, and nor are they racist.

Your energies are being SERIOUSLY misdirected at the wrong people. If you really want to combat racism, go to the root of the problem. Ms. Jones and Todd Lynn are on -air personalities. They do not control what is played over the airwaves. This is a producer call ie: Rick Delgado, who was also the producer of the "Opie and Anthony" radio show; which was taken off the air for similar antics.

I am writing because I can no longer sit back and watch as two people who made a judgment error be touted as racists and called the Tsunami 2.

Please forward this email to everyone that you've emailed trying to derail Ms. Jones and Todd Lynn. They need to know the other side of the story in order to make a fair and balanced judgment to whether they should be fired or a continual suspension.

Please be proactive in looking for the truth and not reactive in condemning two radio personalities.

THE PRODUCER DID IT- Rick Delgado. Let it be known.

Like many home burglaries these days, it turns out that this Hot 97 "Tsunami Song" incident was yet another unfortunate incident perpetrated by hispanics and subsequently blamed on the blacks.

If we're really going to end the hate, let's go to the source of the problem rather than always trying to blame black people.

Fuck the Dame Dash Music Group (no homo)

Ian, pictured above, has gone and started his own new record label. I'm actually in talks with them right now about commercially releasing my "Tsunami Response" answer record as well as some other new projects that I really shouldn't talk about for legal reasons. Here he talks about his lofty mission as the owner of a new hip-hop label (other than scoring with young white chicks):

As some of you may already know, I recently launched a brand new but tiny independent record label at the end of last year called Supreme Clientele.

Our lofty mission is to bring back classic underground hip hop music that hopefully defies the ridiculous divide and shallow labels separating the so-called underground and commercial hip hop worlds. And yes, the label name is an homage to Tony Starks who, besides being one of my favorite hip hop artists, to me represents one of the few artists out today who can still appeal to the many subsets of hip hop fans without compromising his own art. I only hope our label can do even half as well creatively as he has over his career.

It's been tough work getting everything together including securing decent distribution but, finally, our first release, a 12" single -- "Everything's A Go (The Flow)" b/w "Badside" -- by Harlem MC, Bathgate (which I've been slyly plugging on the site, is ready to go and about to hit retail.

DOWNLOAD: Bathgate - “Everything’s A Go (The Flow)”  | “Badside”

A fudgepacker in our midst (no homo)

So I was just sitting here having a Miller High Life and going over my referral logs like all the cool kids do on Friday night when I came across this:

OK, I've been a little obsessed with this Hot 97 Tsunami song thing. There are so many great sites and blogs out there now that address the topic I just didn't think I could do it justice to post anything about it here.

Guys like Jay Smooth over at Hip Hop Music are giving hip hop and urban activism a good name. I'm reading about all these people (asian, white, black, men, women, kids) who aren't activists, aren't political, are normally apathetic rise up and make their voices heard.

But even though you have all these positive people now talking about how incredibly pathetic Miss Jones and Todd Lynn are, you get idiots and posts like the ones found here:

http://www.byroncrawford.com/2005/01/jin_tsunami_res.html

In this thread of posts, the original poster goes on about how he is coming up with an answer track to Jin's track.  Are you kidding me?  You are writing a song critizing Jin for his comments on those Hot 97 assholes?

And then I can't believe some of the replies that people wrote:

Fuck these chinks
Always trying to take over hip hop
This Hot 97 protest is the gayest shit ever 

What???

What???

Fucking incredible...

For the sake of free speach I think we should all pay this douchebag a visit and let him know that we don't take kindly to assholes like him criticizing my shit.

Dame Dash back at Def Jam

Not to sound bitter or anything, but I hope he fails miserably. It looks like he's already made some pretty dumb moves. Him and Jay-Z sold their 50% stake in Roc-A-Fella for only $10 million. Jay-Z alone has sold over 20 million records in the last 10 years. I'm sure the other 30 or so artists signed to that label, combined, sold another million or so records. Talk about the motherfucking deal of the century!

Jin - Tsunami Response: The Answer Record

By DJ Bol Guevara and The Mindset All Stars
A lot of people don't know this about me, but I'm a recording artist too. In fact, I put out about 10 or 15 albums when I was in college. You just can't find that shit anywhere because it's rare like that. I bet Noz has a copy though. Anyway, I thought I was pretty much retired from the music biz until I heard this clown Jin (pictured above) had recorded a response record to Hot 97s "Tsunami Song." For the sake of free speach, I went and recorded an answer record to his response record, if you follow. I can't post the audio because I'm still in talks with the Moody Blues about sample clearance, but below you'll find the lyrics with which you can sing along. Enjoy.

The Ashlee Simpson Show: Season 2 - Episode 1: Episode Summary

My bad about being a bit "intoxicado" for this, my first episode summary for Season 2 of The Ashlee Simpson Show. I tried holding out for as long as I could, but that Miller High Life was just calling me. I felt like Chris Rock in New Jack City. As a lot of you know, I'm basically the godfather of the whole Ashlee Simpson movement, having written about it months before people even knew who she was way back when season 1 began. Hopefully, with these new episode summaries, I'll be able to reclaim my rightful position.

Jigs Rapping about Chinks: A History

I'm in the studio right now working on my offical answer record to Jin's "Tsunami Response" which will hopefully be played tomorrow morning on the new, E-Bro hosted Hot 97 Morning Show. In the meantime, I thought I'd hit you all off with this list, copied verbatim (without permission) from ego trip's Big Book of Racism!, of rap songs where jigs (and in one case, a cracka) make "insensitive remarks" about, um, Asians in rap records. If anything, this just goes to show that jigs clowning Chinamen on rap songs, even on Hot 97 (peep the "dishonorable mention"), is hardly news, despite what certain enemies of hip-hop might tell you.

Irv Gotti = Future prison bitch?

Sez MTV.com:

Irv and Chris Gotti surrendered to federal authorities in New York Wednesday after being indicted on charges of laundering more than $1 million in drug money through their record label, the Inc. The brothers face up to 20 years in prison.

I could care less about him and his bro funneling a little drug money here and there, but I'll never forgive him for the last 5 years of having to hear the likes of Ja Rule and Ashanti everytime I turn on my gotdamn TV or radio. For that reason alone he deserves to spend the next 20 years with his ass in the air and his face buried in a pillow, screaming his lungs out in pain. No homo.

The Real World Philadelphia: A Voyage to Fiji

A Very Special Episode Summary
Thanks to The J Station aka Squirrel and Big Gay Mart (no homo), I didn't get a chance to check out last week's episode, which was the first part of the trip to Fiji, so this week I caught both it and this week's conclusion of the voyage and combined them into one big, epic Episode Summary. I promise it's not all one big sentence. Enjoy.