The Snob Is Heading to New York City This Week

Birds gotta fly. Bees gotta sting. And I gotta move around every couple weeks or so or I get bored. Yours truly is heading back to New York City this week both for work and to catch up with old friends. (And to get the rest of my stuff finally out of my roommate's apartment.) So if you barely hear from me this week, that's the reason why. I'm off gallivanting and grinding, getting my job on. And visit on. Amongst other things. 

Clutch Magazine: On Reality TV Bipolar Shouldn't Be Another Word for Crazy

On reality TV the ladies have gone from calling each other "crazy" to saying "bipolar" and ... um ... so not cool. I write about this Thursday for Clutch Magazine Online. Here's a snippet: "The extreme behaviors of reality show participants (and the personality types these show attract) often have little to do with mental illness, yet cast members are quick to turn into amateur psychiatrists and diagnose their 'out-of-control' peers, often ignoring the fact that the very nature of a reality show is to push people into emotionally intense situations to get the most extreme responses possible out of them."

Read the full post at Clutch Magazine Online.

Sometimes You Can Do All the Right Things ...

It probably hit me yesterday when I was watching President Obama address reporters after the bill for strengthening background checks and closing loopholes failed in the Senate. All the sad, familiar faces behind him -- either victims of gun violence or had lost a loved one to it, coupled with the round-the-clock, often incorrect reporting coming out of the Boston Marathon bombing. 

It hit me how even after I turned the TV off and went to do something, anything else, the feeling still lingered. It was there when I went to the gym to work out. When I ate my oatmeal in the morning. When I combed my hair. Even when I spent time with others I should have been enjoying.

I was depressed. And I didn't know why. After all, I was doing all the right things.

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Rand Paul & the GOP: Black Friend Wanted

Big week in conservative outreach to the black community! 

Rand Paul went to the Harvard of historical black colleges -- Howard University -- to school a roomful of already educated black students on how President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and that all of the NAACP's founders were Republicans. (Some were also white! And really light-skinned Negroes!!! And Ida B. Wells!!!!) Of course, all the students (and me and most black people who can read) already knew this.

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Michelle Obama Makes You Want to Hug Your Kids

... But I don't have any kids, so I hugged my mom. In a tear-inducing speech to raise funds for programs targeting at-risk youth in Chicago, the First Lady talks about the murder of Hadiya Pendleton, a teen who was shot in Chicago shortly after performing for the First Family during their second inauguration. Mrs. Obama said Hadiya was just like her -- a good student from a good family -- only the First Lady got to grow up and Hadiya was killed.

Go get your tissue now. I started crying just typing that sentence alone.

Video after the jump.

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Clutch Magazine: Embrace Your Irrational Hatred of Celebrities You Don't Know

Tuesday on Clutch I write about how often being a "hater" of celebrity isn't so much about the celebrity but ourselves and our deserve to vent. There's nothing more cathartic that going in on something you can't stand. It's a release. An unfair release to those we don't know, but a release all the same.

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WTF: Brad Paisley and LL Cool J Go LL "Fool" J on "Accidental Racist"

First thought: No.

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Temptation: There's No Redemption In This Gospel Play

Tyler Perry recently shot a spot for Oprah's OWN dressed as Madea while Winfrey returned to her "Color Purple" character Sofia. In "The Color Purple," Sofia gets a redemption story arc. But in Perry's new film "Temptation," redemption and forgiveness are hard to come by.There's not a lot about Tyler Perry's "Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor" that I can say that hasn't been said by everyone else who was either amused or horrified by it. Other than the whole thing had a familiar ring to it. A late Sunday night, St. Louis cable access channel ring to it. 

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The Snob Is Scared to Watch "Temptation," Y'All

Source: LionsgateI was (and I'm still) going to go see Tyler Perry's new film "Temptation" but it happened to come out the same weekend as a planned vacation. So I though, no big. I'll see it on Thursday, I thought. But then it started on Facebook with enraged friends giving away the ending, screaming to anyone who would listen how infuriating the film was.

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