Rihanna makes a run for the border

Let me guess: Rihanna is being gradually weaned off of black guys.

Eventually, they're gonna have her take up with and maybe even marry a white guy. But they can't just have her up and start dating a white guy in the wake of the Rumble in the Lambo. That would be a bit too obvious. So in the meantime, they're gonna have her dating a bunch hispanic guys. Maybe even a Chinese guy.

Okay, maybe not a Chinese guy...

I knew something was up the other day when I saw an item over at Gawker about how Rihanna had been spotted out chatting it up and enjoying a bottle of champagne with Wilmer Valderrama, who used to be on That '70s Show. It was an excerpt from one of these columns that's obviously full of plants, for PR purposes. Like Page 6, in the New York Post.

Wilmer Valderrama would probably never be in anything I'd be interested in seeing, but I have seen a few interviews he's done, and he seemed surprisingly intelligent and well spoken. If he wasn't a Mexican, he'd probably be the next Ashton Kutcher or some such. But, alas, he is. Hence, I'm not sure what he's been up to for the past, like, five years.

I know he's been connected to every third young actress in Hollywood (I'm so jealous), and I wouldn't be surprised if he's been making a lot of money as a sort of Mexican for hire, when these white chicks want to spice up their image, but they don't want to go so far as to date an actual black guy. Their price per film would plummet, just like in real pr0n.

In Rihanna's case, I'm assuming it's the opposite. She was black in the first place, albeit light skinted, so it wasn't like there was any getting around it. Still, they couldn't have her getting with one of these rappers. They figured they'd set her up with Chris Brown, who's light skinted himself and sings lame-ass R&B music. What harm could he possibly do? Rihanna had to find out the hard way.

She might be in luck though. If there's one narrative white people love, other than the story of Jesus, it's the one where a woman is attacked by a crazy black guy, only to be saved by the white knight in shining armor. If it sounds familiar, that's because it's the plot of Birth of a Nation, one of the very first feature length films, and the most popular film of its time.

It's also the plot of that Ike and Tina Turner movie. Tina's career reached new heights back in the mid '80s, when she got with that white guy from Germany. Maybe part of it's that people genuinely liked the songs. That joint from the third Mad Max movie still kinda cranks. But part of it's that the story behind those songs resonated with white people.

Rihanna's date with Wilmer Valderrama took place over a week ago. I was gonna do a post on it at the time, but I'd already done so many posts on the Rumble in the Lambo, and I wasn't sure there were definitely shenanigans involved. Maybe Valderrama was already plotting on Rihanna, and he took the Rumble as his opportunity. You don't build up a track record like his without mastering strategy.

But I checked MTV News just now, and I see there's a story about Rihanna might be dating some other Mexican kid. I guess she's been seen out with some latino fellow from Bromance, and he was quoted in People magazine as saying that the two of them have just been kicking it.

Hmm...