Why is Tavis Smiley publishing a book by R. Kelly?

When I read the other day that R. Kelly is planning to publish a memoir, of course I thought to myself, how in the fuck is R. Kelly gonna write a book, when everyone knows he can't read?

Yeah, I know all of these celeb as-told-to autobiographies are written by journalists, who interview these people a few times, and cobble together whatever they come up with in first person, as if the celebs themselves were saying it. Or in the case of Neil Strauss, author of the Game, which I need to read one of these days to figure out how to trick women into having sex with me (too bad it's mad expensive), they might actually spend time with the subject, and even rape-rape a few broads, which then becomes fodder for the book.

If XXL ever goes out of business, that might be the next stage in my own career. Ray J and I could link up and slay a few hoo-ers in the hot tub at Brandy's mansion. I know he was talking about writing a sort of male version of a Superhead book a few years ago, and it's yet to come to fruition. That would just be a matter of the two of us patching up an old beef, having to with a post I wrote half a decade or so ago about wanting to kill him. But that was obviously just jealousy on my part. Really, it was a compliment disguised as a death threat. He just wasn't a strong enough reader to realize. That's why I blog for a living, and he makes love to a series of beautiful (or at least well-endowed) women.

In addition to the fact that R. Kelly can't read, there's the fact that he's been known to bang and sometimes pee on underage girls. There was the time he married Aaliyah when she was like 15, the time a videotape surfaced of him engaging in water sports with a girl who was probably around the same age, the time 5-0 found a camera full of child pr0n in his house, so on and so forth. And yet, Arruh remains a free man to this day. He was just here in St. Louis the other day, performing at a venue downtown with opening act Pleasure P. No really, Pleasure P is opening for R. Kelly on a tour to promote Arruh's new "Untitled." I saw it in the paper the other day. Whether this is a mere matter of coincidence, or if Arruh has decided to take Pleasure P under his wing, like an R&B child molester version of the father-son relationship on the show Dexter, I'm not sure.

Then I saw that Piss on You: A Memoir, or whatever it's gonna be called, will be published on Tavis Smiley's vanity imprint, and it all made sense. A legit publisher probably wouldn't want to bother with with an Arruh autobio, since obviously he's not gonna admit to banging a ridonkulous litany of underage girls. And even if he tried to pull some shit like OJ did, where he said he didn't do it, but then he went on to describe how he would pee on enough 15 year-old girls to fill a showing of Twilight in an IMAX theater, if he did, it would be a huge outrage, and they'd have to pull the book from stores and swallow the advance they paid Arruh, not to mention whatever they spent to market the book. It'd be a disaster, especially in a time like this.

Enter Tavis Smiley, who could use a book to publish, even if it's a little bit flawed. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, because honestly I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure Tavis Smiley is one of these writers who doesn't actually write very much at all. He's got an autobio out, but it's also an as-told-to. Then he's got those books where prominent negro thinkers prescribe solutions for the myriad problems in the black community, as if that's gonna help. He could fuck around and start a Michael Eric Dyson-style book of the month club, without doing any actual writing. Again, I'm just jealous. Year in and year out, I spill enough prose to fill more volumes than even the great Cornholio, and all I've got is this buskit. Props to Tavis Smiley for not turning his back on Arruh, just because he likes his women a little bit young.

Speaking of which, didn't the black feigned outrage community issue a fatwa against Arruh, after the most recent time he got away with "statutory rape?" I thought they were trying to have his songs banned from the radio, like Rage Against the Machine on 9/11. And isn't Tavis Smiley supposed to be one of their main leaders? I can't imagine it didn't occur to him, at some point in the process of signing a deal to publish a book by R. Kelly, that it might not be good for his "brand." The only thing I can think is that Tavis must be trying to go rogue, Sarah Palin-style, ever since the black community turned on him, for having the sheer balls to question Barack Obama, before it was all trendy. I know he got let go from his job as a politics correspondent for one of those morning radio shows older black people listen to. This Arruh book must be an effort to spite them. If that's the case, I wish him godspeed.