Based on a cursory perusal of the front page of Sandra Rose, this doesn't seem like a very good week to be an older black man in a fancy suit. LA Reid was rumored to have lost his job at Def Jam, but supposedly he didn't. Atlanta megachurch pastor Eddie Long is rumored to have effed several young men in the a, and based on his haircut I'm gonna assume that he did. If I were Steve Harvey, I'm not sure if I'd leave the house for the remainder of the week. This is an unfortunate New York Times trend story waiting to happen.

I guess things aren't that bad for LA Reid. At least not yet. He's still got his job at Def Jam, according to a story here at XXL, contrary to a story I read either yesterday or the day before (there's been some substance abuse in the interim) on some other blog, via Twitter. They made it sound like he'd definitely been let go from Def Jam, we just hadn't heard about it yet. In retrospect, the idea that such a prominent figure in the music business could lose his job and the first media outlet to report on it would be some random blog seems less than likely, but you never can tell with black people. Sometimes, when we get let go, it's not under the best of circumstances. Without ruffling any feathers here, suffice it to say that there were times when XXL went through a change in personnel and it sounded like office security may have had to get involved. It seemed to be as contentious as it was abrupt. There wasn't any press release announcing a departure to pursue exciting new opportunities, just a few salty, cryptic emails.

I'm suddenly reminded of that guy Maurice Garland who worked here, briefly, a couple of years ago (you'd be forgiven if you have no recollection of this), probably because I was racking my brain for someone who could give me a primer on what goes down in these black megachurches[1]. I knew that these black preachers are legendary freaks, but I didn't realize some of them might be on the DL - using their position to coerce impressionable young men into playing that game where you put your nutsack on each other's eyelids (l forget the actual term for it), just like in the Catholic Church. (Or is that the Senate?) Of course the implications are vast, what with the ridonkulous spread of AIDS amongst black women, possibly from DL brothers, and now possibly at church; the fact that some of these black churches are in cahoots with the Republican Party, taking kickback money to promote homophobia during election years, which makes sense given the fact that a lot of time the biggest homophobes are the biggest fags; and the rumor that the Illuminati somehow has a sexual component. In particular, I've heard it alleged that in order for black people (who aren't traditionally involved in that sort of thing) to get in they had to take it up the coat. That may have been what Mos Def was referring to on "The Rape Over."

There might even be a connection between the Illuminati, the rumors about LA Reid getting dropped like a bad habit, and the rumors about Bishop Eddie Long taking special trips with boys. How else to explain the fact that all of this is coming out at once? Two of the most prominent black men, in the fanciest of suits, having such vicious rumors spread about them. It's not like they just did some shit that would cause these rumors to be spread. That Big Boi album has been out since the beginning of the summer, and it sounds like Eddie Long has been kissing 19 year-old boys for a minute. Nullus. There isn't necessarily a teh ghey element to LA Reid losing his job at Def Jam, except that it was also rumored that The-Dream, who strikes me as a bit light in the loafers, was let go as well. And who knows about LA Reid? His son, the one who let some chick take a picture of him lying on a hotel bed with his schlong dangling from his sweatpants (pause), doesn't seem very masculine. He must not have had very masculine genes. Any son of mine would have at least issued a statement about it on the Internets.

[1] I remember he once did a post here coming to the defense of these megachurch pastors. I was almost right there with him, but then I read the article in the New York Times, and that shit sounded somewhat more egregious than what was imaginable to me at the time. This one woman had a solid gold toilet. Tha fuck? Why not just a really nice porcelain toilet and a pile of gold stacked next to it? Taking a shit into a bowl made out of solid gold really is making a statement about your station in the cosmos.

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