Tough as the competition is, it seems no one disrespects Black women more than gold-tooth-flashing, Mad Hatter–dressing, alcohol-loving has-been rapper Flavor Flav. Each season on his Black-chelor knockoff reality series, Flavor of Love, he drags 20 empty-eyed hoochies through endless rounds of humiliation as they claw and scratch to get time alone with him and beg to be his plaything. Given the show’s record-breaking ratings on VH1, there’s no likely end in sight. I’m not defending the bling-blinded contestants who pimp themselves to become Flav’s potential wife on national TV. In fact, it’s hard not to despise these women for picking a random celebrity’s coattails to ride with their bare bottoms. But I see no redeeming value in Flav, this former “hip-hop intellectual” who seems to think that “habitatural” and “romantical” are actual words, that the watercraft in Venice are “gonzoleers,” that his face leering out from period costumes is great art, and that his on-air roses are
Ostensibly the show is Flav’s search for true love with a down woman who isn’t after his money but loves him for who he is (this despite Mr. Flav’s arrest in the 1990’s for failing to pay child support). No matter how clear it is that the weaved-to-the-waist conniver with eye shadow up to her hairline is lying, he invariably falls for the woman who, booty shorts half off, purrs about tending to his every need. Talk of “getting to know him” and “being friends first” will land a sister on the sidewalk outside Flav’s mansion with a quickness.