Dear Lost:

I'm not Rev. Al now. I'm not ready to scream, "Racist!" at the drop of a spare rib. In fact, you will find that I am actually quite loathe to use that word at all. It's like, "When did you stop beating your wife." It's a charge impossible to defend against. Besides, I couldn't think of one reason--nope, not a one--why anyone would ever, ever call you such a dreaded, despicable word.

Now, I know some may wonder why Jack, of all people, was ever the leader of this lovable band of castaways. Personally, if I were stuck on a desert isle, after Marianne, I might, just might want the survivalist, Locke, leading the way (see, I'm not a racist, either--I've even suggested another white guy first). I mean, I don't know how to hunt game, forage for nuts, and find fresh water. You know who else doesn't? A friggin' doctor!

You know what else a doctor doesn't know how to do?

Run any sort of military operation.

So, I'm thinking, when "Da Utters" started attacking my black ass, I would've turned to the hard-ass brown man. That Iraqi brother who knows how to handle a gun, torture the shit out of someone, and, oh yeah, snap a motherfather's neck with his damned ankles.





So yeah, if I'd have been looking for a leader when the shit hit the fan, I would've been riding Sayid's jock. In Season 2, I might've even looked to the cop, Ana Lucia. Hell, even the Nigerian drug lord with a heart of gold and his eye towards God, Mr. Eko, would've been a better choice. Talk about a leader of men! And he did stare down the Smoke Monster, after all.

Man, I probably even would've looked to Hitman Jin.

But you know the last person I would've looked to? Crybaby Jack (does the man have a tear duct infection, or something?). No, not because he's a white man. Or a bitch. Though he is both. No. It's because he's a doctor. Not only would he have no practical experience in these matters (wait, I never went to med school--maybe combat training is covered in the first year), but, with polar bears, Smoke Monsters, and Da Utters going all FSU on their asses, you would think that the last person they'd want charging headlong into danger is the one person who could actually heal them when danger struck!

It never made sense that Jack was the leader. What exactly qualified him to be? Was it 'cause Matthew Fox could cry on command?





Or was it more insidi--

"You know what it was, Negro?!"

"Shut up, Al!"

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah.

Well, that ain't even why I'm mad at ya.

Not Jack's "leadership." Not the fact that you simply refuse! to kill that annoyingly anorexic Kate. (Why, Lord?! Why?!!!). Not the fact that yall have killed more brown folks than the Middle Passage and made the Klan salivate with your Killing Koloreds Kavalkade last night. Not "Sayid, Suicide Bomber." Nor Hurley's being Last Muchacho Standing.

I am hating on last night's episode, though. I'll admit, folks were needing to die soon--if Lost were to remain Lost. I felt a little cheated by Sayid's demise (especially since you're keeping Desmond alive), and I was sorry to see Lawnmower Man go.





But what really got me was Sun's and Jin's deaths.

Now, I'm not one of those saps who loved that love story. My memory's too long for that. I remember what a semi-abusive a-hole Jin was in the beginning. I remember how you intimated that he was killing folks for Papa.

You know what else I remember? How Sun was screwing around behind Jin's back, was planning to leave his fishy-smelling ass in L.A., and wasn't too sure whose baby that was cookin' in her belly--Jin's or Lex Luthor's or ... Michael's?



Yeah, you thought I forgot. But this brother's like an
elephant. He is fat as shit
don't forget shit!


I mean, I'm glad they worked through all that--by Sun's never coming clean--and found love. But I've always found that relationship only slightly less annoying than Kate and Sawyer's ménage-à-Jack.

But that's not what annoyed me so much about their deaths. It was just how painfully contrived their dying together was. You guys knew how much everybody (else!) loved these two, and you wanted, needed to give them their Titanic moment.

I don't blame you so much for that. It's just that it didn't make no kinda gotdamned sense.

You had me. At first. Sun's pinned. The sub's sinking. She's going to drown. Jin, the loving husband, is giving it his all to save his wife. What husband (in a relatively decent marriage) couldn't sympathize? Especially after all the years they'd been separated. What husband (in a relatively decent marriage) wouldn't do the same? After all, this was his wife--the mother of his child.

Who? What?

Oh yeah. You forgot.

That's strange.

So did Sun.

I mean, here's this woman, this mother, who struggled for years just to conceive, who returned to this fucked-up island to make her family whole, and, in the very last minutes of her life, she utters not a peep about the child to the father of said child.

Utterly baffling.

See, I'm thinking even Joan Crawford just might have given her child at least some thought at a time like that. In fact, I'm thinking any mother in her right mind, when her husband was all, "Ooooh baby, I ain't never gonna leave you again," woulda slapped his monkey ass, and shouted, "Motherfucker! You best git your ass to swimmin' and raise that daughter of ours!!!"

I mean, I know Sun was a pretty selfish woman--but not so selfish that she'd have wanted her kid raised an orphan. Or by that evil-ass father of hers.

And think of the pathos as Jin swims away from his darling beloved--off to raise their daughter who will never remember her self-sacrificing mother. And think of the shrieks and howls of anguish all across Lostlandia as you capped Jin's Asian ass (he was "of color," after all), failing in the one mission tasked to him by his martyred wife, never, ever to meet the baby girl that definitely was not Michael's.

Damn, I'm crying just typing this shit.

Well, clearly, it's too late for any of that. Even if it weren't, it's not like you'd listen to me, anyway. After all, I'm just the Unknown Writer, while yall are the sumbitches makin' bookoo bucks producing the only show worth watching on ABC for the last decade. You don't even have to remember that I'm mad at ya.

But I am.



Our prayers are with you, Hugo.
When the shit hits the fan,
remember the immortal words of Tonto,
"What do you mean 'we,' white man?"

Read more...

Sharpton Calls for Boycott of ABC's Lost

It was short and sweet because I demanded it be short and sweet. Everyone knows that Baptist minister, self-proclaimed civil rights leader, and radio talk show host, Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr., will talk your ear off if given the chance. I made it clear before I even stepped into his Harlem offices that, under no uncertain terms, I had to pick Pooh up from daycare back in DC by five. Oddly enough, the good reverend agreed. His message is that urgent.

"Hit me, Al," I said, upon entering.

"Lost kills black people," he informed.

"So does Ray Lewis. Where were you then, Al?"

"Brother Campbell, I am being serious. This is no time for jokes!"

I take my seat and get out my recorder, ready to get schooled.

"For six, long, arduous seasons full of high intrigue, mind-boggling plot twists, and fantastical jumps in logic, we have been watching the cold, calculated, conniving, Caucasian killing of black folk, and it has got to stop!!!"

Rev. Sharpton pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his brow.

"It's as though, if you have any, any African heritage on that island, you might as well kiss your melanin-blessed patooty good-bye."

"I never really thought of it that way," I confess.

"Well, think, my brother! For once in your life ... think!!!"

I do. Sharpton helps.

"First, there was that Russian-speaking sister who we all thought was the leader of the Others. When she came on, I tell you, my spirits were lifted. I was thinking, 'Yes, this is just like Angela Davis on Fantasy Island." Sharpton, of course, is referring to the now-classic, banned episode of the old ABC show, where Communist and black radical, Angela Davis, plays Richard Pryor's wife, and the two team-up with Tattoo to solve the kidnapping and murder of their pet chihuahua. SPOILER ALERT: The pigs did it.

"But then J.J. Abrams and the White Citizens' Council over at ABC had a summer to think about it and were, like, 'Oh hell naw! We can't be havin' us no black woman leader. So, they put a bullet in her."

"That did seem rather abrupt."

"And that brother from The Wire and now Fringe, Lance Reddick--"

"You actually know his name?"

"A mighty fine actor," Sharpton continues. "They bring him in for, like, four episodes and pop! pop! pop! Another Negro dead."





"Michael," Al's on a roll, "just a hard-working black man, trying to do what's right for his son. Why's he gotta be the one sellin' everybody out? Why's he gotta go off killin' everyone? Why did they bring him back just to get blown up on that stupid boat? And why, why, why did the brother have to go walkin' 'round so gotdamned nappy-headed all those years?





"And what about Ana Lucia? I mean, sure, she ain't black. Puerto Rican, right? Which is pretty damned close. Unless you're Jason Mattera, of course."

"Actually," I say, "I think Michelle Rodriguez is half-Puerto Rican and half-Dominican."

"Geez, is that even legal?"

I shrug.

"See!" Al screams. "They kill her off! And have Michael do the deed! Yet another case of black-on-damned-near-black crime!"

"Mr. Eko!" I trumpet.

"Exactly. Now you're getting it, Campbell." Al wipes his forehead again. "Sure, Mr. Eko had been a murderous drug dealer. But he had found Jesus. And he was the most popular God-fearing black man since ... since ... well, me."

"Do you think he was a surrogate for you and the producers of Lost were just playing out their fantasies of your murder?"

Sharpton's eyes bug out in anticipation. "Ooh. I like that. I like that."

"You know, I think you've got something," I concede. "I'm guessing that's why Rose is hiding out, not really part of any plots herself. Not having her own storyline in years. She's afraid she'll be part of the genocide."





"Cause on Lost, black folks stay dead," Sharpton said. "Those white folks. They get resurrected more times than Jesus. They should rename John Locke 'Chuckie Lazarus.' That hobbit shows up every time you turn around. And now Claire, who everybody thought was dead is back. And how does she celebrate her return to life?"

I shrug. I didn't see last night's episode.

"By planting an axe square in a black man's gut!!!"

"Oh, hell naw!" I say.

Rev. Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr., shakes his head gravely. I jump out of my seat.

"That's it!" I scream. "Let's march!!!"

"That's more like it, Campbell!" Sharpton smiles grandly. "That's more like it!"




Read more...