Category Archives: Pop Culture

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Luvvie Ajayi of Awesomely Luvvie & More Tech Experts Appear on Exhale Tonight!!!

Hello World, Luvvie Ajayi

Since I started blogging in 2008, I’ve become somewhat of a techie as I’ve tried to learn new tech tools to make this blog the best it can be! If you’re a blogger like me or are just interested in learning more about technology, tonight’s episode of “exhale” is for you!

Tonight’s episode, which airs at 9 p.m. EST on ASPiRE, features conversations with Luvvie Ajayi, social media guru, and the voice behind the entertainment and humor blog, Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie); Dr. Randal Pinkett, author, speaker, founder and CEO of BCT Partners and former winner of The Apprentice (@randalpinkett); Kimberly Bryant, engineer and founder of Black Girls Code (@6Gems); and Andre Meadows (AKA “Black Nerd”), actor, comedian, writer and creator of the You Tube Channel Black Nerd Comedy (@BlackNerd)!

I was able to see an advance screening of the show, and I learned some new information that I was not aware of before. During the interview with Luvvie, she reveals that her real name is not Luvvie! It is a Yoruba name, but you have to watch the episode to find out what it is plus I can’t spell it 🙂 Here a few more tidbits from her interview. There are approximately 173 million blogs out there! Yikes! Blogs get the highest traffic on Mondays. According to Nielsen, African American women are the most active group on Twitter. Also, 74 percent of consumers rely on social media to influence their purchasing decisions. Very powerful information!

During Dr. Randal Pinkett’s interview, he shared that he got into technology when his parents bought him a computer instead of games as a child and challenged him to come up with his own games on the computer. He learned how to write code as a child and create computer games because of that challenge! Obviously, that is a gift from God because I would have just picked up Monopoly or Uno and called it a day…He also shared that he started his first company while he was in college. He is the author of “Black Faces in White Places: 10 Game-Changing Strategies to Achieve Success and Find Greatness.”

According to Kimberly Bryant, less than one percent of tech startups are founded by African Americans.  Also, three percent of the computing workforce are black women. Obviously, Black Girls Code, which is geared toward teaching technology skills to black girls from 7-17,  is needed! Since she started the organization in 2011, seven chapters have been created in the United States and one has been created in Johannesburg, South Africa!

Okay, so you have to watch the entire episode to learn about everything else that was shared!

Follow exhale’s hosts at:   exhale

·Angela Burt-Murray on Twitter @AngelaCocoaFab, and on her websites cocoafab.com and cocoafab-tv.

·Erin Jackson on Twitter @EJthecomic, and on her website erinjackson.net.

·Issa Rae on Twitter @IssaRae, and on her website awkwardblackgirl.com.

·Rene Syler on Twitter @goodenufmother, and on her website goodenoughmother.com.

· Malinda Williams on Twitter @MalinsWorld, and on her website malindawilliams.com.

Any thoughts?

 

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Sherri Shepherd Jokes About Giving Her Surrogate Baby to Raven Symone & More on ‘The View’

Hello World,

Me and Sherri :)

Me and Sherri 🙂

First of all, let me go ahead and admit that I am biased when it comes to Sherri Shepherd. She graciously agreed to be interviewed for my book After the Altar Call: The Sisters’ Guide to Developing a Relationship With God, and I will always be eternally grateful…

Alright, so that being said, I’m so glad she seems to returning to her usual rowdy self after the news broke that she was going through a divorce just about a year ago as of this month and left “The View” shortly thereafter. She returned to “The View” on Thursday as a guest moderator and caused a ruckus after Raven Symone, who may become a permanent host on “The View,” said she wanted to have a baby. My girl Sherri said, “Girl, I got one or two you could have of mine. I will give them to you. It’s so funny how women with kids are like, take mine.” See the video clip below…

That was a read for her ex-husband Lamar Sally period the end. Some say the joke was in poor taste, but I disagree. Sherri remained silent for a long time about what transpired between the two of them (which was wise and decent) while he seemed to be on a media tour talking to any and every news outlet to malign her good name. And now she is financially responsible for a child that is not even biologically her child! She probably has to laugh to keep from crying!

During this episode of “The View,” which is having its share of turmoil too, she also shared that her best friends and Whoopi Goldberg warned her about Lamar according to a People magazine article…


“I actually feel like, if I had listened to my best friends, I wouldn’t be having … a million attorneys in my life right now,” she explained.

“My best friends told me … all the stuff that I’m going through now, all the best friends who told me, ‘Sherri, don’t do this,’ … especially Whoopi Goldberg. She was one who came to my room every day and was like, ‘Here’s the red flags.’ ”

At the time, Shepherd admits she didn’t react well “when every single one of my best friends told me there were warning signs. I was like, ‘What is going on?’ I thought it was a conspiracy.”

 

Well, I’m still on Team Sherri, and I know that God will bring good even out of all this…

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Josh Duggar v. Bill Cosby and the Differences Between Liberal Christians & Conservative Christians

duggars
Hello World,

I get it. I really do. This visceral impulse to defend Josh Duggar who recently admitted and apologized for molesting young girls when he was a teenager. I felt the same way when I first scanned a singular article in which Bill Cosby was accused of being a serial rapist…In fact, below are my exact words from November 2014 blog post “What Would Jesus Do About Bill Cosby?”

I admit that I first came across an article in which the author alleged that Cosby had coerced several women to have sexual contact with him about three weeks ago. I quickly scanned the article but dismissed it an Internet hoax and or outright hogwash because Bill Cosby is Dr. Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable to me. And everyone in my generation knows that Dr. Huxtable is a noted obstetrician,  husband to wife, attorney Clair Huxtable née Hanks and father to their five children.

And I ended my blog post with these words:

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.  Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.

Chile, won’t He do it? Yes, He will…If you parade yourself around as having no faults, sooner or later, God will let everyone know that you are like the emperor with no clothes on: just a regular ole human being just like the rest of us…And I’m not saying the Duggars of “19 Kids and Counting” think or thought they are or were perfect, but many of their fans sure seem to think or thought they are or were…And for the record, I’m still struggling with this whole Bill Cosby thing…

I get why many conservative Christians heralded the Duggars as an example of all that is good and perfect…

  • They live in middle America…For some reason, middle America seems to the base of “family values.”
  • They are Republican.
  • Michelle Duggar is proud and vocal about being a submissive wife. Her husband is unequivocally the head of the household.
  • They have 19 children which harkens back to a nostalgic time when the United States was primarily agrarian, and many children were needed to help farm the land. (If you didn’t have slaves.) Birth control is not an option.
  • The children are homeschooled so they are not tainted by the government-run public school system.
  • They believe in courtship not dating.

Those are just some of the most salient reasons why I can imagine the Duggars are so appealing to conservative Christians. I am reasonably sure there are other, less obvious reasons, why they have such a large fan base.

Liberal Christians, conversely, see these qualities differently…

  • “Family values” or values in general can be found in all of America.
  • They are mainly Democratic or somewhere in the middle.
  • Egalitarian marriages are more appealing.
  • A large family is not necessarily criticized, but a small family including one child or two children is fine too.
  • Public schools are not shunned.
  • Dating with respectful boundaries is appropriate.

I realize I’m generalizing here, and a lot of these qualities are on a continuum. And the truth is that I am somewhere in between myself. But what I want to say to my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ is this:

At best, the Duggar parents have been hypocrites in allowing their daily lives to be broadcast without revealing the full truth of what transpired in their daily lives. At worst, they have been co-conspirators in their son’s crime by not adequately dealing with the issue. According to a Washington Post article, the two supposed authority figures who we were responsible for counseling and or admonishing the then teenager for his actions were later accused of sexual crimes themselves!!!

So how are we, conservative Christians and liberal Christians, supposed to deal with this? Particularly when those who don’t like Christianity for a variety of reasons or those who are hungry for Christ’s love but just don’t know it yet are looking at us to see how respond?

My answer is this verse…

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away. Isaiah 64:6

None of us are righteous – conservative or liberal – in God’s eyes without His grace and mercy and the blood that Jesus Christ shed for us. All of us are sinful. But what we cannot do is use this verse to excuse away our unrighteousness. To do so would make a mockery of Jesus Christ who suffered on the cross so that we could be reconciled to Him. I hope the Duggar family uses this painful revelation as an opportunity to right the wrong that was committed.

Any thoughts?