This summer the only openly gay man in the Big Brother house won the grand prize of five hundred thousand dollars. But before anyone starts clapping, the title of the article to which I'm linking is, Did a Racist Win Big Brother 15? Here are a few of my posts on the subject this summer. And I haven't been the only one blogging and talking about the racist comments.
From NBC News Entertainment:
and then there was Andy Herren, an openly gay contestant who found himself on the receiving end inappropriate slurs from his fellow houseguests, but managed to make enough verbal waves to spark a Facebook statement from his former employer explaining that he "does not represent the opinions or values of College of DuPage."
Andy Herren wasn't the only one, and actually he didn't make the majority of the racists comments. These racists comments were addressed at the season finale last Wednesday night when the house guests came together for the first time since each one had been evicted, before a live audience. But they weren't addressed in any detail by any means, and it would be interesting to see how some of these houseguests reacted to what America saw this summer on TV and the live feed. Several of them were fired from their jobs just like Andy Herren.
But not everyone made racist comments. Unfortunately he didn't win the prize. Howard Overby said this: (And I'd like to add that this guy was great. It takes a lot to bring me to tears, but what this guy had to endure this summer from grown adults absoluetly gutted me.)
"My sincere prayer to anyone who has said anything like that ... is that you grow from this, you mature from this, you own this," he explained. "Hopefully there's a change from the inside out."
FREE Gay Excerpt Small Town Romance Writer
All week I've been posting excerpts from published books, and because this is the last day of the week, I figured I would post an excerpt from an upcoming book in the Bad Boy Billionaire series. This one is tentatively titled Small Town Romance Writer, it's 113,000 words in length, and it's the eighth and final book in the series.
I'll post the pg rated part of the excerpt here on google blogger, and then you can click to my Word Press blog to read the erotic parts.
Chapter
Fourteen
While they were in the airport waiting for a flight to
Boston, Ethan phoned Travis to talk about another bad review he’d received from
The Shark Lady. This time his voice sounded wrecked with anger, to the point
where he practically hissed and Travis had to pull his cell phone away from his
ear.
“That fucking asshole is trying to ruin me,” Ethan said. “Who
writes two bad reviews for the same book? That was no accident, Travis. I’m
going to write an open letter to that shark fucker on my web site and I’m going
to fucking eat her for breakfast.” This time The Shark Lady had taken his
highly toned down sex scenes out of context and turned them into hysterical
examples of bad writing. She’d blasted it all over various social media web
sites. Travis didn’t mention this to Ethan, but even he’d smiled at a few of
her comments. They were genuinely funny, although highly out of context.
Even though Travis had never been a fan of Ethan’s
writing style, Ethan was his best friend and he had to say something to calm
him down. But more than that, Travis had to admit that the review had not been
fair. Funny, but not fair. He’d seen this before more than once, the way a
clever book reviewer can take an excerpt from a book…any book, including the
bible…out of context and make it look ridiculous. It was an age old trick some
book reviewers’ use, but unfortunately most people didn’t recognize it or
understand it. And there was nothing an author could do about it except take it
with grace, write the book reviewer’s name down on a list, file it somewhere
for future reference, and then get even with the nasty reviewer sometime down
the road in the future.
“You have to calm down,” Travis said. “If you write an
open letter to a book reviewer about a bad review the only thing that will
happen is that you’ll make yourself look bad. And you have so many wonderful
things happening right now that would be huge mistake. Just laugh it off. Take
it as a compliment. How many authors get two reviews from the same reviewer?” That’s
what Travis had done.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Ethan said. “No one ever
wrote a review like that for your book.”
That was true. Travis’s award winning book had received
some excellent reviews, and mostly middle of the road reviews. But this worried
him even more than if he’d had bad reviews. He’d always believed the books that
sparked the most controversy and created the most interesting discussions were
the most valuable. In order to spark discussion a book had to be both loved and
hated. But he didn’t want to get into that with Ethan on the phone, in the
airport. So he continued to pacify him and stroke his damaged ego until they
said it was time to board the plane.
“I have to go now. We’re boarding. Call me later when I
get to P’town. Just don’t write or say anything you’ll regret. Let it go,
Ethan. Don’t do or say anything in public. You’ll regret it. Just trust me on
this one thing.”
“Can I send her a dead fish?” Ethan asked. “Or maybe a
ticket for a cruise ship in shark infested waters.”
“No, not even that. Let it go. She only wants you to
respond. She’s goading you.”
His voice had mellowed by then. “I suppose you’re right
once again. Thanks for listening to me rant that way. But I will get even with
that nasty, vicious, evil excuse for a human being someday if it’s the last
thing I do.”
Travis smiled. “I have no doubt about that. Call me later
if you want. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Ethan said. “And thanks again for being
there, as always.”
When Travis hung up, Scottie reached for their carry-on
bags and said, “Is he okay now?” He’d been listening to the conversation the
entire time. He seemed to have come to his own personal understanding about
Ethan and Travis’s relationship and he never questioned the dynamics.
Travis stood up and said, “I think he is. But I have a
feeling someday in the future he’s going to picking his teeth with the remains
of the woman who wrote that nasty book review. Ethan never forgets anything
that bruises his ego.”
Read More....
2 comments:
I've really been enjoying your excerpts this week, thank you!
I finally got caught up with Big Brother and don't even know what to think about this season. The fact that there were only maybe three and half people who weren't racist homophobic bigots is just mind-boggling. Did the producers do this on purpose?
Seeing Will Kirby on the finale was so bittersweet, it brought me back to the days when openly lying and manipulating was the worst you could do in the game, and everyone was still having fun...
I really do love that game, and I know they have to play shady sometimes because that's part of the game. But this season the racism had nothing to do with the game or the strategy. I don't know if the producers did it on purpose, but I do hope it doesn't happen again. If nothing else, I think future contestants are going to be very careful about what they say.
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