Today is the DAY! Get Your Pens and Pencils Ready!

Folks I hope you have found yourself a watch party. If not, throw your own. IT has been a tough three weeks since I discovered the original HGM site ( of which I still have screen captures). I knew 30 seconds after I saw the ads pop up next to that blackface cartoon that a show called "Hot Ghetto Mess" was not going to air. I went to school with these marketing executives. They are risk averse and being associated with a blackface cartoon, by itself, was enough to drive them off.

I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I know this. For the first time in 27 years, BET was forced to change course. Unlike BET Uncut which took SIX years to kill, this took more like six minutes on the phone with a CEO's office.

So get your pens and pencils ready. Write down your impressions and record the products and services advertised on the show and let us all sit back and wait to see what is going to happen.

This has been a ridiculously good learning experience for moi even though I have to deal with the occasional vermin that has been attracted to the site by the increased attention. This was worth it. This was absolutely worth it.

Whichever side you came down on this issue, do not lose sight of the fact that this battle was waged by two African American female attorneys in their thirties. Somewhere Thurgood Marshall, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and Charles Hamilton Houston have got to be smiling because both of us were zealous advocates for our positions right up to the bitter end. We ought to be proud of that.

Regardless of whose side you are on, I hope that this episode has given all of us a glimpse into the potential for Bloggers of Color, even if they are fighting with each other. Next summer we hope to all be able to gather to help lay the groundwork for future efforts by Bloggers of Color at the first International Black Interactive Conference, tentatively called Blogging While Brown.

Check out one of the best articles by a reporter about this whole brouhaha. Its is balanced. She talked to more than two people and she brought in an impartial expert. "BET still has 'Mess' Even With Title Change" . It is by Monica Haynes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.