The People’s Choice Awards aired on Wednesday, January 6 on CBS. Looking at the winners, one would have to wonder which people made the choices? I think that in order to make the “people’s choices” more palatable to people of color, the producers brought back Queen Latifah to host for the fourth time. She did a great job (check out her Twilight spoof shown above). The only African-American winners ironically enough included Kanye for the collabo with Rihanna and Jay-Z and Kanye on Run This Town! Eminem won for favorite Hip Hop Artist kicking Flo Rida, Jay-Z, T.I. and Lil Wayne to the curb. Seriously? Which rapper was much hotter than Lil Wayne last year (except maybe for Lil Wayne’s Young Money protege Drake who wasn’t even nominated!). Mariah Carey took home the award for favorite R&B artist beating out Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Usher and Beyonce (we really needed Kanye for this one!) By the way, Mariah had to be assisted on stage by hubby Nick Cannon because her dress was too tight — not a good look (check out the video). In the other categories, black folks were barely represented and when nominated even big names lost including, Oprah and Tyra losing to Ellen Degeneres for Favorite Talk Show and Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail losing in the Favorite Independent Movie Category.
Now, to be clear, I am not questioning the results and kudos to all the winners but I’m wondering who’s nominating and voting because that would explain the results! It would definitely explain why Miley Cyrus won Favorite Breakout Actress in a category where, Gabourey Sidibe, star of Precious the Movie and arguably THE breakout actress of the year wasn’t even nominated? Blacks are glaringly absent from television these days so there was no surprise that we weren’t part of the nominations in those categories. You cannot win Prom Queen if you weren’t even invited to the party! Clearly, blacks are not voting in numbers large enough to represent our “choices”. This is no different than voting for political elections, you have to go to the polls! I say that to say, I’ve heard a lot of complaining about the results (myself included) but at the end of the day how many blacks voted?
By the way, did I mention that Taylor Swift beat out Beyonce again – this time for Favorite Femaile Artist. Where is that darn Kanye when you need him!!!
