Mayor of Soul

Los Ange­les Mayor Anto­nio Vil­laraigosa per­formed his best soul man imper­son­ation dur­ing the city’s launch event for African-American Her­itage Month. While hon­or­ing Chaka Kahn and Jamie Foxx, Vil­laraigosa swapped his nor­mal speech pat­tern for a black dialect. Maybe he was try­ing to be cool, but when you have to TRY to be cool, you nor­mally end up look­ing like a fool. In this case, Mayor Vil­laraigosa did just that.
While intro­duc­ing Chaka Kahn, Vil­laraigosa said, “She’s received 10 Grammy awards every­body. And a BET life­time achieve­ment awode. By the way, I’m at the BET awards every year held here in Los Ange­les.”
While intro­duc­ing Jamie Foxx, Vil­laraigosa said, “Is there any­thing Jamie Foxx can’t do? Mannnn … I love, I love that con­vo­sa­tion we had in our office a few min­utes ago. Because you know what — don’t think for the moment that this brother couldn’t run for office.”
While attempt­ing to be cool, Mayor Vil­laraigosa embar­rassed him­self, the city he rep­re­sents and offended the black com­mu­nity. Jamie Foxx rec­og­nized Villaraigosa’s approach and spoke in Span­ish dur­ing his accep­tance. Does this make Jamie Foxx look like a fool? Def­i­nitely not because Span­ish is an actual lan­guage. In fact, his knowl­edge of it makes him look even more impres­sive. What Vil­laraigosa was speak­ing was not. Vil­laraigosa was pre­tend­ing to be some­thing he isn’t (black) while appear­ing to be exactly what he is (a fool). If he would like to take a course on pro­to­col I would be more than happy to vol­un­teer my time.

Until next time,

Jules