One of my resolutions is to, again, stop wasting time on internet message boards but they still are a good time waster and I have a lot of time to kill. Granted, I should be writing my actual screenplays and trying to make it rather than just chat about films but whatever, after a long day (or, usually, during the long day) it's a good break.

The reason I bring this up is because of the Vanity Fair controversy over their recent New Hollywood cover which puts the fair in Vanity Fair. Not a minority on the cover and people are in an uproar about it. Anyway, it came up on a message board and I believe so much in my response to that issue that I thought I'd post it here. Also, I had nothing else to write about this morning.

Really, what this controversy proves is that the token is still a powerful entity in supposedly post-racial America. For YEARS, Vanity Fair has been throwing out groups of white people with one or two minorities in the mix. For a couple years, Penelope Cruz was the last melanin standing. Here's a bunch of Leibovitz's Hollywood covers.

Mostly what this is is people getting upset over a symptom and not the disease. TV is getting whiter and whiter (and helmed by more and more men, even though women are running more studios). The film world hasn't gotten much more diverse over the years. George Lopez once stated that he hated when cops would go to a door during the movie because he knew that would be the only time he'd see someone that looked like him: either the suspect or the help. It's still the same.

Should Vanity Fair have played the game and thrown Zoe Saldana on there? Yes. But this Vanity Fair issue is a true picture of a fucked up system and what we're seeing now is people not liking a reflection and blaming it on the mirror.