Being The Best Person Has Nothing To Do With "Nice"

"We're not very good people." 

That's one of the damning statements from Ken Burns' new documentary about the  travesty of The Central Park Five. It's a message I repeat daily, and - just like in the film - nobody listens to it, because they're too comfortable living a lie. 

They live a lot of lies.

   

Lies that impacts others - the helpless - and ripples across the ages. 

   

 For that, they are not good people, no matter what they think.

   

 I know better. I live it:

 

"All of my confidants had to be narcs. Except The Crack Emcee. I couldn't see how even the CIA was advanced enough to hide someone like him among their minions."

- Donnell Alexander, Ghetto Celebrity (2003)

   

 You know the phrase "It takes one to know one"? That applies here.

   

 And I can't find too many out there - not like me. They think life's a cartoon, but this is my life.

   

 Considering the difference - especially when compared with the lives of black folks - I wonder, sometimes, if they've ever been truly alive at all,...

 

More Proof I Haven't Changed (But The World Does,...)

In 2003, my personal character was immortalized in Ghetto Celebrity, a memoir by journalist Donnell Alexander. In it, he said I was the only person he trusted, and one of the greatest artists he knew - and he knows everybody.

Now I just discovered Barnes & Noble has made it available for $2.99 as a Kindle "NOOK Book," under the title Son Of Ghetto Celebrity. (Why they changed the name, I have no idea,...)

I don't actually feature in the story, but it's still one of the craziest four-star reads, by and about a "real" black man's rise through the ranks of journalism, you're ever gonna get (I'm serious - sex, drugs, race, you name it - this book is so confessional, it's embarrassing) so, if you own one of those newfangled devices, all I can say is - at three bucks - this one's a steal:

So steal it already,...