Bitch Set Me Up!

In honor of Black History Month, they've been playing small commercials with prominent African-Americans. They show pictures and talk about the person's accomplishments set to Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable," which doesn't seem like a very appropriate song for some of the people that they feature, but Cole himself is a famous African-American and the people are unforgettable indeed.

Anyway, I've seen two of them so far. The first was this afternoon: Thurgood Marshall, absolutely one of the most influential people, let alone African-Americans, of the second half of the 20th century. He was the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education, was the visionary behind the legal movement to desegregate the south as an attorney for the NAACP, and became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Without a doubt, an icon and a role model for anyone.

The second one I saw, however, was not so much of a role model: Marion Barry, former Mayor of Washington, DC, and current city councilman. If you recall, Barry was arrested and forced out of office after getting caught on video smoking crack in a hotel room. He served a sentence in federal prison before getting re-elected as DC's Mayor in 1994 and returned to District politics as a city councilman this past year (he received 96% of the vote). The commercial talked about how he has had "recent struggles" but has "overcome the obstacles in his life." Yeah, I'd say someone videotaping you smoking crack is a bit of an obstacle, albeit a self-imposed one. It seems like the group that made these commercials could have picked a more appropriate person to profile.

UPDATE: I saw one more commercial from this series, one featuring Marvin Gaye: a very talented R&B and soul musician of the 1960s and 70s, who was shot and killed by his father after Marvin attacked him while strung out on coke and meth. Another slight character flaw?