The Duchess of York’s excuse for selling access to her ex-husband, “I was drinking.” Fergie, Fergie, Fergie, what happened to you girl? She was the one who bounced back after all the pounding (the Duchess of Pork comments, the separation and divorce from Andrew). She had a Weight Watcher’s gig, she was looking good, selling books, and somehow she ended up drunk, in a bribery scheme, on camera. But it’s hard to feel sorry for Sarah Ferguson. In her exclusive interview with Oprah, Fergie watched the undercover video taken in a hotel room for the first time, “I haven’t faced the devil in the face. Because I was in the gutter at that moment.” The video shows Fergie crying and drinking. But the Duchess told Oprah she only needed about 40,000 pounds to get out of debt. She decided on a whim to up it to 500,000 pounds. But is drinking an excuse for what she did? I don’t know. It’s hard to sympathize with a duchess in debt. And even harder to believe that the drinking clouded her judgment that much. The hotel deal wasn’t done overnight. She had time to plan and scheme and set things up while sober. She needed the alcohol to go through with it. Very un-glam Fergie.

Update: Police say Erykah Badu will be issued a citation “about as serious as a traffic ticket.”
Two notable black men in our community–councilman Dwaine Caraway and columnist James Ragland–aren’t happy with Erykah Badu’s little strip tease in Dealey Plaza.  In what D Magazine’s calling “Badukadonk-gate” (really Bethany?), both Caraway and Ragland are taking Badu to task for her performance. Caraway said there wouldn’t be a problem if Badu had kept it clean, ”None of this would have occurred had she stayed clothed,” Caraway told The Dallas Morning News. “But since she didn’t, it elevated the need for making sure that we have policies in place that will protect folks and the integrity of the city as best we possibly can.” He didn’t specify the policies but I hate to see the Dallas Police Department or the city council waste it’s time on “Panty Patrol” outlining policies on how nude a person can be while shooting a video in a public place in Dallas.  Ragland, who also interviewed Caraway and Badu wrote, ” Badu, you see, is like many artists – quick to tell the rest of us that we just don’t get it when we take offense to something that’s rude, crude, vulgar or otherwise socially unacceptable. Instead, they hide behind their art, often putting themselves on a pedestal while painting critics with a broad and ugly brush. All that matters, of course, is that it was good for them.” Ragland said the “stunt” was nothing but an exercise in groupthink (the words that poured from Badu’s head as she lay “dead” on the sidewalk in the video). “And she got exactly what she craved. More artistic freedom? Sure. But let’s be honest. This was about tons of free publicity for her new song, “Window Seat,” for which she shot the “guerilla cam” video at Dealey Plaza,” said Ragland. Alright boys. You’ve done it. Wagged your fatherly fingers at a bad behaving sister. Way to stand up for the community and the poor Dallasites subjected to the sight of Ms. Badu’s bosoms and buttocks. Unfortunately, it’s all completely moot at this point. The video is done. And NOT ONE person who was there that day in Dealey Plaza filed a complaint with the police department, the city, or called the newspaper or TV stations within just blocks of the incident. The most Badu can be punished for is misconduct which could result in a citation maybe. I watched the video and it’s odd and I’d have probably freaked if I saw a naked woman walking down Elm Street too. Parents did jeer at her. Some hooted though. Was it a publicity stunt? Sure. But what do you call making yourself suddenly available to The News and television stations to speak your outrage on a hot topic that’s getting national attention Mr. Caraway? Coincidence? I wonder if all this discussion is more about Badu being nude or about being nude in Dealey Plaza in broad daylight? Seems to me none of would care if she pulled a little strip tease in Kiest Park at dusk on a Tuesday. Was it weird and artistic and somewhat confusing? Yes, but that’s Erykah Badu. And frankly all this guffawing (and character assassination) has less to do with Badu’s actions and more to do with city officials and reporters who didn’t know about the incident until after the fact, until after the video went viral, who, in essence, got caught with their pants down.

Folks are not happy about singer Erykah Badu’s new music video “Window Seat” shot St. Patrick’s Day  on in Dallas complete with mock assassination scene and  a blue blood stain under the singer’s head  that reads Groupthink. The grainy video recalls the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy except in Badu’s video she’s completely naked. Yes, naked. She starts by pulling up to the infamous downtown Dallas location clothed from head to foot and proceeds to strip layers of clothes away bit by bit while passersby stare (or look away) in disbelief as she walks past Dealey Plaza and the Six Floor Museum towards the grassy knoll. “The people caught in the shot were trying hard to ignore me… it was the peeps off camera yelling,” Badu wrote on her Twitter page.”they were yelling , THIS IS A PUBLIC PLACE : YOU OUGHTA BE ASHAMED : PUT YOUR CLOTHES ON : DAMN GIRL! etc…” Badu is a Dallas native and MTV’s Gil Kaufman writes the nudey scene isn’t anything new to the music industry but, ”the soul high priestess latches on to a lesser-followed path in altogether videos: the full-frontal artist reveal.” Apparently not everyone in Dallas is pleased with the “guerilla style” one-take full frontal shot. “I don’t understand how someone who lives here, who is a resident of this city, could do such a thing,” Lindalyn Adams, a civic leader who helped save the JFK site from neglect, told The Dallas Morning News. It may take a bit to make the connection with the video and the lyrics. But it’s rather disappointing to see a singer as talented as Badu go “on and on and on and on” with the stripping in a video for a very cheap, controversial few seconds in the spotlight. Maybe she’ll get more interest in her newest album New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh. It’s bad enough that people routinely stand on the little X on Elm Street where the fatal shot landed and smile for the camera, but is there really any artistry in stripping in front of children and strangers and getting “shot” in the head and die on a street butt naked?

Just got a new video camera uploaded my first video on You Tube. Check it out and don’t forget to donate to my trip To the Middle East. Forgive the quality as I’m just now testing it out and had to go with a much less expensive camera. Look MoJo’s out there. You know how expen$ive good equipment can be. And I’m not walking around the Middle East with a camera that paints a big target on my back and says “Rob her”. Hopefully, I’ll get  better at this stuff, but I’m excited to be foraging into a new area of journalism. And now you can see what I really look like (with makeup!) Check it out and post it to your Facebook and Twitter to help support my trip.

Would you freak out if one of your co-workers posted a You Tube video referencing the brutal massacre of Amish school girls in a down economy, after a round of layoffs when morale is only creeping up to just tolerable? I’m not sure if freak out is the right word. Disturbed maybe. But when you’re working in an industry where employees have to establish an anonymous blog to keep each other updated about pending layoffs (last year and the year before that but nothing so far this year) anything is cause for concern. But I’m not sure if a recent video posted by a Dallas Morning News employee (it’s not clear if he is a current or former employee) is cause for scandal. It’s not quite the ‘Up in the Air’ freak out moment rumors have made it out to be in my biased blogger opinion. Hell, I’d be scared if what was posted anonymously on the DMN cuts blog, said in bars or whispered in cubicles last year made its way to You Tube. A lot of us would have been facing restraining orders!

But when when this video surfaced last week it caught the attention of some folks at 508 Young Street and myself. The video makes repeated references the 2006 Amish school shooting the subject of which will be featured in the Lifetime movie “Amish Grace” this weekend. In the video, pop ups detail the scene in 2006 including the way the girls were shot “execution style”. Jelly Honk’s lyrics include a ranting melody of ‘no more, no more, no more’ and  ‘drop your guns, drop your guns, drop your guns’. The lyrics reference both violence and forgiveness and the video is dedicated to, “the children of Nickel Mines whose bravery in their final hour changed my life forever, inspiring faith against fear.” So do you freak out watching a video like this if it’s your co-worker or cubicle mate or call artistic freedom and file it away in ‘things I never knew about that guy’ and move on? Are we being over dramatic? HOH: the House of Honk has several videos that feature his talents with a guitar and harmonica. I actually like his style, but nowadays every body has that little niggling doubt in their mind: is this the mentally disturbed student who’ll freak out and blast us all to heaven? or is she the wacknut professor who’ll kill us if she doesn’t make tenure? or the condiment client who’ll shoot me and my son over money?

Normally, we all might laugh off a video like this but these aren’t normal times. And scenes from Up in the Air, where employees swiped all the items off desks, cried, got angry and threatened to commit suicide after being laid off by George Clooney and Anna Kendrick’s characters, only highlighted the problem. Lots of people were angry, frustrated, depressed, drunk and possibly thinking maniacal thoughts about their bosses when the layoff went down April 7 on Young Street last year. And not just the people who were laid off. But no one acted out any violent fantasies. And I’m not going to go into the security at the building but I understand why employees might be concerned. Why anyone might be concerned really. But before go casting aspersions, give a You Tube artist his due. Sometimes a music video is just that: music. Feelings, emotions that are especially poignant now. Rock on House of Honk! But be careful what you post.

Step off!  That’s what some sorority and fraternity members are saying days after members of Zeta Tau Alpha, a white sorority, won the Sprite Step Off National Step Competition in Atlanta. Yes, a bunch of honkies from Arkansas outstepped teams of African American students from across the country including members of traditionally black sororities Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi Beta and people are not happy. At the competition ZTA was booed. People couldn’t believe they won and some said the white girls shouldn’t have even been allowed in the competition.  Later, Sprite announced that  they discovered a scoring discrepancy and awarded Zeta Tau Alpha and Alpha Kappa Alpha each $100,000 in prize money and called them co-winners.   

Lawrence Ross Jr. at The Root reports, “The Sprite Step Off, broadcast on MTV2, distributed $1.5 million in prize money via regional competitions to winning step teams from around the country. With musical guests like Lupe Fiasco and Ludacris, this was the first national stepping competition to gain such widespread exposure, and the finals in Atlanta were highly anticipated. And while the nine African-American fraternities and sororities signed a licensing agreement with Sprite, earning an estimated $75,000 per organization, there was nothing in their agreement that prevented a non-African-American fraternity or sorority from competing. Enter Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority from the University of Arkansas.”

Zetas with Ludacris

The Zetas have been stepping for some time and on their campus race was not an issue. “Our chapter became involved in stepping about 15 years ago,” said Alexandra Kosmitis, step team participant and former Epsilon Chapter president. “The Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at our school hosts an annual step show. They invite all sororities and fraternities to compete in it. We have been keeping up the tradition ever since.” This smells of Hampton Universityall over again. Remember that incident last year when Nikole Churchill became the historically black college’s first white homecoming queen. Drama!  I know it’s strange to see white faces at a dance competition traditionally dominated by black sororities and fraternities. But barring the girls from competing and booing them afterwards? Really. Is this the ‘Change’ we all voted for? The Zetas had the cojones to show up at a competition that they were not welcomed at and won. Scoring discrepancy aside, the judges thought they had the stuff. And, yes, some white people can dance. Why don’t others show a little fraternal spirit and give the Zetas their due? See the steps for yourself.

The last time  Berenice Diaz saw her 10-year-old son, Jean Paul Lacombe Diaz, he was begging Bexar County constables not to give him to his father. Video taken by a school bus camera shows the little boy in tears screaming at the officers,  ”Please! He’s not my dad. He hits me lots of times!” And all Berenice could do was watch as constables with a court order took him away–see video here. That was Oct. 16. She hasn’t seen her son since. Oh, and that court order? It was obtained after Jean Paul’s father, Philippe Lacombe, presented manipulated documents from the Mexican judicial authorities that indicated he had legal custody of his son. No one has seen Jean Paul since then. On AC 360 last night, Bernice said the government helped kidnap her son. She blames police, her ex-husband’s lawyers and especially Judge Sol Casseb for issuing the order that let Philippe take his son. No one checked to see if the documents were valid and Berenice didn’t know the custody papers were ordered until constables showed up at the bus stop.

“When the guy can use the law that prevents kidnapping to kidnap a child, we have serious, serious problems,” Diaz told the San Antonio Express News. So how did Lacombe do it? “In 1988, Congress adopted the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, or ICARA, which established rules for returning children who have been abducted from their home country. More than 70 nations signed the treaty, including Mexico and France. It bans U.S. courts from retrying a custody suit that already has been resolved elsewhere. It allowed Jean Paul to be returned to his mother in 2007 after she found him in France, but it also allowed the boy’s father to dupe Bexar County’s court system last month,” the Express News reported. Now Diaz is on a mission. She’s gone door to door. She’s done interviews, set up a web site and is begging anyone who has seen Jean Paul or his father to come forward.

Jean Philippe Lacombe

A warrant has been issued for Philippe Lacombe. He faces charges of perjury, kidnapping, and interference with child custody. But he is believed to have the financial means to take off with his son (which he already did in 2005 when he took Jean Paul to France). Meanwhile, David Goldman, an American father who has battled Brazilian authorities for custody of his son, was just granted custody of his Sean Goldman four years after his wife took the boy for a two week “vacation” but stayed in Brazil with the boy, divorced David and remarried. She died in child birth last year and her family fought David’s petition for custody all the way to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court. Two very different fathers. Two very different cases. And all over children. Families on both sides are heart broken, angry, frustrated and exasperated with legal systems meant to protect children but in both cases stall reunification of the children and protect the “kidnapping” parent. It’s sickening to think that all a dad has to do is make a Xerox of “legal” Mexican documents and no one bothers to check them, the police refused to stall a seizure of the boy while he screamed that his father hurts him,  and that a mother is favored in her home country even when she illegally took the child. It is wrong.

Ever wondered how to get better brows, or mussed curls, or vibrant Megan Fox like eyes? Maybe you’ve tried before and ended up mascary or maybe you’ve ventured to the mall and got a professional makeover and left with $100 worth of products you forget how to apply by the time you get home. Contributor Kelsey Poyer has you covered. She’s scowered YouTube for the best beauty tips. Sit at home and apply and curl right along with other women who want a new look (and, yes, your makeup should change!). And don’t forget to register for a free Sephora makeover Friday, Sept. 18 from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Galleria Dallas. Of course you could skip all the good advice and go straight for the chola look…