Neil Patrick Harris's tuxedo was hardly the whitest thing about last weekend's Emmys, according to a new complaint by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Just check out the audience, it mentions, including a nominee base comprising a handful of minorities, three black presenters and exactly one non-white winner (Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo). Not so good, says the NAACP's man in Hollywood -- who wants changes now.
CBS was a particular target for Vic Bulluck's wrath this morning, with the executive director of the NAACP's Hollywood office seething to the L.A. Times that he "was sitting in my chair and kept sinking lower and lower" during Sunday's awardscast. He cited an in-house report from last year indicating the network's last-place ranking among employers of minority writers and producers, then singled out the Emmys themselves as demonstrating the "clear lack of creativity and vision in network television." This, on the same day CBS scored its late-night Obama coup. Ironic!
Neither CBS nor the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences responded to Bulluck's blast, which namechecked NBC legends Brandon Tartikoff and Warren Littlefield's development of The Cosby Show as a watershed that contemporary networks should emulate. I'm not sure if that's the example I would have used (the Huxtables were whiter than my family half the time), but it raises some good points: Is WGA fractiousness really all that keeps a hit like Tyler Perry's House of Payne from Emmy recognition? Should Everybody Hates Chris have received more than simply a token cinematography nod for its final season? And among issues we can actually control: Jon Cryer over Tracy Morgan? Really, Academy?