Apologies for length, but there are too many gems in this to pick from
How do you treat a Lady of Soul? Very, very carefully.
That's what California high school sophomore Rommel Zamora is learning after launching an online petition criticizing the powers that be at Soul Train for selecting Ashanti as their Lady of Soul Entertainer of the Year, an honor to be bestowed on the rising R&B singer Saturday in Pasadena, California, at the Eighth Annual Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards.
Zamora's cyber-statement drew the attention of TV and radio stations, amassed more than 20,000 virtual signatures (through today)--and apparently prompted a bizarre diatribe from Soultrain.com that dissed the 15-year-old as a "grossly, uninformed moron."
All in all, more than the kid bargained for.
"I didn't really take [the petition] so seriously," Zamora says. "I was bored and I had nothing to do."
On July 31, the bored Zamora logged onto Petition Online and tapped out a modest (and moderately tempered) 116-word petition, entitled "Better Candidate for Aretha Franklin Award."
In it, Zamora called the selection of the 21-year-old Ashanti for the Aretha Franklin--the official name of the Lady of Soul's Entertainer of the Year honor--"an insult to other entertainers who are more deserving." (His pick to click? India.Arie.)
"Ashanti simply lacks singing ability and stage presence," Zamora wrote.
The teenager says he told his friends about the petition. He says he figured he and his pals would click enough buttons to maybe crack 100 total cyber-signatures. But then media outlets picked up the item--and thousands of people Zamora never met started logging on and adding their names.
Then Soultrain.com got funky.
In a response Zamora says was sent to him on August 9 from the Soultrain.com's Webmaster email address, the entertainment site alternately suggested that Zamora's Internet campaign be called, "I'm a fucking loser, I'm not talented or successful, I don't know shit about the music industry and I need to get a motherfucking life!!"
A call to Don Cornelius Productions, the parent of Soul Train and Soultrain.com, was not returned.
"I think they're just mad," says the still even-tempered Zamora of Soultrain.com.
In addition to being emailed personally to Zamora, the blistering response, which also called out the "white-owned" BET.com for publicizing the teen's effort, was posted for several hours on August 9 on Soultrain.com. (No such page currently can be found on the site. Zamora includes what he says are screenshots of those pages on his own Website, The Untold Truth.)
In a message about the petition that currently can be found at Soultrain.com, the Website seems to concede it blew a gasket. "We are no longer angry over what has been a turmoil of insults," the unsigned statement reads.
But the "turmoil of insults" hasn't quite died down yet. Soultrain.com bemoans how "such a large group of individuals" could fall prey to "Black-on-Black disrespect and hatred...under the leadership of an individual whose foreign-sounding name (Rommel Zamora) may be an indication that he is not African-American."
"I mean, I'm not black," Zamora says, "but it doesn't matter. That's not the point."
To Soultrain.com, the point apparently is this: "We will continue to pursue our original dream and to follow our creative instincts" (As well as rant about how "during an age when suicide terrorists have been able to level skyscrapers," thousands have "nothing better to do with the precious time they all have left on Earth" than sign Zamora's petition.)