Vinnie Johnson
     Staff Writer

The first time I ever laid eyes on Stacey Dash was in the video for Kanye West’s “All Falls Down,” off of his debut album, “College Dropout.” The year was 2004, I was ten years old and Stacey was beautiful. Her buttery caramel skin was accented perfectly by the gleam in her hazel-green eyes. And as a young boy on the brink of adolescence, I was mesmerized.

Fast forward to the year 2016 and I’m now a 22-year-old man, no longer an adolescent, who’s had my fair share of experiences with beautiful women. And one of the things that I’ve come to understand is that physical attractiveness is only a mere fraction of what makes someone beautiful. Intelligence, personality and spirituality are what really hold the weight. Over the last year or two, Stacey Dash has continued to make headlines, and though she is still beautiful, these headlines have not been about developments in her career as an actress, model and video vixen. Instead, they have been about her outrageous comments regarding societal issues within the United States. And after watching, observing and bringing her comments into context for the last few months, I have come to one conclusion: Stacey Dash is dangerous. And I do not mean dangerous in a comical or superficial sense. No, Stacey Dash is literally a menace to society, and the greatest modern threat to the security of our nation and its communities.

Over the last couple of years, Stacey Dash has become somewhat of a staple on — of all networks — Fox News. Although their cast is already made up of right-wing, conservative idiots, adding Dash to the mix gives them a bit more ignorance of colorful value. The rhetoric that Dash has spewed during her air time on Fox News has covered all areas and topics from politics, war, society, sexism and racism. Her rhetoric is not only idiotic and ignorant, but it is also poisonous. If she continues to be given this platform to speak her mind freely, I fear that she could infect millions with her disease of brainlessness.

This is the D-Virus, she is patient zero and we must stop her before she brings on the zombie apocalypse. I don’t remember the first moment that I realized that Dash was infected with this dangerous, potent and highly contagious disease, but for a while now it has been sort of a running joke in the black community. But I’ve grown to realize that this is no laughing matter. Hers is the type of ignorance that produces sociopathic dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and — God forbid — Donald Trump. I believe that I first noticed Dash was infected during the Presidential election of 2012, when she endorsed republican nominee Mitt Romney over our current president Barack Obama. She tweeted, “Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future,” and attached a photograph of herself in a red bikini in front of the American flag, I’m guessing to add some value to the tweet. She then went on Piers Morgan to quote Martin Luther King Jr. and explain that, “I chose him not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.” Clever Dash, clever.

In January of 2015, Dash shared her thoughts on rape in America. While appearing on the Fox News television show “Outnumbered,” she explained, “The other bad girls — bad women — are the ones who like to be naughty, might go out and play and get hurt and then, you know…  But the other thing about this is that it then blames the alcohol instead of the person who over-drinks. So it’s like, the same thing with guns. Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Alcohol doesn’t get you drunk; you get yourself drunk.” Not only is her logic totally trash, but she seems to have no sympathy for the millions of young women who are sexually assaulted on a yearly basis, referring to them as “bad girls… who like to be naughty.” If her sentiment is allowed to spread, the world will become a lot more dangerous. When you blame the victim you absolve the attacker of all accountability, and in a society that is already founded upon principles like patriarchy and sexism, it’s too easy to infect other people with your idiocy.

In April of that same year Dash shared her stupid opinions once again when she commented on the wage gap between men and women. In a conversation she had with talk show host Meredith Vieira she stated, “I feel like it’s an excuse. It’s the same thing with race. It’s an excuse. Stop making excuses. If there are opportunities, seize them and be prepared for them, and be the best, if that’s what it takes. If you have to be extraordinary, then be extraordinary.” In yet another trash opinion, she once again forewent all logic and reasonable thought process in order to retain her right-wing conservative stance. She chose to completely ignore that when you have to call for people to be “extraordinary,” in order to be treated equally, you yourself illustrate the problem.

But perhaps some of Dash’s most controversial comments have been in reaction to current race relations in America. She has said some of the dumbest shit, and it hurts my head to even think about it. As a matter of fact, I think I feel myself losing brain cells as I write.

One of the first comments I remember Dash making about topics important to the black community was criticism of President Barack Obama. In fact, Dash was suspended from Fox for two weeks without pay for her use of profanity when she stated, “Obama doesn’t give a shit about terrorism.”

She has been critical of Obama for a while, expressing her discontent with his presidency multiple times, claiming that, “Blacks are uneducated and feel worthless,” “blacks are getting money for free,” and that blacks have not progressed at all under Obama’s presidency. In fact, she even claimed that Obama and other members of the Democratic Party have handicapped the black community by using government to aid and curb the effects of institutional racism, instead of taking the Republican approach and simply telling them to, “work harder.”

Since then she has gone on to criticize BET and the fact that there is a Black History Month. While conversing with her right-wing homies on “Fox and Friends,” she said, “We have to make up our minds, either we want to have segregation or integration. If we don’t want segregation then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the [NAACP] Image Awards, where you are only awarded if you are black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms, it’s a double standard.” She also stated that she thinks we should do away with Black History Month because there is no designated month to celebrate the accomplishments of the America’s Caucasian population.

It seems that in all of her comments, Dash has lost sight of the fact that she is not only an American, but also a woman and a black person. She seems to have no sympathy for America’s subjugated populations, even though she herself is a member of one of America’s most disrespected groups, black women. Within her comments about sexism we hear someone who has clearly been mentally disconnected from reality. She disrespects the struggle of women in our society, and totally forgets the fact that her career began as a result of her physical beauty. She criticizes and disrespects black culture, calling for the end of BET, while forgetting the fact BET has written plenty of checks for her herself. In fact, she spent multiple years as a member of the cast of BET’s hit show, “The Game.”

BET is one of few television networks that was willing to pay you actual money for your horrible acting, and you have the nerve to disrespect it? You want to do away with black publications, but forget the fact that you got your start you have been featured in multiple black men’s magazines, from Jet to King. You expect people who have been subjugated and brutalized for half of a millennium to pull themselves up by their bootstraps because segregation ended 50 years ago? You may have forgotten Stacey, but you are black too. You may be doing well now, but millions of people who work just as hard as you will never reach success because of the systems that are in place.

To be completely honest with you Stacey, I think you’re a special kind of stupid, one that is infectious and contagious. I’m not worried about ISIS, global warming or nuclear war, because whatever virus it is that has caused you to reach this level of idiocy is the single greatest threat to the security of our nation and communities.