Paris Chanel

When surveillance cameras caught a naked Miami man eating the face of a homeless man, people couldn’t believe what they saw.

The video showed 31-year-old Rudy Eugene beating and then eating the flesh of 65-year-old Ronald Poppo for nearly 20 minutes until Eugene was fatally shot by Miami police officers. The grotesque scene was unthinkable and many wondered what drove Eugene to cannibalize another man. While many tried to pin the scene on mental illness, reports indicate that Eugene was apparently high and was possibly suffering from a drug-induced psychosis (his mother said he was a nice guy).

As if the Miami incident wasn’t enough, Baltimore Police just reported another disturbing instance of cannibalism. According to the Baltimore Sun, 21-year-old Morgan State University student Alexander Kinyua was arrested and charged with murdering his roommate Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie.

Kinyua’s father called police late Tuesday night when Kinyua’s brother reportedly found human remains — a head and two hands — in a metal tin in the basement. The brother and father left the room for a short time, but when they came back, the body parts had been moved and Kinyua was washing out the tin, the paper reported.

Officers searched the house and arrested Kinyua. The man allegedly confessed a shocking revelation: not only had he killed Agyei-Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and then dismembered him, he ingested parts of the victim’s brain and all of his heart. He then allegedly dropped most of the remains in a Dumpster behind a church in Joppatowne.

While cannibalism is certainly not new, these cases are disturbing and scary, and will continue to fuel rumors (and jokes) that zombies are no longer figments of our cinematic imagination, but could very well be your neighbor down the street or that creepy dude you pass on the street.

Remember when First Lady Michelle Obama told People magazine that if she could trade places with anyone, it would be Beyonce? Yeah. Turns out that wasn’t just a fun little pull-quote from a puff piece to promote her new cookbook. A few commentators were rankled by it, citing the Beyonce’s revealing sartorial choices, risque song lyrics, and suggestive dance moves as reasons Obama shouldn’t be so quick to play Trading Places with the pop diva.

In the quote that made the rounds when the story broke, the First Lady was rather specific in stating that it was Beyonce’s singing ability she admired: 

“Gosh. If I had some gift, I’d be Beyoncé, I’d be some great singer. The power of music, being able to play an instrument…It looks like musicians just have the most fun.”

It seems clear there that she gave Beyonce’s name as a familiar cultural reference. She immediately follows with, “some great singer.” The rest of her comment isn’t specific to Beyonce; it’s about the musical ability she wishes she had.

Still, the comparison bothered Keli Goff of Loop 21, and she insisted she wasn’t the only one, going on to cite her relatives and online commenters to support her view, before writing:

The widespread disappointment in the First Lady’s response appears to be threefold. First off, Beyonce, is pretty, talented, rich and famous, and to top it all off she seems like one of the nicest celebrities on the planet. She is also best known, not for her singing, but for wearing as little clothing as possible while doing it. And as successful as she may be, like many black entertainers before her, she pursued her career at the expense of pursuing an education, and I don’t mean college. She never graduated from high school or earned her GED; a topic of discussion that crops up on message boards when she misspeaks in interviews, which, unfortunately, is not an uncommon occurrence.

She later expounds:

So when the most influential black woman in the world, armed with degrees from some of the best institutions in the world, names Beyonce, a singer best known for a song called “Bootylicious,” as someone she aspires to be, how can we expect young black girls who didn’t go to Princeton to aspire to more than that?

Goff isn’t alone in her disappointment. In an article for The Root, Demetria L. Lucas also takes issue with the First Lady’s comment:

For a woman of Michelle Obama’s caliber to uplift Beyoncé as a role model, and to speak of swapping lives with her, sends a damaging, demeaning and dangerous message to women and girls. It says that despite education and intellect, grace and power, what really matters is our looks, our willingness to submit and our ability to swivel our hips to sexually satisfy the opposite sex. We hear that message loud and clear every time a reality show airs. We don’t need to hear it from our first lady, too.

Without examining too much of what each writer has to say about why Beyonce is an unfit celebrity for Michelle Obama to want to trade places with, I’d like to point out that each piece assumes that the majority of African American girls look to one or both of these women as the sole or primary arbiters of what they should become. To make arguments like these, you’d have to take for granted anyone else who may have a stronger, more hands-on, consistent influence on the life of an impressionable girl. Like her mom, her aunt, her favorite teacher or principal. You’d have to believe that none of them will look at Obama’s original quote and take it for what it actually was: a casual, offhanded comment about how she wishes she could sing like Beyonce.

Not to minimize either woman’s social influence, but I don’t think many girls who already admired Michelle Obama’s accomplishments and wanted to be like her will now automatically and without thought or qualification, decide they’d rather make their living shakin’ it in a sequined House of Dereon frock for millions instead–and vice versa. I doubt any girl who already wanted to be the next Beyonce will look to the First Lady’s comment to back up her choice.