For the sake of anonymity I'm changing a couple names, but I wanted to share with the tribe a story recently told to me by a dear friend 4 days ago.

I've known Ruben (not real name) since grade school. He was always super creative and aspired to be a TV star when we were kids. He didn't make it to being a TV star, but he did become a writer. A damn good one. Good enough that for the last 15 years he's lent his talents to the likes of Wildin' Out, WWE, Impact Wrestling and other programs. Long story short, Ruben's got some meat on him in the world of writing.

3 months ago, he was given an opportunity most writer's bust nuts over...the chance to pen the script for an original pilot. I'll not mention the network for privacy, but one of the big cable networks was looking for a new "Modern Family" styled sitcom, and my boy Ruben got the nod to put one together...and that he did. He told me it took him 2 months to flesh out the theme and characters. The show would revolve around an integrated family. The husband is a Black divorcee with a 16 y/o daughter. The wife is a Hispanic widow with 14 y/o twin boys. They've been married 2 years, and at the start of the show she finds out she's now pregnant with their 1st child together...a whoopsie. Supporting characters are the wife's sassy-ass mother, who refuses to act like grandmother, the husband's clueless but kind hearted younger brother, and the husband's ex wife, who serves as the antagonist early on.

So here he writes out the entire pilot, and 4 days ago he finally got to bring it to the network. Safe to say the network contacts flamed his script. 1st thing they pointed out was how polarizing having a black woman serve as the antagonist would be. Can't piss off "the sistahood" can we? The next thing he mentioned was how they said they weren't fans of how the husband was written. How he was way to masculine. Up next, they picked on the idea of a black/Latino integrated family. But a white/Latino family is perfectly fine? Long & short of it, this network that usually prides itself on progressive and inclusive programming totally shit on Ruben's script because it was to based for their tiny brains. The killer is when one of these folk told him...and I quote "maybe revise it a bit and make the more Lorenz Tate and a little less Andrew Tate." My jaw dropped when he told ne that part.

So yea, Ruben thanked them for the opportunity, but vowed he'd never work another project for that network again...not even freelance. And that's proof positive that strong male lead characters on TV and movies are shunned by modern day Hollywood. They want the women portrayed as smart, strong and liberated...and the men portrayed as aloof, docile and needy. Oh, don't worry about Ruben, he's not strapped for work. WWE just recently hit him up for work helping out leading into Wrestlemania...and he's always got projects down the pipeline.