Just when you thought Oxygen couldn’t stoop any lower with their programming after they tried to give Shawty Lo and his millions of baby mothers a show, they’ve decided to prove us wrong with Pastors of L.A. Following in the trend of reality shows about the wives of pastors and the children of them out here acting wild, the show will be about the actual pastors themselves, their often rocky journey to preaching the word of God, and how the megachurch pastors from Southern California live their lives when they’re not in the pulpit. Knowing Oxygen, the home of the always ratch Bad Girls Club, this show will probably be far from holy, and I’m personally not too excited about it…Here’s an excerpt of  the press release about the show from Oxygen, courtesy of Shadow and Act:

“Pastors of L.A.” will give viewers a candid and revealing look at six boldly different and world renowned mega-pastors in Southern California, who are willing to share diverse aspects of their lives, from their work in the community and with their parishioners to the very large and sometimes provocative lives they lead away from the pulpit.

“‘Pastors of L.A.’ documents these larger than life characters who are rock stars in their communities, with a fresh, unique perspective that will resonate with our young audience,” said Rod Aissa, Senior Vice President of Original Programming and Development, Oxygen Media. “By teaming up with Lemuel and Holly who are some of the best creative minds in the business and heavily respected within this community, we can deliver this authentic series with integrity, while also staying right on brand with Oxygen.”

“We are delighted to work with Oxygen to develop this groundbreaking series on the extraordinary lives of some of the most prominent pastors in America,” said Lemuel Plummer. “I come to this project with a respect and understanding of their world, having grown up as the son of a pastor and religious broadcasters. We intend to portray the human side of these pastors and the real world in which they live and work.”

“This show documents a journey of transparency from one man to the next as they endeavor to lead others to their own truth and self-discovery,” adds Holly Carter who holds a doctorate of divinity with an emphasis on marketplace ministry and is the daughter of a pastor and an industry veteran in faith and inspirational development and programming. “It’s a dose of reality and a pound of redemption coming from a creative team reared in the church.”

The cast will include Bishop Noel Jones, the brother of entertainer Grace Jones; Deitrick Haddon, a divorced preacher whose church has shunned him; Bishop Clarence McClendon and Pastor Wayne Chaney, who is battling with his family to make his church, Life Church of God in Christ, the next big megachurch in the state; Bishop Ron Gibson, a former drug addict who has come far, but struggles with his wife to bring a child in the world; and Pastor Jay Haizlip, who reaches out to the troubled youth after being one himself and also battling crack addiction in the past.

Everybody (though Bishop McClendon seems the most tame) seems to have a back story, and if you’re really interested in getting to know them better, the show will debut this fall. That is of course, unless a Change.org comes out before then…

Delusional doesn’t even scratch the surface of what DMX’s real issue is, but it’s a pretty safe description to use for a man who, with so many issues of his own that need fixing, calls someone who tries to help him “toxic.”

That’s the word X used to describe Iyanla Vanzant following the airing of his episode on “Iyanla Fix My Life” last Saturday. We already knew the rapper was upset when his publicist put out a statement on Monday morning saying:

“DMX agreed to be a guest on ‘Iyanla: Fix My Life’ with the understanding that she would be helping his relationships with his ten children. When he arrived for the taping, most of the content was focused on his struggles with drugs and poor parenting. Iyanla did not “fix” DMX’s life just made his image worse, and does not have DMX’s personal written consent to use the footage.”

Now DMX is moving one step further with that last allegation, exploring his legal options to get footage of his “Fix My Life” episode removed from the OWN network altogether. He told TMZ Iyanla was only supposed to ask him about his issues with women, not drugs, and he was totally caught off guard by the prodding into his addiction.

“Iyanla set the whole thing up to make me look bad for ratings. That lady is toxic … My last words to her were that she can suck my d**k and she still can.”

As much of a fan as I am of Iyanla, I do know that she can be preachy, but toxic? Sounds to me like he’s projecting his own mess onto someone else. While it may be true that DMX came to Iyanla about women rather than his children, that right there says he has some serious issues if he’s putting random groupies before his kids. And even if the episode stuck to his addiction to women, did he nor his publicist not think his addiction to drugs was going to be discussed as a factor there as well?

The bottom line appears to be DMX just wasn’t ready to do the work, as Iyanla would say. And the response he’s giving to the episode is only discrediting his claims that Iyanla is the one making him look bad and showing no one can do that better than himself.

Do you think DMX has any legal leg to stand on in getting his footage removed from OWN?

In Hollywood, plenty of drug scandals have made news headlines and while many of them end in tragedy and sometimes death, there are some celebrities who have overcome their addictions to be stronger and better than they were yesterday. Any addiction is hard to break, and as a celebrity, the added stress of constantly being in the public eye can make things even harder, but these celebs managed to triumph and we salute their success!

Getty Images

Oprah

As if a crazy past riddled with abuse and poverty wasn’t bad enough, Oprah also drug issues to contend with. During her 20s, Oprah admitted to using coke and she apparently was also a regular user during the ’80s. Today Oprah has long let go of her addiction and has become one of the most successful women in the world.

Source: WENN

One reason that many people will always love Mary J. Blige is for the level of realness that she never ceases to exude. Since What’s The 411, the singer has not only won us over for her amazing vocal abilities, but for her authenticity, her openness and her honesty. We love the fact that she doesn’t just freely discuss the good things, but also the bad things, the hurtful things, the things that may actually help someone else. In a recent interview with Kevin Sessums of Los Angeles Confidential, the Queen of Hip Hop Soul opened up about some of the challenging moments in her life and offers inspiration to us all as she recalls how she made it through. Check out some of the interview’s highlights.

On how Whitney Houston’s death impacted her personal alcohol consumption: 

“What I did was I chose to learn how to drink socially and it didn’t work. The test comes when you have to decide whether you’re drinking to be social or drinking to cover up something again. To cover up depression. To cover up guilt. Shame. Abandonment. All of that, man. Once I realized, “There you go again,” I had to stop. Whitney Houston’s death really affected me. Her death is another reason I stopped. I really do think I’m done. I looked at how that woman could not perform anymore.”

On being molested as a child:

“I was 5. Mmmm … yes. I was 5. I don’t want to go into the details. It’s something that hurt me really bad. I’m still the same way. When I open up to trust you, I trust you wholeheartedly. And then when you betray that trust, it closes me up.”

“The quiet. I always think about how quiet it all was. It was abnormally quiet. It was just quiet. And there are certain smells that… mmmm… well… someone was using this lotion on their hands an hour or so ago. I smelled this lotion and I had such a flashback about it all. It’s weird that we’d be talking about all this right now after me just having that flashback.”

On the dark moments in her life:

“That’s it. Life. You start from day one. And what we spoke about earlier—when I was 5 years old. That dark moment. That one dark moment. It only happened once, but after that there was so much else in my childhood that happened. So many dark moments—which all added up and that’s what sprung on the drug addiction, trying to numb it all with the drugs. The depression. The lack of love for myself. The lack of people loving you around you. The abandonment issues. Daddy not being there all the time. Mommy not knowing how to handle it all. Although she loves you, she abandons you at some point too. I’m not saying that to be down on my mom. She was just a cursed woman as well. There have been so many other dark moments that I can’t even talk about. I have given the world so much and even in the middle of all that stuff there has been so much Isht going on. It was all those tributaries that gave me such deep soul. But it is those same things that now have taught me how to be strong. In the past those were the same things that were killing me. But I made it out. I made it out.”

On believing in God throughout her addictions:

“I don’t know why. But I didn’t want to go to rehab. I believe that anything man himself can do for me, God can do for me in a greater way. I decided to pray and to seek God on my own. I just stayed in The Word. And it worked.”

“I loved God, but I didn’t love myself. When I would get really, really high and the daytime would come, I would feel like God was watching me. And that’s when I’d start to go into this panic thing. I remember one night I was soooooo high. And as I was trying to go to sleep there was this dream… mmmmm…. Gosh, man, I don’t know if I should be telling you all of this. But let me put it this way. I believe in God so much that I would not let the enemy win my soul. You know what I’m sayin’? God loves me no matter what.”

 

Jazmine Denise is a news writer for Madame Noire. Follow her on Twitter @jazminedenise

Source: Oprah.com

At this point I can officially say that I am unashamedly a STAN of Iyanla Vanzant and her new show on OWN, “Iyanla Fix My Life.” Every single time I watch an episode of the show I walk away shouting the life coach’s praises and thinking about all the lessons she inadvertently laid out for me to learn while working on someone else, but after watching Saturday night’s special with actress Maia Campbell, I came away from the program feeling somewhat uneasy.

Maia, as most of us know by now, has been notoriously exposed as a former drug addict, thanks to World Star Hip-Hop and opportunistic observers with a camera who splattered footage of the star having a drug-related meltdown all over the Internet. Since that time, Maia has gotten clean, boasting two years of sobriety, but her problems are far from over. For one, the 35-year-old suffers from bi-polar disorder and will always have to be on medication that, from her appearance on “Fix My Life,” appears to keep her in a somewhat dazed state. Second, the actress still appears to be mourning the death of her mother, author Bebe Moore Campbell, who died of brain cancer in 2006. Third, she is still confined to an assisted living facility which she is expected to remain in until at least March, which means she also does not have custody of her 12-year-old daughter. To say Maia’s issues are multi-layered would be an understatement, which is why I don’t think she was quite ready for Iyanla to “fix her life,” at least not in the public eye.

Personally, it was uncomfortable for me to watch Iyanla put Maia through various exercises, like acting out the traumatizing experiences from her past, like the drug meltdown that was caught on tape or the breakdown she had on the set of “In the House.” Perhaps it was just the acting aspect that seemed awkward to me, but as I observed Maia’s somewhat lifeless eyes and child-like demeanor, I almost felt like what I was seeing was something that I shouldn’t have been watching. One hour could never be enough to fix the troubled star’s life, much like all of the other individuals Iyanla works with, but there’s an enormous difference between helping someone with mental illness who is a recovering addict, and someone who is a bully with mommy and daddy issues. Shoot, even Evelyn got two episodes, Maia clearly needs much more than that.

And that’s the other reason some parts of the special rubbed me wrong. Though I will testify about Iyanla’s abilities from now ’til kingdom come, all I could think while seeing her on OWN was that a psychiatrist, rather than a life coach, would be much better fitted for helping Maia through the recovery process. I don’t doubt that Iyanla could bring the actress to an awakening at some point, but there were times during the show when I wasn’t even sure Maia could fully comprehend what was going on. I also felt as though Iyanla, being a friend of the family, perhaps should have passed up on the ratings opportunity and really put in work with Maia off camera. At the very least, I hope she is providing ongoing counseling to Maia because I’m not sure their session even scratched the surface of her issues, despite the fact that she has indeed come a mighty long way.

I think all of us who loved Tiffany on “In The House” and remember what a beautiful woman she was are rooting for Maia to overcome these obstacles in her life, but unfortunately after Saturday I walked away from “Fix My Life” feeling more sad and deflated about the teen star than optimistic about her future. Hopefully there is some other work going on behind the scenes that will allow her life to one day be fully fixed.

Check out some footage from the episode here. What did you think about Maia Campbell’s appearance on “Iyanla Fix My Life?”

Brande Victorian is the deputy editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

Well, that’s all folks. Michael Jackson has been dead since June 25, 2009, and after a media circus that has painted both the late singer and his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, as irresponsible and greedy folks, and a trial that didn’t get started until two years later, you can say that some form of justice has been served. Dr. Conrad Murray was just found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a jury that deliberated for a total of nine hours over two days.

While Murray’s lawyers tried their damndest to make it seem that Jackson was under so much pressure to perform and do well, that he took sleep sedatives on his own and administered a dose of Propofol to himself when Dr. Murray stepped out of the room, it didn’t work. The jury found that no matter who gave him the final dose or how he got it in his system, Murray was responsible because he was suppose to keep an eye on Jackson, and by leaving him alone, he caused the singer’s death. Especially since it was reported by witnesses that Murray was on the phone “parlaying” while his client stopped breathing.

Dr. Conrad Murray is now possibly looking at a maximum of four years in prison or a minimum of probation and the loss of his medical license. His license has already been suspended in California, so that seems like the probable next step. Judge Michael Pastor has decided to keep Murray in custody for the time being until sentencing.

Not sure if I feel happy or sad.

Let me rephrase that actually: I’m very happy that this over-amplified case is over, but still sad that Michael Jackson is gone. I was and will always be a huge fan of the singer, so knowing the manner in which he lost his life and the plans he had before he passed, it’s all still somewhat upsetting. However, I might be one of the few folks out there that doesn’t think Murray should go to jail for this. Blame that man for his death if you want, but in reality, blame can go around and around and around, from the folks in his family to the people that were supposed to be on his “team.” Real talk, I had no idea that MJ was addicted to drugs until he died (he covered it well), but those around him knew: his friends, some in his family. Hell, even Lisa Marie Presley admitted that his addiction ended their relationship, an addiction she became aware of in 1995. If this is true, then we can all see that folks had YEARS to intervene. But here we are, and all it took was one seriously misguided doctor to decide to take a phone call for all the blame to be transferred to him.

So yes, Dr. Conrad Murray is a mess for being greedy enough to ignore the morals of his practice to make money. However, I don’t look at him, or hear the details of the case and think he truly meant to put the icon in a coffin. He just got played into feeding Jackson’s habit, and in the end, played himself. But in all honesty, he’s not the first physician to do so for the pop star, he’s just the first one to get caught. I say strip this man of his license, give him probation, let him walk the streets with an infamous name, and leave the mess at that. He is the official scapegoat for a lot of people, but does he deserve jail? If you ask me–nope. I think losing the right to practice, knowing what he did for the rest of his life, and knowing that so many people are disgusted by him is more than enough. Maybe this will teach other people in Hollywood to start stepping up for the sake of their sick family members instead of letting them do whatever and take whatever because they don’t want to get cut off from a share of money they don’t deserve (and that’s directed at you poppa Joe, Jermaine and La Toya…).

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Drugs are very bad, kids. Very bad. Amy Winehouse,  whose album “Back to Black” was the business, has made no secret of her battle with severe drug addiction. The 27-year-old soul singer has been in and out of rehab over the years, but so far nothing has seemed to stick. Over the weekend she was in Serbia giving a concert and well…just look at the video below. Le sigh.

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“I am on a drug – it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

That statement came out the mouth of the King of Coke himself, Mr. Charlie Sheen in all his glory. While his outrageous quotes can be seen in top 10 lists of most outrageous things said in 2011, one must ask the question “are we laughing with Charlie Sheen or at him?” And if we are indeed laughing at him, because none of us would dare come off as half the lunatic he has been, why do we find humor in his addiction?

I too am guilty of watching his rants well into the wee hours of the morning, cracking up at the crazy things that come out of his mouth. But something Dr. Drew said really resonated with me, he said “this type of manic behavior results in someone going to jail or ending up dead.” Countless Hollywood alums have died from drug overdoses so that wouldn’t surprise us much. But I’m afraid that if Charlie Sheen were to succumb to death by drug overdose our hands would be dirty with his blood.

It’s “us” who have not only tolerated his rants, moreover we have encouraged them by overwhelmingly supporting his erratic behavior. Charlie Sheen is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for the shortest period of time for a twitter user to amass one million followers. I’m following him, are you? If so, we’re definitely part of his problem and not the solution.

Charlie needs some help, clearly! Should we abandon him during this trying time, a tactic that may drive him into further depression causing him to endanger himself? We abandoned Whitney, El DeBarge and Darryl Strawberry much to their own demise, why not Sheen? Do we support him but overwhelmingly send a message that he needs to get some help? Or should we mind our business and fight real battles, like the war on education in Detroit and not be bothered with these celebrities who have all this money yet squander it while there are millions of Americans living in poverty?

Would Charlie Sheen be such a media darling if his name were Martin Lawrence or Eddie Murphy? What do you think, should we roll with Charlie or kick him to the curb like Lindsay Lohan?