Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Critiques HBO Series 'Girls,' Says Show's World is 'Mostly White'

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Critiques HBO Series ‘Girls,’ Says Show’s World is ‘Mostly White’

by Zach Stoloff on Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 12:08AM

Why is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing a television critic for the Huffington Post? We have no idea, so let’s get that out of the way, first and foremost.

Abdul-Jabbar used to have a regular column with HuffPo years ago, but he hasn’t been penning for them in quite a while. Well, he’s back, and the all-time NBA great wants you to know what he thinks about the popular HBO series Girls in a column posted on the website on Thursday.

In a blog post entitled “Girls Just Wants to Have (White) Fun” Abdul-Jabbar criticizes the Lena Dunham-led show on a number of fronts, both on critical and sociopolitical grounds. For one, Abdul-Jabbar makes a fairly common observation about the show that while it takes on controversial sexual subject matter, at the same time it only wades into such situations lightly. Another criticism is that he says the male characters are actually more interesting than the female ones.

However, Abdul-Jabbar also repeats another race-related criticism of the show, not only noting the lack of characters of color, but bemoaning the show’s failed attempt to introduce a black female character, too. He even goes so far as to say that a certain adult marital aid might have been a better addition to the cast.

In typical meta-fashion, the criticisms of Abdul-Jabbar’s criticisms have been mixed. For one, The Atlantic referred to his notes on the series as “astute.” In contrast, SB nation thinks that Abdul-Jabbar’s critique is just a little too common, and doesn’t add much to the conversation about the show’s position in the zeitgeist.

Once again, one might wonder why HuffPo even tabbed Abdul-Jabbar for television criticism, so we’ll leave it up to you to decide whether his critique holds weight.

Lena Dunham photo via Facebook/Girls

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Is this a fashion shoot? The Grammys? Nope, it’s a Super Bowl news conference.

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Say it ain’t so.

I just read Vijay Singh admitted to using the banned Deer Antler Spray. SO ALL THIS TIME SINGH-MANIA WAS A LIE????
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Eric Stangel (@EricStangel) January 31, 2013