“Little bitty pretty one, come on and talk to me” about that one time a vintage clip of Frankie Lymon performing amid the blandness of several saltines resurfaced on social media.
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On Tuesday, a Twitter account by the name of @africanarchives posted a video of Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers performing their hit “Little Bitty Pretty One” with some…interesting crowd reactions. The account captioned the post with: “Imagine being so racist you can’t even enjoy an iconic bop.”
As you can see, the shots of the audience (consisting of a balanced demographic of blonde and brunette white women) do not match the energy on stage. Lymon’s zestful stage presence (also, shout-out to Larenz Tate’s portrayal of the late iconic singer) is bursting with joy while these bigoted birds are as bland as the cottage cheese casserole they made for dinner following the concert. They are as rhythmless as the trot they made some 60-odd years later to the polls so they could vote for a tangerine tyrant who eventually lost the race fair and square. Welp.
Anyway! “Little Bitty Pretty One” was a bop (way before my time, obviously) and is still a bop to this very day!
How could you not at least bop your head a little bit?! Tap your feet? And fix your face, ma’ams! Ugh. Naturally, Black Twitter had some things to say!
The Root staff had some commentary, as well. The Root’s Managing Editor Genetta Adams contributed a viral tweet: “Wow, these Jim Crow Karens look super salty,” equipped with several crying-laughing emojis.
Jim Crow Karens! It rolls off your tongue quite nicely.
In our work Slack, The Root Staff Writer Anne Branigin offered some insight into their stiffness noting, “I’d probably be that salty if I found out I only clapped on the 1s and 3s, too.”
True.
Straight From 
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