You have to hand it to the folks at Black Entertainment Television: they never shift out of “Funny Negro” gear. They don’t even do it during Black History Month.

So how did the folks at BET celebrate Black History Month? Why, by coming up with a show called “The 25 Most Bleep-Bleeped Moments in Black History,” of course.

I guess those bleeps are substitutes for the words “messed up.” Except that the word “messed” should really be replaced by the dreaded F-word that never has and never will appear on BlackAmericaWeb.com. So we’ll have to settle for “messed up.”

Comedian Paul Mooney hosted the show, and on it's scale, “messed up” was defined as black folks who went above and beyond the call of duty in bringing shame on the race.

“If they acted the fool,” Mooney said, “they made this list."

That sounds more like “The 25 Most Embarrassing Moments in Black History” to me. When I think of “The 25 Most Messed Up Moments,” I think of moments that were really messed up.

How about the "Mississippi Plan” of the 1870s, when white vigilantes, terrorists and Ku Kluxers shot their way into power in several Southern states, overturning Reconstruction governments in the process?

How about the terrorist uprising in Wilmington, N.C. in 1898, when white supremacists took over a city where black folks had achieved significant economic and political power? How about the race riots that destroyed Black Wall Street in Tulsa in 1921? What about the one that destroyed Rosewood, Fla., in 1923?

Hey, stop me anytime here. This list could go on a piece.

What about the one that didn’t even happen in the United States -- the 1912 massacre in Cuba of 6,000 Afro-Cubans who were trying to form an independent black political party?

“This was a significant bloodletting,” said USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham on the “American Legacy” show on TV One. “It is probably the largest massacre of people of color, of people of African descent, in the American hemisphere throughout the history of our time here.”

Those, dear readers, are truly “messed up” moments in black history. But when it comes to the embarrassing ones, the folks at BET still didn’t get it right.

Mooney’s choice for number one was Halle Berry’s “make me feel good" scene from the movie “Monster’s Ball.” Mine would have been our invention and perpetuation of the Willie Lynch fiction.

The one those masterminds at BET chose was former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry getting busted for smoking crack cocaine. But since BET was so determined to highlight embarrassing moments in black history, how did the network’s canceling all its news and public affairs shows not make the list?

Talk about embarrassing. And downright insulting. “Lead Story” was a BET news talk show that regularly featured Wickham, columnist Clarence Page and George E. Curry, the former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine. It was an excellent show, but honchos at BET canceled it anyway.

Then BET bigwigs did the unforgivable: they deep-sixed “BET Nightly News,” which aired at 11 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Now, I’d like to tell you the main reason I watched the show wasn’t to ogle pulchritudinous anchor Jacque Reed, but you all know I’d be lying. I WAS watching mainly to ogle Jacque. But, as fine as she is, there was a lot more to the show.

This show gave actual news. There were times when I got good column material from watching “BET Nightly News.” And where else could black folks see Congress of Racial Equality spokesman Niger Innis, a supporter of the Bush administration, debating black liberal Democrats?

When Hurricane Katrina hit and we needed a black television network to give us news about what was REALLY going on inside the SuperDome, there was no “BET Nightly News” to tell us. Cameras from a “BET Nightly News” crew might have caught police from suburban New Orleans forcing blacks and a smattering of whites back into the flooded city at gunpoint.

We need a black television network news crew to give us the skinny on the race war Latinos are waging on black inmates in the Los Angeles County jail system. White networks are either ignoring or underplaying the story.

When it comes to “embarrassing” or “messed up” moments in black history, folks at BET need look no further than their front offices for those who should be at the top of the list.