Blasting The Blogs: Gabrielle Union Speaks Out

Gabrielle Union is fed up with the way she's been portrayed on many of the Black, non-news blogs. The 35-year-old actress was once a fan of many of the online blogs, but once Union began seeing the fictitious accounts of her personal life being "reported" by the blogs, she realized how reckless some of the online portals can be.

"October [2007] was a really bad month for our blogs," the actress began. "It was also the month that I was literally crisscrossing the globe. It was the month that I had where I was not working on a set, where I was lobbying different state legislatures to get more funding for centers and I'm going to all these different breast cancer events all around the country."

The Omaha, Nebraska-bred talent said that she was chastised by the blogs for jet-setting across the country for her charitable causes. Instead of reporting why Union was actually in the various cities, most blogs accused her of becoming a professional party girl. The 'Daddy's Little Girls' star believes the picture painted about her online undermines the seriousness of her philanthropic endeavors.

"Anytime you try to negate my voice and my character and what I stand for, you're squashing all of the good work that I'm trying to do for our community. I'm talking about African-American assault victims, African-American breast cancer statistics. I'm not talking about any other community, I'm talking about us and anytime that you try and attack me and attack my character, you're attacking my voice. If no one else is speaking up about these things then we're shooting ourselves in the foot," she vented.

Union, who most recently starred in the Queen Latifah-produced 'A Perfect Holiday,' recognizes that the attention she's received comes with the territory, however she would still like to see the blogs attempt to use some integrity with the stories they disseminate. Gabrielle Union & Hill Harper on the red carpet

"I almost get to a point where you can say whatever you want to say about me, but print some facts about our community that can help somebody," she explained.

"I don't care because I combat lies. I really used to think that if you read it and you see it and it's in a magazine, a newspaper or you see it on TV, then it has to be true. And it's just not true! I don't even know how to combat that except for do more good things for the people that I care about which is my own community."

Last fall the Neutrogena spokesmodel was the subject of the blogs, a New York gossip column and one of the tabloids, which had her romantically linked to Michael Jordan, actor Hill Harper, and both rapper Ludacris and his manager, Chaka Zulu all in the same week.

"It's sad that people who have that forum where you have all this traffic... If I really did get arrested or stole someone's flipping husband and the wife was calling me, sure. So if I do it, talk about it. I own that, I screwed up. It's never happened! Don't create crap that is negating one of the few voices in our community that Gabrielle Union & ex-husband Chris Howard at the NAACP Image Awards actually likes Black people, loves Black men and is actually trying to do something for our community and make changes. Don't try to kill that voice along with your stories so that you can get a couple of more subscribers. It's just bulls--t and its unfortunate," she concluded.

In May 2001, Union married NFL player Chris Howard of the Jacksonville Jaguars. The couple separated in Nov. 2005 and their divorce was finalized in April 2006.