February 9, 2010, by
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I spent a few minutes with Atlanta entertainer and radio host Steve Harvey yesterday at a local Kmart where he was promoting its "Share the Word" program during Black History Month.
Harvey's appearance was tied in with "relationship wellness," thanks to his huge best-selling book "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man," which has sold more than two million copies. He said his book was the third biggest selling book of the year, behind a "Twilight" book and Sarah Palin's memoir. He complained that her book was often discounted big time and that he tries to sell his at $19.99 or at worst, $16 at Kmart (though ironically, I could not find his book on kmart.com.)
He is working on a sequel to dig deeper into a woman’s psyche, especially those struggling to balance life as a single mom. “How can she find the guy to take over that,” he said. “That’s a major issue… the one thing I learned: I haven’t found a single woman who set out to find a husband who found one… you can’t hunt the hunted.”
Harvey joked how difficult it was to stretch out the part about how men think, given how simplistic we really are: “I had written 13 pages but the book company had me stretch it. You can summarize men in three pages.”
He expressed sympathy for Kanye West and anyone who became famous young such as Michael Vick: "He redeemed himself admirably."
He also waxed romantic about “Soul Train” and how he loved to see the girls more than the dances or the music. VH1 recently aired a great documentary about the program. “I wanted to be a Soul Train man,” he said. “My room had a sign on the door that said, ‘Welcome to the Soul Train.’ I had bean bag chair and beads and everything. Yah, I had a lava lamp. I was Mr. Soul Train.” His best dance move: The Rodeo.
Harvey hopes to bring a bit of original host Richard Dawson's sharp tongue to "Family Feud," which he is going to begin hosting this fall. "If you give a stupid answer, I'll let you have it," he said. (He's the first African American to take the helm, most recently held by John O'Hurley.)
My camera ran out of battery space just seconds after the interview ended. He joked that his family has “violent tendencies,” that it would be ugly if they ended up on “Family Feud.”
