So
Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller were not happy with some of Jeezy and
Jay-Z’s “rants” during a performance in DC over inaugural weekend. I’m
sure you have seen the video. Jeezy thanked the
journalist who launched the Stacey Adams bombs at the former President
as well as the moving crew who got all his s### of out the White House.
Jay said he’s putting the puddy on pause because he’s not interested in
any more Bush.
The response from the Fox peanut gallery was par for their normal course. Jeezy and Jay were called offensive and low class.
I watched that short clip they played over and over again on Fox attempting to discover the source of the pair’s angst. It
couldn’t have been the profanity because O’Reilly and Miller did not
call them p#### mouths. It couldn’t have been the sexual connotations. We have all seen the transcripts from O’Reilly’s sexual harassment suit. He’d be ill advised to chastise anyone for sprinkling their metaphors with female anatomy references. So what was it?
Dennis Miller said The Inauguration should have helped them ratchet down the hate. So
I guess it was the Bush disdain that caught the ire, as if somehow the
communities further disenfranchised by his policy have no right to
dislike him. We should accept. We
should accept the lies, the war, the treatment of New Orleans and all
the other Bush decisions that set our communities deeper into the tank
and keep it moving. Expressing your dislike for being treated as if you have no worth is hate.
Now,
I am not blaming Dubya for every ill the country faces; especially in
the black community as we have more culpability than we would like to
admit. But most understand that he did his
damnedest to lead plenty of folks down the road to ruin. Even if you
don’t agree, how can you say Jay and Jeezy aren’t entitled to their
opinions? And how is purposefully forgetting or mispronouncing someone’s name not just as disrespectful? (Miller referred to Jeezy as emphysema.) How is mocking a culture not disrespectful. How
is single-handedly making Monday Night Football the lamest show on
earth for two damn years not disrespectful? (Don’t tell me you don’t
remember Miller from Monday Night Football.) O’Reilly said Jeezy and
Jay missed the memo of the country coming together; but when looking at
Bush’s approval rating, it looks like the country had been together for
some time. And that memo, Mr. O’Reilly missed.
What
I hear when I listen is ignorance; ignorance to who those two men on
the stage were; ignorance to how they represent themselves and the Hip
Hop culture and ignorance to the mixed bag of expression that has
always been found in the black community.
You see, those comments were made during a Hip-Hop show at which Hip-Hop fans were in attendance. Yes,
it was a public place, but the community involved appreciates and
accepts to colorful lingo and hard core expression used by its artists. Would the pair have spoken the same words with the same intensity at a mixed meeting? Of course not. It
is very easy for Bill O’Reilly to remove a conversation from the Hip
Hop context and hold it up to the public PC standards and say, “Look
how hateful they are.” It is extra easy when you
refuse to acknowledge the source of the harsh words; the catalyst of
the pain that leads to the reprimand.
In
public, O’Reilly has referred to lynching parties when talking about
Michelle Obama. He has admitted his astonishment when visiting a black
restaurant and not seeing angry black people screaming and cursing all
about. Yes, he said he was shocked we could make it through a night out
without calling someone a motherf****r.
Miller is no better. He
suggested a while back in jest that the disenfranchisement of the Vice
President was way worse than anything Black folks in this country have
gone through. And yes, that s### was supposed to be funny.
Look, I’m not here to weigh in on the appropriateness of what Jay and Jeezy said. However,
I would think while you are hurling aspersions at folks who you deem
offensive and low class, you would attempt to do so while taking the
high road. Unfortunately Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Miller were unable to do
so. To me that renders their opinions irrelevant and their behavior, for lack of better words, offensive and low class.**To Get The Latest In AllHipHop Editorial, Follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/allhiphopcom**
