Fair play, a derivative of honesty and once a companion of common sense and common decency, is so lost in mainstream American news media that it may never resurface until it appears in an obituary.
Imagine if our previous president, George W. Bush, made the political and social scene with this fellow, a wealthy campaign contributor and inaugural VIP guest:
An ex-con entertainer who wrote and performed songs loaded with hate for gays, women and black men, while boasting of his allegiance to illegally owning and discharging assault rifles and automatic handguns as tools of lawlessness and murder.
It wouldn’t have happened because it couldn’t have happened! The media would have forced Bush to denounce that friendship and renounce his own rotten judgment. Calls for his impeachment or resignation would be immediate.
And the news media, to this noble end, would have done their job.
Yet, this same presidential buddy exists in and around the Obama White House in the form of rapper Jay-Z. The media, however, won’t touch it. This president has never been asked to explain his predilection for such an entertainer.
In Obama’s speech at his second inauguration last month, he stood hard on two issues: Gun control and civil rights, including gay and women’s rights. Jay-Z, whose wife, Beyoncé, was selected to sing — sorta — our national anthem at the inauguration, was an honored guest.
Yet, well before and throughout the Obama Administration, Jay-Z has made a fortune — some of it contributed to the Obama campaign — by recording and performing his position on those issues:
Black men are “N- – – – z.” For crying out loud, Jay-Z has done more to return the N-word to mainstream dialogue than any 10,000 white racists working as one.
Women, at best, are “bitches and whores” to be immediately discarded after sex and their usefulness described in the most vulgar terms. (The Obamas have two daughters).
Jay-Z has scripted, recorded and sold songs belittling homosexuals as “f- – s” and the Spanish slur for gays, “m – – – – – – s.”
Guns? Geez. Jay-Z has written, rapped and recorded so many odes to street murder that it’s hard to keep track. Glocks, Tecs, chrome, 9-millimeters, AK-47s. He has sung love songs to guns for over 15 years. They’re not cautionary tales or laments from the mean streets; they’re boasts, threats. Here’s one of many:
“I keep a banger in the ankle, one in the hip.
Two in the stash, one come up when I shift.
I keep one under the chair where I sit.
I even got a gun in the hair in the bun of my bitch.”
But the president of the United States — this president of the United States — is never asked about such things by a media that ignore in some presidents what they’d never allow in others.
This month, Mrs. Obama flew to Chicago to attend the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, an African-American girl murdered by a gunshot.
Mrs. Obama’s presence was a noble, representative act given that Chicago has had 5,000 murders in the last 10 years, the vast majority of the victims and perpetrators being young and black or Hispanic.
Yes, the madness — here, there, everywhere — must stop!
Of course, Mrs. Obama, later joined in Chicago by her husband, was never asked to explain her and the president’s fondness for Jay-Z. No one would ever hand them — or a White House spokesperson — Jay-Z lyric sheets and ask the first family if it would read them aloud, let alone approve their content.
So, as President and Mrs. Obama’s hearts continue to break over what’s ailing America we’ll leave with the chorus from a song by one of their favorite performers, election contributors, campaigners and VIP inauguration guests, Jay-Z. Out of respect for the President and the first lady, I’ve chosen one of his tamer numbers:
“Put ya guns up in the air if ya feel me.
“F – – k ‘em all day, f- – k ’em all night. We don’t love these hoes.”