ESPN EMBRACES RACIAL-SLUR RAPPER FOR HALFTIME SHOW:
On ESPN, Jemele Hill, co-host of “SC6,” grew excited. Her previous noteworthy excitements were tweets condemning President Trump as a “white supremacist” who contributes to the oppression of blacks, the second of which led to a brief suspension for defying ESPN’s instructions to cut it out.
Tuesday, Hill was excited for a different reason: ESPN had selected the halftime entertainment for the its broadcast of the national championship football game.
“The powers that be finally got something right — Kendrick Lamar!” she squealed, pumping her arms in delight. “Kendrick Lamar!”
Given Hill’s race-based activism, one logically wonders why she’d so openly favor Lamar, a rapper who has grown fabulously wealthy through lyrics that consistently refer to
black men as “N—-s”.I’d be glad to provide Hill examples of his lyrical artistry so she can recite them on ESPN. She could start with “Money Trees.’’
That could never happen because ESPN would never allow such a thing, thus she’s spared from exposing her rank hypocrisy.
Or perhaps she can identify the proper context in which African-Americans should be called “N—-s,” and those logical instances when the vulgar degradation of women should be recorded, sold, performed, applauded.
Does Hill know that 12-year-old black kids now effortlessly, reflexively call one another “n—-s”? She’s good with that?
Odd, but not surprising, how it works. ESPN, a sports network, decries racism and sexism from within and beyond, yet eagerly seizes the cross-promotional (perceived) value in embracing such rappers. Still, not one ESPN exec would dare publicly repeat their lyrics.
Why, it’s as if the alt-right is the mirror image of the mainstream American left, or something. How mainstream is Lamar? Obama met with him in the oval office before his last State of the Union Speech, and he performed for Mr. Obama last Fourth of July, despite* Lamar’s lyrics, and the cover of his million-selling album:
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, known for using the f- and n- words liberally in his music and celebrating attacks on Bureau of Land Management officers?
It takes an Inner Party level of self-imposed amnesia for the left to simultaneously declare Trump a uniquely racist vulgarian, while blocking out their near-total control of pop culture for decades, and the former president’s embrace of some of the worst of it. Perhaps someone should have asked, are we being the baddies here, before going too far.
* I know, I know, I just Fox Butterfield-ed myself there.