{"id":15093,"date":"2019-08-15T18:11:35","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T02:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=15093"},"modified":"2019-08-15T18:11:35","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T02:11:35","slug":"jay-z-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2019\/08\/15\/jay-z-nfl\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Z\/NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is what we called co-option in the sixties. It was the worst sin possible, to get into bed with the opposition when they offered a carrot stick, but not the whole meal.<\/p>\n<p>This is about money and fame folks. That&#8217;s one thing the NFL&#8217;s got, at least for now, cash. Did you see what Roger Goodell makes? More than almost any musical performer. And other than taxes, it&#8217;s all net. There are no touring costs, they&#8217;re picked up by the league.<\/p>\n<p>So Jay Z refuses to do the Super Bowl in solidarity with Kaepernick, but now he&#8217;s throwing in with the NFL?<\/p>\n<p>God, of all the professional sports, football is the most like a plantation. The players, to a great degree African-Americans, are told what to do and if they break rank, they&#8217;re out. All the while exposing themselves to bodily harm and possibly dementia and early death while the fat cat white owners sit in safety. Maybe you have to play in a game to become an owner, see how the other half lives.<\/p>\n<p>So now the NFL struggle is over. No one can stand up to the man because Jay caved.<\/p>\n<p>Of course this is good for exposure, i.e. hip-hop at the Super Bowl, the NFL has ignored the sound the league runs on forever.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s like allowing you to sleep indoors but not eat at the dining table.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s how far we&#8217;ve come, everybody wants to be a mogul. Meanwhile, all these entertainment wannabes aren&#8217;t even in the league of the billionaires who own these teams. They&#8217;re minstrels, puppets on a string. This is all about money, and you ain&#8217;t got enough of it, so they don&#8217;t respect you. Why don&#8217;t you ask them to let you become a member of Augusta National, or the Bohemian Grove. No they don&#8217;t want you in their house, and Jay Z is single-handedly holding back the future of African-Americans in society.<\/p>\n<p>As for saying Kaepernick&#8217;s suit has been settled and we have to move on&#8230;how about Kaepernick himself? Jay had leverage. He could have insisted that Colin get a tryout, and that he couldn&#8217;t be cut unless a panel of independent coaches said he was worse than the guy who took his job.<\/p>\n<p>This is America, as Donald Glover would say. Where it&#8217;s all for me.<\/p>\n<p>Jay Z&#8217;s leverage is his fame and influence amongst his followers. The NFL knows that if they get Jay on their team, they put a hole in dissension. Who&#8217;s gonna side with a player protesting when Jay&#8217;s in with the owners?<\/p>\n<p>Now theoretically, Jay&#8217;s fans, the community, could protest his action, he could pull out, like Chappelle did with Comedy Central. Contracts are only a sketch, they&#8217;re not law and they&#8217;re made to be broken and redone. So Jay Z&#8217;s got room here. But he&#8217;s so busy being a business, man, that he can no longer do the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>We revere those who do the right thing. Who&#8217;ve got credibility. Who don&#8217;t defend someone like Kap and then sell him out.<\/p>\n<p>What kind of bizarre world do we live in where a corporation, Nike, stands up to the NFL, defends and invests in Kaepernick, and Jay Z says there&#8217;s no choice but to play by the white man&#8217;s rules?<\/p>\n<p>No wonder music doesn&#8217;t drive the culture, no wonder it&#8217;s a second class citizen.<\/p>\n<p>Music is about truth, and when you undermine that you&#8217;ve got nothing, you&#8217;re a pop artist, only as good as your last hit.<\/p>\n<p>We revere those who speak from their hearts and walk the walk and talk the talk. Who don&#8217;t do what&#8217;s expedient, who follow their heart as opposed to the cash.<\/p>\n<p>How much money did Martin Luther King, Jr. have? Gandhi?<\/p>\n<p>Those are the people who are remembered.<\/p>\n<p>And John Lennon, because he spoke truth to power.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the power of a musician.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve been co-opted you&#8217;re meaningless. Money doesn&#8217;t keep you warm at night.<\/p>\n<p>We all make mistakes. Jay Z made one here. He&#8217;s got to pull out.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is what we called co-option in the sixties. It was the worst sin possible, to get into bed with the opposition when they offered a carrot stick, but not the whole meal. This is about money and fame folks. That&#8217;s one thing the NFL&#8217;s got, at least for now, cash. Did you see what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3Vr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15094,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15093\/revisions\/15094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}