Monday, August 19, 2019

Jay Z and NFL join forces





It has been announced that Jay-Z is going to become one of the owners of a NFL team and lip service will be paid to social injustice at some point by the forming of an "entertainment and social justice partnership". As you well know, Colin Kaepernick played a major role in dragging the NFL into matters of social consciousness, particularly overly/needlessly aggressive policing by officers that often end up with an unarmed black person being killed by a cop. Now it's not as if a fair amount of attention wasn't already being paid to the situation prior to Kaepernick taking a knee for the cause. Every other week it seems a video of racial bias goes viral. Word on the "street" has it that Russia is playing a big part in making sure such videos are seen by the maximum amount of people to keep friction between whites and people of color in America at peak. Whether that's true or not, what's indisputable is that too many of the racial tension incidents where at least one of the participants was a police officer ended up in someone being shot. More often than not it proved fatal. More often than not the victim of melanin had not committed a crime and was not armed, yet still managed to be on the receiving end of a cop's bullet. It's no wonder that Colin Kaepernick was disturbed by what seemed on the verge of becoming an epidemic. All decent people were, and many black people grew frightened and/or furious. Something clearly needed to be done and once Hillary Clinton "lost" to Donald Trump it was clear that aid wouldn't be coming from the federal government any time soon.

But was the NFL the best place to take a stand and make a plea? One could reasonably argue that this situation has nothing to do with professional football (none of the prominent victims has been a NFL player), so taking a knee while the National Anthem was played before football games was perhaps misdirected effort. During televised games is certainly a high profile, much viewed opportunity to draw attention to an issue. But it's not as if the NFL was the entity that needed to do anything about horrible, homicidal police officers with bigoted mindsets who are not worthy of the uniforms they wear. In fact, the only meaningful action taken by the NFL was collusion by team owners to keep Colin Kaepernick from returning to the league. He had become a PR nightmare for a league that wanted focus to be on its entertainment value. The NFL already had plenty of unavoidable thorns in its side. How best to discipline star players for various infractions, particularly those that do not lead to criminal convictions but seem in need of moral condemnation. The long term effects of concussions. Refs screwing up calls in prime time games, leading to constant tweaks of what is/isn/t a catch, what is/isn't reviewable by instant/slow mo replay. The last thing the NFL needed was to be dragged into politics, into the debate over what constitutes patriotism, into matters that were supposed to be in the domain of #BLM (Black Live Matter), not #NFL (National Football League).

Just as the dust FINALLY appeared to be settled (Colin Kaepernick sued for collusion and won an undisclosed amount of money. He still wants to play in the NFL and still hasn't been called for a try-out, but when you sue someone it's not surprising that they choose not to contact you for a job interview) Jay-Z of all people stirred things up again. We knew the topic was of interest to him because he had previously shown solidarity with Kaepernick, wearing his old jersey and referencing him when stating his reasons for not participating in the Super Bowl halftime show. Therefore it came as a surprise to many that Jay-Z isn't making headlines by coming out with a pro Kaepernick - anti NFL rap song, but rather, by entering the ranks of NFL team owners. Who the team will be remains a mystery for the time being. 

Jay-Z is famously a billionaire. If you're a billionaire who enjoys sports and/or realizes pro team ownership is a sound financial investment, you have the option of buying into a team. So if Jay-Z does have any more new music left in him, perhaps he will tell us why he decided to buy into the NFL with a remake of Bobby Brown's MY PREROGATIVE. If you see Jay-Z as being a sell-out because he seemed to switch sides from the oppressed to the oppressor, I can understand that interpretation. If you see him as as being a much needed brown face in the sea of white pro team ownership, I can understand that too. If you believe Jay-Z wants not only to make a sound financial investment and gain entry into the ultra exclusive club of professional sports team owners, but also to use this position to make change for the better in the NFL where it comes to taking action on behalf of social injustices, I can see how you would reach such a conclusion. Doesn't mean you're right, but we'll find out soon enough I suppose. For all we know Jay-Z may plan to finally give Colin Kaepernick the opportunity to try out for a NFL team once he's officially a shot caller for one of them, whichever one it may be. I can't imagine this to be his primary motivation by a long shot, but perhaps it's an item on the agenda of Beyonce's hubby. Based on past history Colin Kaepernick has shown himself to be a flawed quarterback who nonetheless is better than a fair number of back-ups currently in the league and is perhaps better than a few starters. This is assuming that he 
hasn't become quite rusty since his last time under center, which is certainly a possibility.

If Jay-Z was a hero to you because of his status as hip hop legend, you may feel betrayed. Or else feel the need to defend him against accusations by those who believe he has gone Benedict Arnold. As for me, I am neither enraged nor especially encouraged by Jay-Z's latest venture. I didn't see him as saving or destroying the world with Tidal (which I mostly ignored) and same deal with his foray into the NFL. If the team he ends up involved with happens to be my beloved New York Jets I suppose that will make me care a little bit more, but not substantially. Jay-Z told us a while back that he has 99 problems. Seeming to turn his back on the plight of Colin Kaepernick, patron saint of lost causes whom I sincerely respect but idolize no more than I idolize Jay-Z, adds a 100th problem. But I suspect it will blow over soon enough. Colin Kaepernick may or may not get a shot to return to the league. Jay-Z will remain wealthy, and I think he realizes that he won't be adding to his riches courtesy of many more hit songs in the future (he's rather long in the tooth by rap star standards), so instead he'll get his current money to make future money for him. Such is the way of capitalism and successful capitalists. He may lose some fans over this at least temporarily, but as with DOLLAR$ he has plenty of them to spare. As for the rest of us, we'll continue to enjoy Jay-Z songs and NFL games. No amount of kneeling for the National Anthem or saluting the flag or arguing over it threatens to impact that by a substantive amount. Ultimately we are here to be entertained.




























COMPLETELY UNRELATED BUT HERE YOU GO ANYWAY

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