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After the New York Times ran a chunky profile of Jay-Z this weekend, a gleeful Fox Nation concluded that the fabulously successful rapper/entrepreneur/NBA owner
By
Kent Jones
After the New York Times ran a chunky profile of Jay-Z this weekend, a gleeful Fox Nation concluded that the fabulously successful rapper/entrepreneur/NBA owner is against the Occupy protests at Zuccotti Park and elsewhere. One percenters, unite!
Headline? “Jay-Z Rips Into Occupy Wall St.”
Said the Times:
He gets a little agitated when the subject of Zuccotti Park comes up: “What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?” He says he told Russell Simmons, the rap mogul, the same: “I’m not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?”
Jay-Z likes clarity: “I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly. Because when you just say that ‘the 1 percent is that,’ that’s not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”
Does that sound like Jay-Z “ripping” Occupy Wall Street to you? Please. Hova might be asking the protesters to clarify their goals, but I suspect many of the protesters are asking themselves the same question. So what does it mean when Jay-Z then pointedly accuses some one percenters of robbing, deceiving and ripping off clients off with fixed mortgage schemes? That’s not ambiguous: “That’s criminal. That’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur.”
Evidently it’s possible to be for free enterprise and against vulture capitalism at the same time. It’s called “nuance.”
