Unless you belong to an arbitrarily specific religion that prays exclusively to Gayle King and/or Oprah Winfrey, neither of those women are gods. Which means that neither is infallible. And if, for instance, you allowed Gayle to borrow your last $20 and she refuses to pay you back, or you invited Oprah to a game night and she stole all of your forks, โfuck Gayleโ and โfuck Oprahโ would be reasonable responses to those acts.
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What is unreasonableโwhatโs past unreasonable, actually, and is legitimately gross and violentโis the vitriol these women are receiving for doing things some (wrongly and stupidly) perceive to be antiblack. In Gayleโs case, both Anne Branigin and Maiysha Kai have recently written brilliant pieces articulating the fallacy of believing now is โtoo soonโ to think about, discuss, and reckon with how and where the sexual assault allegations against Kobe Bryant fit in his legacy. And Maiysha specifically deconstructed the explicit misogyny in Snoopโs response to Gayle and the tens of thousands of digital and spiritual co-signs it received. So I wonโt go back down that road.
But I will say this: Kobe is dead, yโall. And as shocking and tragic and devastating as that still is for many people, erasing a crucial part of his legacyโand attempting to flatten the voices of people uninterested in hagiographyโainโt gonna bring him back. And it ainโt gonna change who he was, what he was accused of doing, and the still-vibrating reverberations from that fallout. We all leave footprints when we leave here, and โColoradoโ is cemented, forever, in the soil. This doesnโt mean that redemption was/is impossible. Just that the world is messy. And weโre the ones who make the mess. And if finding space to grapple with both the Kobe Bryant you wish to memorialize and the Kobe Bryant that Gayle King asked Lisa Leslie about breaks your brain, good! Itโs supposed to be hard! But thatโs honest. Thatโs necessary. Thatโs human.
Whatโs easyโwhatโs the easiest thing Iโll think about and/or do todayโis Snoop.
Snoop Dogg has been fortunate enough to shift into this current, classic rock/elevator-rap phase of his career, where he retains status as an โelderโ and even allows himself to be called โUncle Snoop.โ Heโs used his tremendous platform to be a vocal critic of what he perceives to be antiblackness. Along with his critiques of Gayle, heโs shared similar thoughts about Kanye West. The irony here is that while heโs accusing Kanye and Gayle and Oprah of being sellouts, if being demonstratively antiblack is what makes you one, Snoop has been a sellout his entire career. And he isnโt just a garden-variety sellout; heโs perhaps the most prominent sellout in the fucking country (and definitely the richest). The Michael Jordan of sellouts.
Understanding this requires a fundamental shift in how antiblackness is commonly thought of and assessed. Basically, you have to decenter black men and center black people. In his almost 30 years (!!!) now of being a public figure, thereโs nothing Snoop has done to suggest that he doesnโt hate black women; nothing you can nod to in his โreal lifeโ as a mere counterpoint to the art heโs created, which has consistently and happily displayed an antipathy for black women and encouraged disrespect and/or violence towards them. He is an unfathomably rich and middle-aged black man who, in his almost 50 years of life on Earth, has only displayed public affection for one womanโMartha Stewart (who is, um, white)โwhile relentlessly shitting on the women who look like him.
Again, this is easy.
Whatโs also easy to see is that those insults and threats towards Gayle were a performance. When watching that video, I didnโt see a man who was hurting; pouring his grief out on film and through anger. I saw an expert performer who (rightly) assumed his fury would seem righteous if directed at a black woman he believed to be vulnerable to claims of antiblackness. Everything about it, from the positioning of the camera to the bonnet or whatever the fuck he was wearing, was stagecraft. A bullyโs greatest weapon is his emotional intelligence. The best ones are experts at reading people/rooms and understanding human nature, and this is what enables them to choose the right targets. And of course, Snoop knew there was a virtual army of people ready to ride with him, as he has 150 million in the bank that proves that the vocalized and weaponized public disrespect of black women is a booming business. Perhaps Americaโs boomingest.
When youโre that consumed by and entertained with the hate of an entire demographic, is it even possible to love someone as much as he claims to have loved Kobe? Of course, itโs possible to love a myth. Itโs possible to love a performance. Itโs possible to love how Kobe made him feel. But can you love a full person? Does he possess the emotional bandwidth for that? Hmm, weโre back to the hard questions again. Letโs end with an easy one.
Is Snoop Dogg a sellout?
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