You’ve got to hand it to the people still fighting the good fight over at Occupy Wall Street. What they lack in numbers or media attention right now, they more than make up for with the same kind of earnestness as your friend who hangs around forever waiting for you to have sex with him. Shocked that multi-multi-multi-millionaire Shawn Carter wasn’t enthusiastically on board with a progressive taxation system, they’ve vowed to respond the best way they know how…with a teach-in outside the Jay-Z-supported monument to capitalism.
Details are light other than this will be a “teach-in and musical performance;” it’s not clear where at the still-being-constructed stadium they’ll be posted up. Vowing to show up in front of the LIBOR Barclay’s Center before Jay’s show on Sept. 28, the Guitarmy will lovingly ask him to fight for social justice and ask him which side he’s on. As if that question hasn’t already been answered. If you’re keeping track, that’s the very first day Barclays will be open.
Jigga’s quotes, for those of you who still somehow haven’t seen it read:
“What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for…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…When you just say that ‘the one percent is that,’ that’s not true. Yeah, the one 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.”
Fortunately we here at Brokelyn have rich guy translation software (hitting the market Q1 2013) and it spit out the true meaning of Jay’s quote: “I don’t read the news but I’m worried someone is coming for my money.” Which, fair enough. Jay is a guy who sits in board meetings now, talking about things like “top-down brand marketing infrastructure” or whatever. He lent his name and support to a real estate power play disguised as a sports stadium that has yet to see one tiny iota of promised low-income housing. The man has a family (two if you count Memphis Bleek’s) to send to Harvard for eight generations, so whose side do you think he’s on?
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for Occupy. But if they really wanted to ruffle some feathers, they should have called Jay the out-of-touch rich dude he is and then try to get Killer Mike and El-P to put on a show in front of Barclay’s.
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View Comments (4)
This whole "Jay-z vs. OWS" thing has gotten really silly, with the internet media blowing both sides out of proportion for the headlines. Jay's words didn't sound like an attack of the movement at all, just a call for clarification of motive. OWS's response would make it appear they appropriately interpreted what was said, since they are staging a "teach-in" to answer his questions, not a "protest," as one online journal article labeled it.
Regardless of the triviality of this non-news, I'm completely on board with the El-P/Killer Mike idea. Use your internet-hype-generating powers to make it happen.
Oh hey, I don't totally disagree with you, this is a little silly. But, as Brokelyn's Occupy correspondent and the guy that blew the lid off how much money Jay-Z's stuff is worth, it only seems right that I chimed in. It's also silly rying to get a guy who made a career out of conspicuous consumption to co-sign a movement about, well, the very opposite of that.
I also don't think Occupy is taking the right path trying to play nice with Mr. Carter. If they were going to do any kind of event related to that horrible box of rust, they should be brining shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and trying to take the thing apart. I have many hundreds, perhaps thousands of words to about this, but despite my lobbying, neither Tim nor Faye will subscribe to a "Dave's Unhinged Opinions" section running on Wednesdays.
"It’s also silly trying to get a guy who made a career out of conspicuous consumption to co-sign a movement about, well, the very opposite of that."
Absolutely agree. He's either unsympathetic or a hypocrite (read a few comments on the youtube video of Kanye and Russell Simmons at OWS last fall to see that even those making statements of support get torn apart if they have "too much" money). I'm not sure why interviewers keep digging up this topic with the rich celebrity crowd (isn't it the rich bankers and finance jocks that we're angry with anyway?).
But I can't be so agreeable with you on the arena; I think it looks amazing.
But really, how can Jay Z be unclear about it but stil making T shirts that profit off of it?