Do the crime; do the time
I’m done with listening to the character assassination of a good woman. An AfricanAmerican, proud woman who has served with honor on the Philadelphia bench for well over a decade. A woman who I know personally and, although we are not close, is a role model to me as a member of the legal profession.
Or let me put it in language that someone named “Meek Mill” might understand a little better:
You don’t disrespect a lady You, who look shady Playing with drugs Hanging with thugs Thumbing your nose at those who chose To do it clean What you seek, Meek Is a deal You real? You do the crime You find the time.
I know that Jay-Z won’t be knocking at my door, and Niki Minaj won’t ask me to be her opening act (although she might sympathize with my point of view.) But I don’t have delusions of grandeur about how I’m an artiste who’s been misunderstood by the Man. I wasn’t poor growing up, and I didn’t suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune that young black and brown men claim as their birthright.
My song, if you want to call it that, is about a fellow who has been given every chance in the world to do something very easy for most of us: Tow the line, and walk the straight and narrow. He has been cosseted by record producers, loved and squeezed by famous women in sparkly dresses, heralded as the “Next Big Thing” in Billboard and other places that apparently know a lot more about music than I do.
And yet he still shows an amazing amount of ingratitude for the people who tried to help him, including the Honorable Genece Brinkley. I have watched this pathetic saga for the past few years, and I know what Judge Brinkley has been through with this guy who believes the hype of his own genius. She, and assistant District Attorney Noelle De Santis, were treated like the kind of women who end up regularly in rap songs, with a disrespect that makes Harvey Weinstein look like a guy who’d hold the door open for you.
Mill is an example of what is happening to this society, this ridiculous schizophrenic psychosis where, on the one hand, we decry sexual assault with all the hashtags in the world and on the other, we allow men to belittle good woman because they have “talent” and they are from some ‘hood we’re supposed to honor as a crucible for this blighted youth.
Give me a break. Meek Mill is getting what the law prescribes, and what his conduct has earned him.
Mill is an example, also, of our misplaced concern for entertainers in this society. If he were Joe Schmoe from West Philly, or South Philly, or Chester who couldn’t string two words together in a rhyme, would we really give a damn about his plight? No, don’t answer. I already know the truth, and it’s a big, fat “no.” We are blinded by the sparkle of the limelight and the fact that even though I have no idea why in the world what this man does is considered art, let alone intelligible, what he puts out on a regular basis is valued by people with money.
Meek Mill has a right to mess up his own life, but he and his posse have no right whatsoever to defame good women, and the criminal justice system to which they have given their lives. They don’t make the money he does, and they don’t get invited to the parties he frequents, and they don’t write urban poetry like this Shakespeare of North Philly. But they have earned respect, and don’t need to demand it like defendant Mill.
The people who have the gall to stand outside of the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia are supporting a creep who violated his parole and thinks that his ability to rhyme should excuse him from doing time.
They are so focused on his “rags to riches” story that they lose sight of the fact that he and his bevy of high-paid, trash-talking lawyers are walking over the reputations of fine women in the process. I bet you every single one of those fans slamming his sentence are the first to tweet #Metoo.
So let’s dispense with all of this sympathy for the rapper, and see him as he is:
Dude who thinks he above the law But on this, you gotta gnaw You can wail and flail But you’re stayin’ in jail.