My least favorite expression in the English language is “if that was me”.
And I hear that expression ALL THE TIME as it relates to some particular celebrity and the shenanigans, illegal or immoral, that they’ve found themselves entrapped in.
Of course the bollocks that it implies is that if the speaker could somehow pick up the celebrity’s life from right before the moment he or she committed the crime or immorality, he or she would have done something so much better and smarter than the celebrity did.
The omission; clear, obvious, and embarrassing, is that speaker could have never found him or herself in the position of said celebrity because, to that point at least, he or she hadn’t lived the life necessary to become that celebrity in the first place.
I hate to play Devil’s Advocate—or in this case, T.I.’s advocate—here because I certainly think that what T.I. and his wife Tiny did was dumb.
I like to get high. I love it, in fact. Gimmie a blunt and a funny movie and either sit and laugh with me or get the hell out of my house cause I sure as hell won’t have you bringing me down.
However, I’m not a rich Black celebrity on parole driving around in an expensive car through Hollywood.
There was no excuse for that brother or his wife having the dope actually on them when there are countless disposable people that would have delivered it, happily and free of charge, where they could have used it all greedily in the comforts of their hotel room’s bathroom (the bathroom for quick, if necessary, flushing should the police raid) and subsequently got it in (whatever that entails for this particular husband and wife duo).
But note: I said what T.I. and Tiny did was stupid. You’d catch me stealing out of my mama’s purse before I called T.I. or Tiny themselves “stupid”.
Contrary to what many people seem to believe, rap is an art. It’s a highly developed art that requires staggering brainpower to pull of successfully and convincingly.
T.I. is also, as evidenced by the movie that I saw on Friday night, quite a prodigious actor.
And Tiny’s no beauty queen, yet she married a man that’s both good-looking and talented so clearly she’s a genius.
So before anybody else tells me what they would do if they were Tiny or T.I. let me say what should be said to all people that utter that completely nonsensical phrase: never mind what you would do if you were him or her, what would you do if you were you?
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