whatever happened to intergrity???

it seems like somewhere along the way everyone forgot about having integrity. didn't dignity used to be en vogue??? today money is everyone's supreme motivation & it leads them down a host of awfully shameful pathways. the thing about money is that its supposed to give people power when they have enough of it, but nowadays rich people act like they're wealthy & waste all of their doe buying shiny things to impress the other idiots.
in our modern world there's a lot of coons that will do anything for money, but when they finally get it they don't use they're power for anything.

imagine if jordan, lebron, or kobe ever said or did anything that made a difference. i'm not talking about throwing money @ non profits & charities that only serve as band-aides over the bullet wounds of society's ills. truly utilizing power would be more in the range of talking to the media about the merits of universal single payer healthcare, or using their stardom to open a dialog about raising the minimum wage to something that not insulting.

katt williams says something interesting about his experience hosting the not so surprisingly racist roast of flavor flav on comedy central. katt talks about how flav's kids were so embarrassed by the way their father was treated that they left in tears before it was over. after the show flav told katt that he didn't care about what the comedians said about him because no matter what comedy central had to pay him. flavor flav is not uplifting his family (or any other black folks for that matter) by allowing moderately humorous white people disgrace him in front of the world.

how did we allow money to become the thing that has the highest value in our world? back in the day when black entertainers absolutely had to coon to get booked in paying venues its more than understandable that they did it. old school jazz cats like cab calloway broke all the barriers & kicked in all of the doors specifically so there would be no need (or excuse for) a motherfucker like t-pain to essentially perform in black face in 2009. they say that everyone has a price, but didn't people also used to say that there's a line that you simply do not cross??? in fact i contend that cats like the ying-yang twins are so successful that they make it impossible for more thoughtful musicians to become popular. by no means am i saying that everyone isn't entitled to unlimited freedom of expression. however, when the people holding the purse straps see how easy it is to make money on the backs of individuals without a grain of integrity its easy to understand why youngsters frequently emulate what they've always seen as being acceptable behavior (that supposedly ends in them getting big money).

i guess my chances of becoming another one of those pop-tart musicians with deep pockets is waning because everyday the list of things i'm not willing to compromise (for any reason, let alone the false promises of money) gets longer.