Former Governor and Republican Presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, has a new book coming out and he is turning heads over some controversial comments about Jay Z and Beyonce.
In his new book,?God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy,?Huckabee takes a shot at the royal music couple and their performance of the smash hit song?“Drunk in Love.” Huckabee writes:
“…Jay Z is a very shrewd businessman, but I wonder: Does it occur to him to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object?”
Okay. There are maybe 24 things wrong with this passage. Just reading it enrages me. Yes, I am admittedly, a proud member of the Beyhive-Beyonce’s extremely dedicated fan base. I love her a TON! I also love Jay Z; he is one of my favorite rappers of all time. So of course, any negative critique of them will usually not be okay with me.
However, Huckabee’s comments are just plain idiotic regardless of how big of a Beyonce fan I am. First, Huckabee speaking on these issues just makes me mad in general. He is clearly an older male who has traditional values and talking about this urban-pop power couple shows how out of touch he is with our culture. But let’s be specific.
Beyonce is an independent woman. She has sung about it. Maybe Huckabee has been too busy reading and nit-picking the Bible, complaining about Obama, and pretending to have a real talk show, to have listened to the numerous Beyonce songs where she talks about female empowerment. She is not one to sit back and let someone control her career, even if that person is her husband.
Huckabee seems to be implying that their “Drunk in Love” performance was all Jay Z’s idea. Anyone who knows Beyonce’s work knows that she is a perfectionist and if this was not something she genuinely wanted to do, she would not have participated; the performance would have been scrapped or altered.
So it is clear that Huckabee has no idea about Beyonce as a person nor entertainer. Sure, before the above passage, he says that Beyonce is “incredibly talented” but any and everyone on Earth can realize that. What is unnerving, is Huckabee’s intent on acting as if Beyonce is some regular, feeble-minded, naive girl who can so easily be exploited.
His comments speak to a larger issue though. Beyonce aside, this thinking punishes women for being sexual. Women cannot be sexual beings. Oh! That is like a phrase from Beyonce’s popular song off her self-titled album, called “Flawless.” How apropos. She knows how men like Huckabee view women. Women cannot be sexy. They cannot show their bodies except in private or else they are being exploited. Well Beyonce clearly doesn’t agree and many women, like myself, don’t either.
A woman like Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, and others, can feel good about their bodies and show them off and there is nothing wrong with that. Has Huckabee read any of Jay Z’s lyrics? Jay Z, like most rappers, has sexual content splattered all throughout his discography. Yet Huckabee, nor anyone else for that matter, accuses rappers of being exploited as sex objects. This is because men CAN be sexual. Women deserve this same treatment.
So, no, Mike Huckabee. Your old-fashioned analysis of the Carters is utterly wrong. Beyonce is her own woman. Jay Z is his own man. And no one is a pimp. Not only does your critique reek of ignorance, it is coated in racial undertones. “Pimp” conjures a certain image and it is not one of a person?that looks like you. So scratch your racial language and your 15th century views. And lastly, to the Conservatives in general who continue to hate on this couple, what is wrong with you? Huckabee preaches family values, yet Beyonce and Jay Z dated for years, then got married, then had a kid. This is the “perfect order” of events in their Judeo-Christian society. Yet they still come up with ways to trash them. Enough already.
