I know: The last thing in the world you want right now is to read another post about rapper Lil Wayne and his issues of mental and emotional instability, but bear with me for just a moment.
While on stage at a Beats by Dre concert, Lil Wayne decide to blast the entire NBA Heat basketball team by telling the audience, “If you’re wondering why you didn’t see me at the All Star Game. It’s because I was banned from attending all NBA events. The Miami Heat got me banned. F*** NBA! F*** NBA! F*** Lebron! F*** SheWade! F*** Chris Bosh! And I F***ed Chris Bosh wife!”
What precipitated this obviously pre-planned outburst by Wayne? One week before the rapper hit the stage at the Beats by Dre Concert, he claims that he was forcibly removed from a Miami Heat versus LA Lakers basketball game because he chose to cheer for the Lakers; subsequently, he claimed that he had been banned from all NBA events. Representatives from the NBA state that Weezy voluntarily left the game and that he has not been banned from any future events. Potential game of Who Is Really Telling the Truth? aside, the real question here is: Why Did Lil’ Wayne feel the need to throw Adrienne Bosh, wife of Chris Bosh, power forward and center for the Miami Heat, under the bus by telling an audience of complete strangers that he had had sex with her?
Adrienne Bosh is a beautiful woman, and before getting married to Chris and giving birth to his son (after getting married to him, I might add), she was a model for some skin magazines and was known to travel the party scene. For this past behavior, Mrs. Bosh is now being lambasted as a gold digger (but really, why dig if you aren’t going for the gold?), a groupie, and much worse. She is being called just about every name under the sun except a ‘child of God,’ and for what? Because as a young, single, attractive woman, with no husband and kids, she chose to model, party, and have a generally good time. Oh goodness, a young, attractive woman who is having a good time before settling down to being a wife and mother–quelle horreur!
To all the pearl clutchers in attendance who are now clutching their pearls so tightly that your knuckles are surely turning white, you can release your jewelry now because I am not going to jump on the bandwagon that has the name Let’s All Trash Adrienne Bosh on the side of it. You can ride that wagon by yourself and with your fellow pearl clutchers, thank you very much.
I am going to defend Adrienne Bosh. And I am going to explain why you should be defending Adrienne Bosh, too.
For starters, Mrs. Bosh had absolutely nothing to do with whatever situation originally aroused the ire of Weezy. Adrienne does not escort people to their seats or remove people from their seats at the Miami Heat games. Adrienne Bosh, as far as I am aware, is not even an employee of the Miami Heat. She is a wife to Chris Bosh, a mother to her own son, and a step-mother to Chris’ daughter from a previous relationship. In other words, Mrs. Bosh was minding her own business and has given Lil’ Wayne no reason to even bring her up while he was supposed to be performing for an audience of people who paid money in order to see him perform.
There is an allegation that Mrs. Bosh scammed Wayne in her pre-marriage days. Some say Bosh dated the tattooed, dreadlocked rapper and was able to get him to give her large sums of money by claiming that she needed it for cancer treatment. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. But, mainly it doesn’t even matter at this point in time. Adrienne Bosh has been happy to leave any relationship that she had or didn’t have with Wayne–and any other man she may have dated–in her past, where such history properly belongs as far as any married woman is concerned.
Weezy’s attack on Mrs. Bosh is about his own misogyny, plain and simple. His attack is a demonstration of the way that women, and particularly their bodies, are used as a battlefield where men fight their wars with each other–One man says to another: I know how I’ll attack you–by attacking her! Men know that an easy way to attack the pride of another man is by hurling a vitriolic word or two at any woman associated with the man he wants to hurt.
But women are not appendages of men. Women are not subordinate to men. Women do not deserve to be attacked when they are the closest that an attacker can get to attacking a man.
The only person in this situation who should be getting belittled is Lil’ Wayne, a man who has had at least 4 children outside of wedlock and a lengthy criminal record which includes having served jail time.
Some of the women who read this may think that the slander of Adrienne has nothing to do with you, you may even think Mrs. Bosh and Mr. Bosh are getting what they deserve.
Adrienne Bosh is a fair-skinned Latina originally from Venezuela. Those who think that this situation can be reduced to an incident of ‘the dark-skinned black men choosing a light-skinned woman with a shady past when he could have had chaste dark-skinned black woman and now he is reaping what he has sown’ are missing the point. Bringing up issues of colorism would be a diversion tactic at best, and a chance to enjoy the suffering of a light-skinned woman because you think that this enjoyment will level the playing field after all of the mistreatment that dark-skinned women have received, at worst.
Don’t be confused. This is an attack on a woman because being a woman makes her an easier target to attack. And if being a woman makes a person easier to attack, then all women should realize that just because it is Adrienne being maligned today it could be you or another woman you know tomorrow.
For her part, Adrienne and her husband are taking the embarrassment and spectacle of this situation in stride, at least publicly. Adrienne has been using her twitter account to retreat positive messages from her supporters and using the twitter hashtag #TodayICan. Chris Bosh has used twitter to post a lovely picture of his two favorite ladies–himself holding a trophy, flanked by his wife and daughter. The Bosh’s have chosen thus far to refrain from speaking directly about the controversy.
Robert Little, a writer for Black Sports Online, comes to the right conclusion about the allegation that Mrs. Bosh scammed Wayne:
What does all this really mean, besides Manti Te’o would fall in love with her instantly? To me, it doesn’t mean much. She hustled Lil Wayne and probably some other ballers and entertainers.
I saw that happen 27 times during All-Star Weekend, so it isn’t an uncommon occurrence. At some point, she smarten up and realized that wasn’t the best life for her. Bosh was aware of her previous lifestyle and didn’t care. She is now married, with a kid and chilling with President Obama.
She didn’t change, she evolved. A lot of women in the industry could learn something from that.
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil
For all the people angry and ready to fight to the end, and protect this grown woman's "honor", how about we put all that energy into defending 9 yrs old Quvenzhané Wallis, who was called a "cunt" by a douche bag from The Onion. And yes, this is about race. How many times have we seen the word cunt used when describing other young white kids in Hollywood? NEVER!
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