Kanye West Doesn't Care About Young People!

I believe it was the Roman senator and historian Tacitus (56-117 A.D.) who noted that, during the time when the Empire began inching towards oblivion, there was one surefire method of recognizing a citizen who was close to burning out, breaking down, and possibly imploding. Wrote wise Tacitus: “Beware the man (or woman) who gets into a debate with a 3-year-old hip hop song.”

The thing about Tacitus, he didn’t know about me. He didn’t know about me, and he surely was somewhat less than fully cognizant of rapper Kanye West.

In my role as lawyer, as attorney, as legal representative and officer of the court, I get to hear – on a daily basis, in fact – about how unfair absolutely everything is. About how that “Wet Floor” sign in the grocery store was nearly three feet away (!) from where your slip and fall happened. About how your previous attorney’s utter incompetence was the only reason you got sent to jail for that fourth DWI arrest. About how you honestly didn’t believe you had to pay federal income taxes because your friend told you the 16^th Amendment was not ratified in the proper manner.

But there exists one special issue said to be so unfair, so gravely inequitable, so devastatingly punitive in nature that all other of life’s slings and arrows seem minor in comparison.

Of course, I speak of … CHILD SUPPORT.

How often am I afforded the opportunity to hear yet again how patently unfair it is that the state makes non-custodial parents pay money to support babies they’ve fathered? Well, enough that I would remark on it, for starters. But also, it seems, enough that I am able to counter these whining sessions in my sleep.

In my sleep! Literally!

And so it was on Monday night that I fell asleep with the television on a cable station known to its nearly 42 viewers as “Vh1.”  And verily, my mind recoiled in disgust and my dreams were filled with righteous indignation, and not just at the wretchedly bland sounds of James Blunt, Fergie, and Sarah Bareilles, no.

No, for as I lay there upon my living room couch, that small part of my brain reserved for my professional activities lashed out at what shall hereafter be known as “THE GOLD DIGGER HYPOTHETICAL.”

 

Let’s take a quick look at each allegation within Verse 2 of Kanye West’s hit single “Gold Digger” one at a time, shall we?

1.                  “18 years, 18 years / She got one of yo’ kids, got you for 18 years.” 

Now, Kanye West is just two months younger than I am. So I know, at this age, you can be what Kurt Vonnegut once described as “so full of lust and jism all the time.”  And to be fair, I once had a guy tell me that his ex got pregnant by retrieving a used condom from his trash can. But assuming that the pregnancy was not obtained by hook or by crook, this sounds a lot like someone complaining because somebody has to pay for their toddler to eat.

We’ll come back to this point a little bit later…

2.         “I know somebody payin’ child support for one of his kids / His baby momma’s car crib is bigger than his / You will see him on TV, any given Sunday / Win the Superbowl and drive off in a Hyundai.”

Not being a sports fan, this one caused my nocturnal mind a bit more trouble. But briefly, it appears that the allegation here is that the hip hop artist in question is acquainted with an NFL player from a team that has played in the Super Bowl. And this NFL player, due to child support payments, has been forced to drive not a mighty vehicle worthy of one of our nation’s glorious and essential players of the football, but rather, a [shudder] Hyundai.

In 2007, the lowest rookie salary in the NFL was $285,000, the median salary was $770,000, while the average salary was $1.4 million. 

The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the 2008 Hyundai Accent is $11,970, while the MSRP of the 2008 Hyundai Elantra tips the scales at a whopping $14,870. Of course, Hyundai makes an ugly minivan that costs damn near 30K, but I hope we can agree for the sake of argument that a man who doesn’t want to pay for baby diapers is not going to be driving around in a family-sized mini-van.

Let us also assume that an NFL player fresh from the Super Bowl is not making the lowest rookie salary in the league, but rather the (still relatively low) median salary of $770,000. This would leave him with a taxable monthly income of $64,166.

Good news! If this loverboy – cursed with a  constant spray of sperm flying off of him and into every available gold digging vagina – impregnated a woman in Texas, his monthly child support payment would be $1,500, presumably leaving him with more than enough expendable income to upgrade from that Hyundai.

In the State of Texas, not even Bill Gates himself is gonna pay more than $1,500 in current support for one baby.

Other states calculate child support differently than Texas. Around the time “Gold Digger” was written, teams that had made it to the Super Bowl were from such exotic locales as Philadelphia, Oakland, Tampa, and St. Louis. But since most of those places (unlike Texas) take Mom’s income into consideration when calculating child support, it doesn’t seem like he’d have to pay the maximum to a woman whose “car crib was bigger than his.”

But now, dear reader, we come to my personal favorite part of the program. We come to the lyric that inspired me to lay down this entire exercise in writing.

Behold:

3.         18 years, 18 years / And on her 18^th birthday, he found out it wasn’t his?”

This does indeed sound horrifying. Dare a man even walk down the street in a society that would do something so unfair? Surely, this so-called “child support” is but a sham foisted upon those unfortunate enough to have testicles in a gynocentric society.

The man about whom Kanye West is rapping is AN IDIOT. Someone should take steps to prevent this guy from engaging in adult activities with his own rosy palm, let alone actually breeding. For there are two ways and only two ways that this 18^th birthday surprise could happen.

First, it could be that Spermy the Offensive Lineman signed a Voluntary Acknowledgement of Paternity. Since the Urban Dictionary informs us that he was never married to his self-proclaimed “Baby Momma,” this acknowledgement was both unnecessary and unwise. But even less wise was his failure to rescind the acknowledgement during the four years he had to do so.

Second, Kanye’s buddy might have defaulted entirely on the paternity action in court. Done nothing. Nada. Because if he didn’t answer or show up, then YES, he would have been adjudicated the daddy. But even then, he would have had four whole years to challenge the case and prove he was not.

Perhaps that meager $770,000 per year did not afford him the luxury of hiring one of our state’s esteemed family law attorneys. You don’t know!

Regardless, IN ALL OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, there would have been a paternity test.

So Spermy the Offensive Lineman should think about that a bit while he’s cruising the streets of St. Louis in his Hyundai Accent bemoaning how terrible his Baby Momma is.

Somebody paid for Spermy’s food and clothes and shoes when he was a kid. Somebody paid for Kanye West’s food and his clothes and his shoes and even his ugly shuttered sunglasses when he was growing up. In fact, somebody even had to pay for the food and clothes and shoes of this kinda-sorta-but-not-saying-she’s-a Gold Digger when she was just an upstart bronze digger.

Unless…

In the night, I struggled mightily against a thought slowly bubbling up…

Unless…

No! I broke into a cold sweat…

Surely it can’t be true!

 

KANYE WEST DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE?!

Kanye, buddy, don’t let your fans grow up to be deadbeats...

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(NOTE: This blog is for entertainment purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Nothing herein should be relied upon in lieu of consultation with appropriate legal advisors in your own jurisdiction.)