Snoop Dogg, listen to your rant. You threatened Gayle King and you know it.
Snoop Dogg now says he didn’t threaten CBS journalist Gayle King after she dared to ask legitimate questions about the rape case that is part of Kobe Bryant’s life story.
Well, here is the thing: Snoop Dogg did threaten King, who is one of the most prominent African American female journalists in America. He punctuated an Instagram video about King in which he accused her of soiling Bryant’s NBA legacy by telling her to back off “before we come get you.”
OK, I think when someone says, we’ll “come get you,” that means we’ll come hurt you. And I’m fairly certain that your average citizen, or your average linguist, will bear me out here.
We’ll “come get you” if you do or say something we don’t like is not subtle. At all.
It was a direct threat to a female journalist who makes her living asking tough questions. That’s what journalists are supposed to do. That is what the First Amendment allows us to do. That type of question asked publicly is what separates our country from Iran or Russia or Mexico, where narco traffickers kill journalists for asking inconvenient questions.
What is so infuriating about Snoop Dogg’s act is that it’s so cowardly. First, he makes a clear threat and then he backtracks and claims he’s nonviolent. Did he address the specific words he said in his clarification? No. Did he apologize? No. Did he say he was wrong for saying the words, “back off, bitch, before we come get you.”
No he did not.
Snoop took down his offending Instagram video, though you can still see it via others’ posts.
And then he tried to sidestep the worst of what he did by simply pretending he never said it.
Protecting Bryant’s legacy
You can deny you said something, you can try to remove it, but the digital memory means it’s now part of who you are. While trying to protect Bryant’s memory, he threatened a journalist and no amount of backtracking now protects his stained legacy.
He could have said: “My emotions got the better me. I should have never said the words ‘before we come get you’ to Gayle King. I should have never mocked her appearance. I should have never called her a bitch. And I ask all my fans to stop attacking her on social media and I certainly don’t want anyone to even think about getting violent.”
He could have said that, but didn’t He took the chicken way out. He said was non-violent. He said he wasn’t raised that way even though he was that way.
I get that people are mourning Bryant, a basketball icon. His death was unspeakable. But Snoop Dogg took that emotion for Bryant and weaponized it. He turned his hero worship into an attack on a respected woman and a free press. No one elected this man to be the guardian of Bryant’s legacy.
History will decide that. And it will remember Snoop Dogg for the horrible things he said.
This story was originally published February 10, 2020 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Snoop Dogg, listen to your rant. You threatened Gayle King and you know it.."
