I'm not sure if the petty moon has eclipsed the sun of righteousness or if the winds of petty have swayed to and fro, but it has been quite a week of pettiness. I can't recall another week when all the petty gods unleashed their wrath, but it feels like Petty LaBelle and Petty Pendergrass had a baby and it was named "This Week." I sifted through all of the week's pettiness so you didn't have to. Below is the top five countdown.
“Top five, top five, top five” (Drake voice):
5. Petty Disses (About Feelings)
In the beef that no one cares about, Joe "Pump it Up" Budden was once friends with Aubrey "Drake" Graham. Somewhere between the hookahs and the strippers, the friendship soured. Budden got real sensitive after he believed that Drake took a swing at him on “4 p.m. in Calabasas.” In the hip-hop tradition of petty, Budden released two diss tracks coming for the prince of soft-velvet-sweatsuit feelings. Drake then did what he does and took a "Hold me back; I'm serious, cuz, hold me back" soft jab at Budden on the French Montana track “No Shopping.” Budden responded with this, which, actually isn't bad, but who cares.
4. Petty Vicious (With Snapchat)
Kim Kardashian knows a thing or two about taping things and then blowing up careers, don't she? Anyway, Kim secretly recorded God's softest eyelash, Taylor Swift, telling Kim's husband, Kanye Kardashian, that he could run with the "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex" line in his song. It wasn't petty for Kim to release the recording; it was petty of her to record it in the first place.
3. Petty Misses (Over Trump)
The Republican National Convention was this week, and Ted Cruz walked in and put his muddy boots all over Trump's couch. Cruz was still holding all that bitterness of losing the nomination to Trump when he took the stage. Cruz basically walked inside Chateau Sheree and refused to talk about how nicely it had come together after hating on it through the entire building phase. At the convention de la Trump, Cruz refused to endorse Trump, proving that the petty isn't limited to housewives.
2. Petty Wishes (About Your Parents)
Kobe Petty-Ass Bryant has a long list of petty—remember when he got arrested on the rape charges in Denver and started snitching on Shaq's infidelities? Well, recently he wrote a letter to his 17-year-old self in which Old Kobe tells Young Kobe not to give money to his parents or his family, and that was all the letter was about. This letter wasn't a work-on-your-jump-shot piece; it was a "Man, my family sure is a mess" opus of petty.
Kobe writes: "The next time I write to you, I may touch on the challenges of mixing blood with business. The most important advice I can give to you is to make sure your parents remain PARENTS and not managers."
I'm not saying that Kobe doesn't have a point. The letter actually makes several good points, all of which you can read here. I'm just saying that it's mad petty to use a public forum to air family business.
1. Petty Malicious (Over Doing the Right Thing)
WNBA players already make less than a full-time manager at McDonald's, and the WNBA knows this. But that didn't stop the WNBA from fining the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury and their players after each team showed support for black unarmed victims shot and killed by police. According to ESPN, all three teams were fined $5,000 and each player was fined $500.
"What's most upsetting is the way it was handled," Indiana Fever player rep Briann January told ESPN. "You have a league that is 90—if not above 90—percent African American, and you have an issue that is directly affecting them and the people they know, and you have a league that isn't willing to side with them.
"It's not a race issue, not an anti-police issue, not a black-or-white issue," January added. "It's a right-or-wrong issue."
On Thursday, even after the fines were issued and the Liberty lost to the Fever, both teams took less than a minute to speak about the game they'd just played and told reporters that they would be fielding all questions about social awareness—proving once again that solidarity will always trump corporate pettiness.