Wyclef Jean is a stupid man who should not be trusted with a five dollar bill.
He is in no way a bad man. He is not a man of ill-intent. It’s not because he’s an evil man that he shouldn’t be trusted. It’s simply because he’s stupid.
It is an unwritten rule among the club of people in possession of five dollar bills that you should not hand them over to stupid people.
So let’s say that a man comes up to you and requests that you relinquish your five dollar bill to him. Should you hand it over? Well, how about I tell you a little more about this man, and you tell me if he should get your $5.
This man is 37 years old. His last real job was at Burger King. He only briefly worked there as a teenager, and was fired from this job. He spent the next twenty years dabbling in music. To pay homage to Jimmi Hendrix, this man once lit his guitar on fire while playing the Star Spangled Banner. Hendrix was at least smart enough to separate the two events with a span of time sufficient so as to not burn his fingers.
Unless you’re as stupid as Wyclef Jean, you’ve realized that the man I’m talking about is the incredibly stupid Wyclef Jean.
At this point, I’ll once more take a step back and reiterate how strongly I believe that Wyclef is not a bad man, or a man who ever wished badly upon anyone. He seems to be a man with a good heart, who wants to use his talents to bring good things to those around him. He’s just the dumbest fucking guy ever.
As you’re well aware, Jean was born in Haiti, and has always cultivated his roots to his homeland. Five years ago, he started a charity for Haiti. Aaaaand that’s kind of where he left it. The charity didn’t exactly file returns with the IRS for three years. The returns they did file (years later) were embarrassingly incomplete, and showed that the charity had basically just been funneling money to friends of Wyclef Jean.
For example, in 2006, the charity claimed $1 million in income. More than half of this simply went right back to his buddies. $100,000 went to Wyclef himself for one performance. That’s $60,000 more than he ever made at the height of his popularity with the Fugees. That’s twenty thousand people who belonged to the Five-Dollar-Haver club who made a check to “Haiti”, and had the money go to “Stupid Wyclef & His Crooked Buddies”.
Then, after all this embarrassing, stupid, dumb shit went down with his own charity, Wyclef was dumb enough to say “Oh shit. An earthquake in Haiti! I’ve got a charity for Haiti! This is perfect, give my charity money!”
Because, stupid, stupid Wyclef Jean honestly thought that he could be of help. This super dumb guy honestly thought he could be of service.
I’ve stated before how I get a kick out of rich celebrities hitting real-life walls that the rest of us had to learn to deal with as we grow… I get a real kick out of this one.
All of society had to pull Wyclef aside and say:
“Listen, idiot. You’re accountable for your actions, and you’re accountable for your word. When you start a charity, you’re very much accountable for every single dollar that you accept from the good-natured donations of others. You fucked this up BIG time, and not only should you be extremely ashamed for your name as a man, but you should be ashamed for how your carelessness and immaturity let your people in Haiti down just when they needed you most. I don’t give a rat’s ass how good your intentions were. There are people dying under toppled concrete who can’t trade your good intentions into a drop of water. You claimed to be a leader and a voice for Haiti, and you dropped the ball. You let your corrupt buddies ruin your good name, and now you’re standing alone at the top of celebrity hill, very, very responsible for what happened.”
No one would have blamed Wyclef had he never started a charity, and said “I’m Haitian, and I’m grieving for my people. Please give to the Red Cross.”
Wyclef, I sure hope you were too stupid to see this coming. Because if you had any idea that these obvious actions would lead to this obvious result, you ARE actually a bad man.