Musician Turns Down $9 Million Payday, Refuses to Get COVID Vaccine
Up until recently, the rapper Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, Sr., was set to star in a Sony comedy with comedian Jack Black entitled “Oh Hell No.”
Yet when Ice Cube was asked to ensure he was fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, it appears that the film’s title can serve as a rough estimation as to what he told the producers in response.
In short, he said no.
Jackson has now departed the flick, The Hollywood Reporter revealed this week, after producers requested that the cast would need to be vaccinated.
Sony, a rep for Jackson and his agency, WME, all declined to comment.
The crew was set to begin filming this winter in Hawaii, although production will now be set back, and Sony is now looking for a replacement for Jackson, sources told the outlet. Black also injured his back in June filming a stunt for “Conan.”
The hip hop legend has also departed the boxing drama “Flint Strong,” written by Barry Jenkins of “Moonlight,” for unknown reasons, according to the Honolulu Star Advertiser.
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Jackson hasn’t exactly been critical of the government’s COVID-19 response thus far; he’s been an outspoken proponent of masking, and in August, he and others donated thousands of masks to Bacone College in Oklahoma, traditionally a school for Native Americans.
At the start of the pandemic, he also raised money for front-line workers by selling “Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self” t-shirts, which featured images of himself sporting a mask, according to The Reporter.
Without comment from Jackson or his proxies, we can only speculate why the vaccine requirement resulted in his stepping away from the project, but we do know that by so doing, he was also walking away from a $9 million paycheck.
Now, Ice Cube, it must be stated, might be sacrificing a massive paycheck, but he’s not exactly hard up for cash, one imagines. Nor is society going to be missing out much with the loss of his role in a Jack Black film.
Tens of thousands of healthcare workers, firefighters and police officers across the country, meanwhile, are facing the loss of their much-needed livelihood as their communities face the loss of their essential work.
State governments and the Biden administration have been pushing so hard for vaccines to be made mandatory against what has clearly become a rather substantial consensus against such coercion, that they’re apparently willing to risk massive staffing shortages among people who were willing to not only work throughout the pandemic, but to also risk their lives and health on the daily.
As many as half of Chicago police officers are at risk of being placed on leave without pay over their refusal to disclose their vaccine status as their union faces off with Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, while the state of New York has been facing a healthcare staffing shortage as its leadership insists that medical professionals, many of whom have already been exposed to and survived the COVID-19 virus, be fully vaccinated.
Some people, like Ice Cube, have the luxury of turning down work that requires vaccination without worrying about their pocketbooks. This is, of course, his personal choice either way — as it should be everyone’s.
The grim truth remains that the people our communities sorely need on the job simply do not have this luxury, and not only will they and their families suffer thanks to stringent vaccination requirements, but the nation as a whole will likely suffer, both constitutionally and practically, if COVID vaccine tyranny continues to spread unchecked.
How much longer are the powers that be going to prioritize their aggressive vaccination campaign over the personal convictions and bodily autonomy of our most vital and underappreciated workers?
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