Fairweather tall Israelis

There was a time, a year or so ago, when I thought Russell Simmons was so badass. Not only was he arguably the hip-hop mogul least capable of demonstrating any sort of useful talent (remember, Diddy was once a good dancer), but he'd somehow managed to entrap Kimora Simmons into being married to him forever.

But then it occurred to me not too long ago that this might not be such a good thing. Blood Diamond Rush was on the Howard Stern Show, which I don't listen to on a daily basis, promoting his silly new self-help book, and Howard, who's got an astute team of fact-checkers, mentioned the fact that Russell and Kimora don't have any sort of pre-nup.

What's more, apparently, the two of them have this communal pool of money that they both draw from, but you get the idea that it's Kimora, what with her diamond encrusted cell phones and solid gold toilets and what have you, who's doing the lion's share of the drawing. BDR, who's deep into yoga these days (read still getting the coke out of his system from 1993) claims to not be into material things nearly as much.

Which is probably true, in a sense. On the one hand, I can't imagine any guy - or even most women - being quite as into material things as Kimora Lee Simmons. You've all seen that episode of MTV Cribs. On the other hand, you're not going to convince me that Blood Diamond Russell Simmons, the same guy who was once sent out on a PR tour by the De Beers family to discredit the film that carries his namesake, doesn't care about money.

Do I look stupid? (Don't answer that question.)

Hence, I couldn't help but wonder what was really going on the other day when I read that ol' BDR had somehow managed to get fired from his own company. You'll recall that BDR hasn't been the real owner of Phat Farm for a few years now, since he sold it to the Kellwood Company, but he's continued to draw a salary, presumably as their Jay-Z-style black cosigner ever since. But not anymore. What gives?

The statement he released to the media was pretty vague, but it seemed to suggest that he needed time to work on his various other business ventures. Which would be a reasonable enough excuse, if he did anything other than lend his name and likeness to a gaggle of companies that are all really owned by a secret cabal of uber wealthy Jews. (No Mel Gibson.)

Think about it: obviously he wasn't performing any duties as CEO of the company the whole time he was going on tour to promote his book, acting on the god-awful Run's House, meeting with his fellow tIs to decide whether on not to ban the dreaded n-word from rap music, and so on and so forth.

I was flipping through one of these rap magazines the other day, and in addition to the 40-plus pages of ads for Roc-A-Wear, which is de riguer these days, there were a lot of ads for Phat Farm and its various sub-brands as well as this new clothing line BDR is starting, which looks just like Phat Farm, except it doesn't say Phat Farm anywhere on it. Which, perhaps unintentionally, has the effect of making it look like the K-Mart version of the real Phat Farm.

Questions raised in my mind: Will Rush and his family still appear in ads for Phat Farm, which, as far as I can tell, has been their main function there in the past few years, and, if not, who will? Also, Rev. Run and his family won't be able to keep their jobs as the fake CEOs of various Phat Farm sub-brands, will they? This could be an even worse blow for them than it is for Rush himself.

The worst part about - and I realize this is going to come off the wrong way - is that I though Rush was tight with the Jews like that. I mean, look at the way he whored himself out to them all this past winter. Clearly some phone calls could have been made or something. And come to think of it, you mean to tell me that he couldn't find a lawyer to finally settle this thing between him and Kimora in his favor? What the fuck is going on here?