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In case you’ve been in a coma for the last day and just woke up, Jay-Z, wife Beyonce and her sister Solange attended last week’s Met Gala and then headed to an afterparty at NYC’s Standard Hotel. After leaving the party, they got into an elevator and Solange proceeded to curse, spit at, hit and kick Jay-Z, while Beyonce, for the most part, stood by and did nothing. Admirably, Jay-Z didn’t retaliate in kind.

But if not for the quick action of the couple’s longtime bodyguard, Julius, who stopped the elevator, restrained Solange and sent Beyonce and Solange off in a separate car from Jay-Z’s, things might have been worse. (Note to the couple: he definitely deserves a raise).

If there is anything we know for sure about the altercation, it’s that we will never really know what happened. Days afterward, but before the surveillance tape surfaced, Beyonce and her husband were photographed hanging out at Brooklyn Nets game with actor Jake Gyllenhall as though nothing went on at all, though seeing the pics from the game now, Beyonce looks unusually subdued.

Monday night, the day the tape surfaced, the couple attended yet another Nets game, again putting a good public face on a bad public relations moment. Short of a tell-all book or a disgruntled employee lawsuit (or as Oprah found out, an angry ex-stepmother) nothing else is likely to surface about the altercation and whatever goes on behind closed doors in the Carter marriage.

We wouldn’t know this much if not for the fact that someone at the Standard figured, and rightly so, that TMZ would pay for the exclusive footage, which runs for 3-and-a half-minutes without audio. Days later, a prayer Beyonce posted to Instagram about relationships makes more sense.

The real breaking news here?, Guess what, Beyonce is human, too. Given the attention paid to every word, deed, song lyric, social media post, pregnancy, haircut and concert that Beyonce is involved in, maybe it’s time everyone, including the singer herself, allowed her some humanity. She’s not a deity from above sent to bring a message of spiritual hope to the masses. That’s Jesus’s job. She’s a singer. She’s an actress. She’s an entertainer.

From the woman on YouTube who damn near had a coronary when Beyonce’s self-titled CD hit the web without warning, to the excesses of the Beyhive who are ready to come to the Queen’s defense against any perceived enemies, to feminist scholar bell hooks calling her a “terrorist” because she wore a sexy outfit on the cover of the Time ‘100 Most Influential Issue,’ to Bill O’Reilly frothing at the mouth over every skimpy outfit she wears, maybe it’s time to recognize that Beyonce is just like you and me.

She’s a hard-working wife, mother and businesswoman with marital and family issues. She may not have to struggle to pay the light bill, or wonder where Blue Ivy’s next meal is coming from or what would happen if her man were out of work, but she, too, has problems. Maybe Solange stood up for her sister because despite her career success, Beyonce’s passive in her personal life.

COMMENTARY: Elevator Fight Shows Beyonce’s Human, Too  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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