Thursday, April 12, 2007

The stupid! It burns!


Damian Penny (inspired by race relations expert Michelle Malkin, no less) emerges from his burrow to ask one of the less enlightened questions of the month:

What's more harmful to African-American women: one stupid "joke" by Don Imus, or typical hip-hop lyrics?

Well, Damian, see ... there was that other time, too. But who's counting, right?

AFTERSNARK: In all fairness, you can appreciate the motivations of Imus' defenders, since it goes without saying that Don Imus is clearly not as destructive or divisive a social force as, say:

  • hip-hop artists

  • Al Sharpton

  • AIDS

  • a giant meteor slamming into the Earth and obliterating all life

  • the heat death of the universe

You know, in the same way that George W. Bush, despite having destroyed Iraq's infrastructure, obliterated its history, killed hundreds of thousands of its civilians and plunged it into civil war, is still not as bad as its former dictator. That would be the motto of the Bush administration: "Sure, we're neo-con, imperialist, genocidal lunatics ... but we're still not as bad as Saddam. Um ... right?"

That's quite the standard you have there, Damian: "Don Imus -- sure, he's a despicable racist and bigot, but how about that gangsta rap, huh?"

6 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

I really wish rigthwing Canadians would do their own thinking once in a while.

Anonymous said...

So that makes the hip-hop lyrics okay then? Some cracker making cracker jokes?

I wonder how often black women hear those kind of lyrics compared to how often they actually hear Imus directly? Hmmm.

CC said...

ek drools:

"So that makes the hip-hop lyrics okay then?"

Um ... I want a list of all of your English teachers, ek. So I can hunt them down and slap them.

That guy said...

So that makes the hip-hop lyrics okay then?

No, it doesn't. Also, the hip-hop lyrics don't make Imus's remarks okay. One is wrong. So is the other one.

I really don't understand what's so complicated about this.

¢rÄbG®äŠŠ said...

Chester, I think it's the mathematics behind all of it that confuses some.

Ti-Guy said...

Hip-Hop has nothing to do with this. Why should the Rutgers Women's Basketball team be described as "nappy headed ho's?"

There is really no connection here between that and the lyrics used in a particular brand of artistic/cultural expression.