IMUS

[Thorngrub]

I know you're not ashamed ded. I was havin a snarky time of it - when I realized I had 'caught' your post; since I had answered, I figured, "fuckit", hit the backspace, retrieved it, and Wump, dey it is ;b

I like the dude in your av by the way . . . who is he ?

[Galactus]

He's Darnell from My Name Is Earl, AKA Crabman.

[RocDoc]

<sub>Mary:
my point was not about public outrage, but about the feigned outrage on the part of the asswipes who hire shock jocks and then pretend to be pissed when their shock jocks offend more people than they wanted. but i think the members of the rutgers basketball team (and that's just the obvious example, but of course any thinking person really fits in here) have every right and reason to find imus' comments totally repellent and to say so.

i have to run and teach so don't have time to get into detail here right now (perhaps later) but for the record:

-- i completely disagree that there is no difference between an old white guy using offensive racial slurs against blacks and a black comedian making fun of all races including his own. context matters.

-- i am so tired of hearing "culture" (and especially hip-hop, as if it is some homogenous blob) blamed for problems in the black community with nary a fucking word about structural conditions like deindustrialization, white flight, and the decline of city centers that has contributed to so much hopelessness and despair in this country's forgotten zip codes.

-- can people who obviously don't know ANYTHING about hip-hop just shut the fuck up about it?? please??</sub>

Mary, my posting Whitlock's (Whitlock, right?) article doesn't mean that I didn't think it had more than a few weak points, that Imus certainly shouldn't be given a pass on this AND especially that the Rutgers players' truly honestly felt opinions on the comments do matter.

How 'personal' and how 'honest' were they truly after all the filters they passed through?
Could have even a one of them thought, 'Pah, no I don't want to personally mess with this nobody who really didn't matter to me until you told me it better had matter to me...and aren't we PAST all this shit anyway?'

Within the 'event' orchestration of news conferences and shit (and the presence of Sharpton and sleazeball Jesse), I certainly do see a strong possibility that their massive outpouring of the 'personal hurt' that each and every player uniformly said she felt, had somewhat of a 'C'mon, roll with us, willya?', whereas their original thought more likely may nave been 'Imus? Imuswho?? Him? That guy? Pleeease...hahaha!'

I mean, I'll generalize that these kids are on somewhat a higher plane as star athletes and national champions, so for, let's say several of them, they likely don't give a fuck what a Don Imus says. But the brouhaha is set and everyone's telling them it'll raise their status, and the NCAA's women's programs' status, as well as make them more marketable/bankable to their pro agents.

I was listening to a station in my car that was giving it some airtime, but breaking away when a person again went into gratuitous 'A great season, great girls who're going somewhereblahblahblah...' cos the shit was just going on forever.

It needed Oprah to edit it and give it some form.

Re this blanket, all-over, no-good-exceptions hip-hop condemnation you think you sussed out there, I didn't get that at all.

It was those forms and those artists who engage in the sorts of sensationalistic lewdness and violent, irresponsible luridness which he cited (which definitely play well in huge segments of the black AND the white AND the Hispanic communities) which the guy was saying needs to be pointed out as a false path that large groups are acting out as they 'live large' like these super-talented 'heroes' of their do.

And I do not care so much of their social milieu, but far more that their presentation seduces the impressionable who think they've got nothing better to do....and it's creating an even worse self-sustaining (by most outward events) milieu enamored of death, irresponsibilty for one's actions and a ridiculous fatalism that, continued, will definitely get none of them anywhere.

Yes, you know your positive hip-hop role models exist there somewhere, but those are not who he's talking about.

[shin]

We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Most important part of the entire column, and it'll probably fly over most people's heads as to what it means.

You'll never find such issues in lyrics by A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli, Cannibal Ox, the Roots, or Blackalicious, and when you do find them in the lyrics of others such as Dead Prez, Mr. Lif, Nas or Non Phixion, it's always to lament and inform. But none of these acts are accepted as "hip-hop", though that's explicitly what they are, nor are they acknowledged by the major labels or mainstream white music listeners at large.

Hip-hop right now is in a state where the only way to jump the middle class entirely is to either be a basketball star or a rap star, and if you do rap, you have to rap about sex or violence and you have to glorify both. This is what appeals to White America, and has been so ever since Ice-T, Public Enemy, NWA and 2 Live Crew became so dangerous to white parents, and thus so appealing to their children.

Three of the four acts I mentioned just there told about a world they lived in that we couldn't understand; that was the entire point of the exercise. Instead it got turned around into white kids dreaming of going through the same sort of violent rites of passages they couldn't find in their white picket fenced worlds. White kids started envying the lives of people who did what they wanted with their women, were feared and respected by their peers and found their manhood while staring down the barrel of a gun. It was supposed to be the other way around, but that's the way it became.

In other words, any attempt to say "well rappers call their women 'ho's' in rap songs" is completely missing the point. Most white people won't listen to rappers if they don't.

[shin]

QFT:

[luke]

shin said:

Three of the four acts I mentioned just there told about a world they lived in that we couldn't understand; that was the entire point of the exercise.

So are you trying to say you could relate to the lifestyle of 2 Live Crew? Because if so, I'm not sure whether to bow before ye or label you a rapist.


heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy we want some pusssssssaaaaaayyyyyy

You see, me and my homies like to play this game
We call it amtrak but some call it the train
We all would line up in a single-file line
And take our turns at waxing girls behinds
But every time it came to me, I was shit out of luck
Because I'd stick my dick in, and it would get stuck
The girls would say stop! I'd say I'm not!
That's enough, I quit, cause ya'll are bustin' me out!
I say, girls, don't hide it, just divide it
And please don't knock it until youve tried it
So to all of you bitches and all you hoes
Lets have group sex and do the Rambo!

The Rambo, motherfucker.

[luke]

Just nibble my dick like a rat does cheese.

[shin]

What makes you think that was the one of the four?

[luke]

I'm not sure, just as I'm not sure why that post won't italicize. I've edited it about twelve times now.

[shin]

You probably put in two begin italics codes, and you only closed out one of them.

[luke]

No way, man, the code is in there just right.

Man, I killed this thread with PEW-like efficiency.

[Thorngrub]

Haha, Imus is all, "I can get a job any day, with more pay and a better contract".

The sad part is . . . he's probably right.

[Galactus]

Fuck Imus, I'm way more pissed off that conservative pundits have decided to make this about rap and it's working. It's fucking working. Nobodies saying - Hey wait a minute, popular music has been about glorifying deviant behavior and marginalizing women for at least fifty years...much monger if you really want to get down to it...but I'm supposed to get upset because Timbaland said "ho"? Now what's the difference between Timbaland talking about hoes and Ray Charles singing about how his woman "knows her place" or Johnny Cash singing about cocaine mornings...is it because they didn't actually use the word "ho" is that it? Jesus o freaking holy cricky on a stick.

[sisyphus]

true 'dat.

[Thorngrub]

well, think of it this way, ded. Righteous indignation from the hip hop underground will surely revolutionize another backlash of hardcore rappin because of this. And so it goes...