27 January 2012

Bozell, take your blindfold off.

The conservative cultural crusader Brent Bozell's latest column "The Double Standard on 'Hoes'" attacks Nicki Minaj's horrible new song "Stupid Hoe". In a way as a heavy Republican-hating lefty I wish I could actually agree with him for once! But I take issue with this passage:
It seems rather clear that Imus deserved some punishment, even if his dismissal might be excessive. So why were the Reverends [Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton] applauded universally for their activism?

Because all of their fuss wasn’t about “public decency” or “degradation” or media companies “mainstreaming racism and sexism," not really. It was about race, and about how whites cannot say “indecent” things about blacks, not even in jest. But blacks can use those very same words, however they wish, with the ugliest of intentions if desired, with impunity. Where are Jackson and Sharpton over 'Stupid Hoe" now? Cricket, cricket.
Did Bozell and the other CONservative pundits miss how the black activists also took rappers to task after the Imus controversy? Like Sharpton's march on May 3, 2007 calling for an end to the use of the B-word and N-word in hip hop lyrics? Or Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons calling on record labels to drop the B, H, and N words? Or Sharpton's National Action Network having a Decency Initiative that "advocates against the entertainment industry’s use of capitalizing off of denigrating lyrics to describe black culture."

Funny how Bozell warns his readers: "Don’t hurt your brain trying to make sense" of the lyrics of the Minaj song. Well, I think that many people have lost more brain cells reading Bozell's selectively-researched rants and Catholic apologetics. Furthermore, Bozell contradicts himself by asserting that rappers can advance their careers by using "ho" but then pointing out "YouTube watchers gave the Minaj video about twice as many Dislikes as Likes" (as I type this the video now has likes and 232,539 dislikes.) Given that reaction I don't think Bozell has much to whine about now.

Furthermore, on the Dec. 23 edition of Fox News' Sean Hannity TV show Bozell called Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead". So after that instance Bozell has lost his right to call for decency in culture.

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