Let Us Now Praise Famous Race Hustlers
Michelle Malkin's new column is about how it's okay to call college basketball players black whores because hip-hop lyrics are gross. Or something.
Is the Sharpton & Jackson Circus truly committed to cleaning up cultural pollution that demeans women and perpetuates racial epithets? Have you seen the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart this week?
The number one rap track is by a new sensation who goes by the name of "Mims."
The "song" is "This Is Why I'm Hot." It has topped the charts for the last 15 weeks. Here's a taste of the lyrics that young men and women are cranking up in their cars:
This is why I'm hot
Catch me on the block
Every other day
Another bitch another drop
16 bars, 24 pop
44 songs, nigga gimme what you got…… We into big spinners
See my pimping never dragged
Find me wit' different women that you niggas never had
For those who say they know me know I'm focused on ma cream
Player you come between you'd better focus on the beam
I keep it so mean the way you see me lean
And when I say I'm hot my nigga dis is what I mean
Good stuff! But Malkin doesn't like it:
Al Sharpton, I am sure, is ready to call a press conference with the National Organization for Women to jointly protest this garbage and protest the radio stations and big pimpin' music companies behind it.
The thing is, Sharpton does denounce "this garbage." When it comes to hip-hop, Sharpton's about as tolerant as Joe Lieberman. Here's a hard-to-find story from the yellowing New York Post archives of one week ago.
Parents and community leaders yesterday threatened to boycott two of hip-hop's biggest artists in the wake of a rapper's alleged attack of a 14-year-old boy who was wearing a T-shirt promoting a rival's label.
Unless The Game and 50 Cent, two of rap's biggest stars, squash their beef, the communities that support them will—in the words of hip-hop pioneers Public Enemy—shut 'em down.
"We put the i-n-g in your bling-bling," Sharpton said. "All of us have children who listen to your music. Some of us listen ourselves. But we don't want to feel like we're investing in the demise of our community."
This is a (although probably not the) reason that Sharpton has credibility, if we can call it that, in this endless national flagellation. He's a cultural scold. This isn't to pick on Malkin, by the way, as plenty of less prominent pundits have made the "why don't these people go after hip-hop?" argument during Imusgate.
I suggest everyone turn for wisdom to the prophet Jay-Z:
I'm like "fuck critics, you can kiss my whole asshole
If you don't like my lyrics you can press fast forward"
UPDATE: Worth noting how many of the editorial cartoons on the Imus meltdown go with the "but really, this is about those blacks and their hip/hop music" angle.