“Hip-hop hypocrisy” was the headline on a Washington Post column Saturday that would cause one to wonder if the vaunted political instincts of Hillary Clinton have suddenly left the premises.
First, candidate Clinton joined most other politicians in denouncing as “small-minded bigotry and coarse sexism” Don Imus’s infamous characterization of the Rutgers women’s basketball players as “nappy-headed hoes” while taking care to remind her base she didn’t intend to curtail free speech. So far, fine.
Then, she decided to take her campaign against small-minded bigotry to New Brunswick, N.J. last Monday for a photo op with team members. Bad weather and the Virginia Tech massacre intervened to render the Imus story obsolete but not sufficiently so to cause Hillary to give up the op and she visited the Rutgers campus on Friday.
But the Rutgers players had more sense than the candidate and, according to an account in Newsday, they “skipped the meeting, citing their studies and Imus fatigue.” A spokesman said the students were preparing for finals and had had enough of the Imus flap so Hillary had to be content with meeting with the coach and addressing 700 not so busy students and faculty. She named all the players, praised them and urged the audience to pledge, “Enough is enough when women or minorities or the powerless are marginalized or degraded.”
That might have been the end of it, had not Post columnist Colbert King reminded his readers on Saturday that this same foe of words that disregard basic decency and degrade all women had just taken in $800,000 at a fund raiser sponsored by one Timbaland, a hip-hop artist who makes a nice living writing lyrics that do just that.
King writes that both Hillary and her husband were present at Mr. Timbaland’s fund raiser in Pinecrest, Florida, March 31 and he wondered “why she was down in Florida making nice to — and pocketing big bucks from” a composer whose lyrics include this little ditty:
”We aint like them other fools, who don’t compare to us
All the hoes love a nigga, they be backing it up
But me I love money, I be stacking it up”
Mr. Robinson offered several other, similar examples of Mr. Timbaland’s poesy but this is enough to give you the idea. He said his reporting could not determine if Mr. Timbaland “shared his musical talents with the Clintons while they were in his home collecting money.”
There are so many fine musicians who do an excellent rendition of the old English ballad, Matty Groves. The least she could do is to try to curry favor with those of us who enjoy the classy music of our ancestors instead of wasting time on this trashy new stuff.
Posted by: Buck on April 22, 2007 6:42 AM
Spoken like a true hipster, Buck ;-). I admit it's hard to see the value in a lot of new music, but I also remember that our parents thought the same about ours. I suspect that's part of the point. It's like those cellphone ringtones that most people over twenty can't hear.
But mainly I want to say Welcome, Dick! Thanks for joining up. I enjoyed your first post and look forward to the next one.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) on April 22, 2007 8:06 PMIt's certainly true that African Americans use the word "nigger" all the time, and hip-hop artists are no exception. But doesn't this just illustrate the level of self-loathing that is often created by growing up an a society that seems in so many ways to loathe you? Did you ever hear a Jew call another Jew "kike"? (Not that there's no such thing as anti-semitism, but it isn't even in the same ballpark, at least in this country, as anti-black racism)
This isn't to excuse the misogyny and racism in hip-hop. It's just to say that there's a world of difference between a slur delivered within your own in group and one directed to you from the outside. IMHO.
Interesting point CCRyder. Who's making the executive level decisions to market this kind of music to the kids? Someone at the RIAA and the record producers I suppose.
There's a certain anti-establishment message in this music that's par for the course for the coming of age group — as Chuck rightly points out — our parents didn't understand our music either. However, it you accept the premise that music often reflects societal dissatisfaction within a group, perhaps the fact that a huge percentage of African Americans are incarcerated at alarming rates has something to do with the music that's in demand among the group. On the other hand, a huge percentage of the white kids listen to this hip hop stuff too, much to the chagrin of their parents. Or at least that's what I observed down south the last few years I was down there.
However, Dick makes a valid point. Maybe our first female President will be a hoe. If I remember correctly, her husband was a good pimp. Seems to me that this kind of pairing usually works fairly well from a financial standpoint, or so I'm told.
Hopefully we'll do better, but if history is any guide...