Political Frenzy

A condescending and flippant series of comments on my article regarding Uncle Roger’s letter to me about Don Imus reached my inbox from a reader known as Colleen. This is one you want to read every letter, period, hyphen, quotation mark, and colon of.

Uh, yeah, not really quite sure if you purposely passed over some of the bigger hits that are actually out this year. Considering this past month is when the Don Imus controversy arose, shouldn’t we use more recent lyrics, and not 3 “soft” songs chosen from a history of violent, degrading rap songs?

Here’s a real list.

“Ima b pimpin
I dont be slippin
When it come down to these hoez
I dont love em
We dont cuff em
Man thats just the way it goes
I pull up in the Phantom
All the ladies think handsome
Jewelry shining, I stay stuntin
Thats why these niggas cant stand em
Ima chick mag-a-net
And anything fine im bag-gin it
And if she got a man, I dont care
10 toes and I wanna be, cause I gotta have it”

(R. Kelly, I’m A Flirt, presently NUMBER ONE on Billboard.com)

“U In Da Club U C A Bad Bitch Point Her Out”

(Young Jeezy ft. R. Kelly, Go Getta)

I don’t have time to go through all the hits these days, but you get the idea. Don’t ever try to make all rappers seem innocent and only preaching advice and such. Please.

What I also wanted to add is what I heard on a newscast recently, and I have to admit this world has absolutely caused it to be true:

“Everyone has freedom of speech except white people”. And after something like this? Yea, it’s true.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed by our nation.

Firstly Colleen, just as with any art form, rap is a spectrum - from crap to magnificent, from positive to negative. Even classical music has its crap - you just don’t hear it anymore. My point was just this: there is no blanket statement that can be made about rap, and I cited some of the most popular hip-hop songs of the now fairly mature decade. Any blanket statement you could make about any genre would simply be false. It was my attempt to avoid the broad sweeping generalization that plague our nation. Everyone is saying “Liberals are” or “Conservatives are” or “Rap is” or “Punk is” or “Iraqis are” or “Blacks are” or “Persians are” - what we really should be saying is “he is” or “she is” or “it is”.

Secondly, I would love to hear who said that White People are excluded from Freedom of Speech. I myself was personally involved in defending Seattle local college journalist Lee Myers when faculty at Seattle Central Community College threatened his position as an editor, and in fact the entire structure, of the City Collegian, the school newspaper. Myers produced an unpopular - but not original - article of opinion. The way some people tell it he tried to blame all black people for their systematic oppression for over a century. Others allege that he was simply pointing out what he noticed, which was black people working against their own best interests.

As an Iranian-American, I was personally hurt by Lee’s words - especially so since I know him personally - as they were so similar to the way many pundits speak of my own people. But instead, at a rally in the school’s Atrium, I got up with a microphone and defended Lee’s right to say what he wants to in the school newspaper - to an overwhelming majority of black Americans who booed me and tried to take the microphone from me. Instead I stood my ground because I felt that Lee Myers, perhaps the whitest man I know, was at least attempting to make an intellectual argument.

Some of the more cogent and articulate anti-Collegian partisans, especially the leader of the United Feminist League, argued more specifically and cohesively that the Collegian was using money from the students of the college to print racist material, promoting ignorance. Since it was their money, they contended, it was their right to define the content of the paper.

My simple argument was that the money was not paying the authors of the Collegian, it was providing an open forum for anyone to say anything they wanted. Lee Myer’s article was published because the Collegian does not discriminate in what it publishes. The lack of opposing opinions was because those people who cried out when Lee Myers expressed himself had months ago decided neither to join the Collegian’s ranks nor contribute anything to the Collegian. I wrote as much and had my opinions printed without question in the next issue of the Collegian.

I tell you this story because it enrages me that I would be accused of siding with those who would silence free speech. I am a vocal opponent to any form of censorship, and oppose the FCC’s very existence.

Now, if you had bothered to actually read my article, you would have read this line:

I certainly don’t think this remark is worthy of the outrage it has incited.

Imus should have been ignored for putting his idiocy and ignorance on display. It was painful to hear him defending himself, and no one believed a word he said - if anyone accepts that half-hearted apology, they’re fools. And it should never have come down to forcing a man to apologizing for something he doesn’t truly believe was a mistake. Apology should not be a ceremony to wash away controversy like a media baptism, it should be the earnest expression of regret. By forcing him to his knees, all the establishment has done is forced Imus to cheapen the words “I’m sorry”.

For future reference, Colleen, read my articles before you comment on them, and don’t talk down to me like I’m some kind of idiot. I, for instance, never try and portray snarkiness by beginning my sentences with “Uh, yeah,” like an antagonist from a second-rate teen drama starring Lindsey Lohan. T’chyaa, like, what-evarrrr. OH NO YOU DI’NT!

It’s people like you - who polarize everything by ignoring certain things that I write - that make moderates like myself so damned invisible to the world. Instead of recognizing that I neither called for Imus’s resignation nor even called him a racist (Because he’s not! Being ignorant doesn’t make you a racist!) you instead focus on the fact that I don’t agree with Imus - which apparently to you translates to being some kind of censorship-happy politically correctness freak. And just like Imus, Colleen, you’re wearing your ignorance on your sleeve.

But I’ve probably lost you by now. I bet you read maybe 1/4 of what I’ve written by skipping around - probably zeroing in on your own name rather than reading the whole thing letter to letter. And you’re missing a lot, Colleen.

If that’s the way you read everything, it’s no wonder, either.

If you’re so ashamed of this country, Colleen, I hear France is doing amazing things with homogenizing their culture. No one will ever disagree! So either pack up and leave - give up on this “shameful” nation - or stand by your country like a real patriot, through thick AND thin, through the good times and the crap times. You stand by the country you love, like you stand by the man or woman you love. And to throw around a hackneyed phrase like “I’m ashamed of this nation” makes me want to spit to get the taste out.

I highly suggest you sit down and listen to some Palestrina. The Pope Marcellus Mass really centers me, and I think it could do the same for you. It’s a wonderful Kyrie. Perhaps it will get you to critically think and analyze instead of shooting out talking points of a television pundit at me.