(Video is NSFW)
If music with the word “fuck” in it sung by black rappers causes racism, does music sung by women with “fuck” in the lyrics cause misogyny, or at least flatuating assholism? If so, perhaps the bolder theorists among us will see a connection between the way that Joe Scar treats Mika and the fact that his band was a failure around the same time Liz Phair released Exile in Guyville.
Bobby Thomson
And Rumsfeld started talking about dead enders when she released HWC. Coincidence?
Warren Terra
As I understand it – and I’ve watched none of this, nor read a transcript – the theory propounded on Morning Joe is that exposure to rap music, with its allegedly frequent and innocuous use of the N-word, has destigmatized that racial slur, such that these upstanding young men didn’t realize it was wrong to use the word.
This of course is a bunch of hooey (think they used the word casually in mixed company, even in song?). But much, much worse than that, it misses the point entirely. The song these fraternal paragons were singing contains lyrics about how no Black man will ever be permitted to join SAE, and they will lynch any African-American that tries. True, it uses the N-word to refer to these hypothetical people of recent African heritage – but that’s the least of the problems! If it had taken a cue from the more artfully phrased but equally ugly British racism of a generation or two ago and instead of using the N-word had referred to “Worthy African Gentlemen”, the declaration of racial exclusion and the threat of bloody murder would remain, and would demand our attention!
Emily68
Doesn’t “fuck” come from Anglo-Saxon? I think I learned that in school somewhere. So then everybody must have learned it from WASPs.
Baud
Damn you, rappers! We were a post-racial society, but you had to pull us back.
Baud
Shouldn’t you have posted Cheney’s defense of the word as a counterpoint?
Gex
I’ve been saying we need to take away those Sooner boys’ guns and cars because I bet they play FPS games and Grand Theft Auto. And these poor boys are so impressionable they just have to do what’s in the media they consume…
Ryan
“does music sung by women with “fuck” in the lyrics cause misogyny”
No, no, of course not. The reason is because we’re talking about a stupid fraternity singing racist songs. Now, had the fraternity been accused of supplying date rape drugs or something like that, then…. No, of course not, cause the women were totally asking for it.
This, AFAIK, is the conservative mindset and it’s reasoning capacity.
WereBear
Ummmm, yeah. It was about outright racial bigotry and terrorism.
Sambo’s Restaurants were rightly schooled about their reference to a children’s book featuring pancakes, but this SAE song is really really awful stuff that cannot be angled to look misunderstood.
ThresherK
Joltless Joe had a band?
Scarborough sounds like the next incarnation of Pat Boone, if Boone were no longer with us.
Jesus, I’m nobody’s idea of a rocker–too much of the old Hollywood and Broadway tastes in me–but I have a wonderful Guild hollow-bodied electric and I could kick his ass with it.
raven
@ThresherK: When REM played their last gig in Atlanta it was right before the first Obama election. Stipe made a simple statement about Obama being a good man and they fucking boo’s rang down. That’s the kind of “rocker” that panty waist asshole is.
ThresherK
@raven: I said it before and I’ll say it again: In 2003 I saw Bruce Springsteen live, and he performed that alchemy of making a 40,000 seat arena into a place of rock and roll.
This was a classic sweat-it-all-out, drain all the energy revival meeting of rock and roll, not a political event. He did casually toss off one line: “I think the President’s a good enough man, but he spends too much time listening to Mr. Cheney.” (Or words to that effect.)
This was before “DixieChicked” was a verb. This was years before GWB was political poison, and therefore before “he was never a true conservative” with the conservatives, before the moderates sniffed out his disasters, let alone our tastemakers.
From his position, to do that, I had a newfound respect for the man.
Patricia Kayden
I don’t agree with rappers using the “N” word either but trying to link the SAE idiots to rappers is silly. Racism and the use of the “N” word existed long before rap was a thing.
WereBear
@Patricia Kayden: It would make sense only if the rappers were also advocating institutionalized racism and lynching.
When, in fact, they only observe instances of it. They are certainly not in favor of it.
eric
This is simple: “nigger” used to mean — know your place or we can and will lynch you with near impunity — when said by a white man. It did not have any other “nicer” connotation. When a black person says it, it could be a term of affection or a term of anger, but it does not mean, and cannot mean, that you are subhuman and less deserving of the fruits of life that I am because of the color of your skin. Thus, white guys (like me) dont ever get to fucking say it! This is not hard.
ETA — by used to mean, before it was accepted as term by and for black people themselves.
SiubhanDuinne
@Emily68:
I always thought it stood for Fine Upstanding College Kids.
debbie
@Ryan:
Pretty much. I just listened to Glenn Beck’s freaking out over the Secret Service again. He’s afraid the country will be torn apart should there be an assassination. He then stated that the blame is on MSNBC and on the Ferguson protesters for not stopping their protests after Wilson was “exonerated.” Not one single mention of the DOJ Ferguson report that proved — beyond any doubt — just how rampantly racist the PD is — and how right the protesters have been all along.
WereBear
@debbie: Classic abuse pattern: I wouldn’t hit you if you wouldn’t try to assert your personhood against my wishes!
They know it so well. Makes me think they know it toooooo well.
Amir Khalid
@Emily68:
I’m pretty sure it does. It looks very close to the German ficken.
RobertB
I like Liz Phair, but she sings like a female Neil Young.
Iowa Old Lady
@Amir Khalid: From dictionary.com: “Although its first known occurrence in writing dates from the late 1400s (disguised in a cipher at that), the word fuck was undoubtedly heard long before that, and it remains primarily a creature of the spoken language. “
Archon
If they had a song about how only “real [email protected]@as” join SAE then yes you could say they were influenced by rap music.
To try to link rap music and the use of the “N-Word” to a song that sounds straight out of Jim Crow is a joke.
wasabi gasp
Cut me down with your silver knife
Something over there I do not like
There’s no use in wondering
PJ Harvey – Joe
Tree With Water
This most recently stupid dust-up lends insight into the role of jesters in ancient royal courts. Power is quite intolerant of free speech and independent thought. It scares more than a few to death- death for others, I mean, not them.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Warren Terra:
I am somewhat willing to believe that they had never thought through the implications of the song, not because of rap music, but because they’re stupid and sheltered and never stopped to question it. They are now learning a hard lesson about not questioning “tradition,” as they should.
Bubblegum Tate
Now this post post speaks to me! I am a hardcore hip-hop head (since 1985!), but also a big Liz Phair fan who ranks Exile in Guyville as easily one of my favorite albums of all time.
Benw
@Bubblegum Tate: Exile in Guyville is a stone-cold classic and her run of albums through Whitechocolatespaceegg are amazing.
wasabi gasp
@Bubblegum Tate: Masterpiece in one. It’s an extraordinary debut.
Bubblegum Tate
@Benw:
Agreed. And now that I think back on it, I’m pretty sure whip-smart was the last album for which I did the “count down the days until it hits stores” thing. I enjoyed whitechocolatespaceegg as well, and then she never made another album. Nope. Not a single album. No more Liz Phair music after that. It didn’t happen.
NotMax
Let’s set the Wayback machine to 1938, shall we?
Another Holocene Human
@Iowa Old Lady: That’s interesting. I’d always heard that it came over water with the Dutch and that medieval English used the word swyven, although that term was used in a baudy context, not as an intensifier.
Nellie
OK – I can’t believe I’m the only one in this conversation that remembers ‘You Oughta Know’. Alanis Morissette? 1995?
wasabi gasp
@Bubblegum Tate: My appreciation of Liz Phair begins and ends with Exile in Guyville, but she did release three more albums in the aughts following whitechocolatespaceegg.
Egypt Steve
They train our young men to drop fire on people — but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes, because it’s obscene!
— Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.”
Bubblegum Tate
@wasabi gasp:
I know she did. I refuse to acknowledge them because they are terrible.
wasabi gasp
@Bubblegum Tate: Ahh, should’ve picked up on that. I’ve been to that place a few times myself.