Letting Off Like Bernard Goetz

I know it's taken a little while to answer my own question, and I do have a bushelful of excuses, but what can I really say? Apologies are for the weak. I do what I like to do and I listen to what I like to listen to, but if the oppo research file got a hold of my iPod, I'd be dead in the water. I like music with horrible values - music that tells listeners that by working hard, ruthlessly destroying all competitors, and always excelling at all that you do, you will achieve all material pleasures a mind could think of. You would think that this music could soundtrack the Republican National Convention, but I have a feeling we will not see John McCain shimmying to "Nuthin' But a G Thang" anytime soon. Enjoying gangsta rap, the music that extols the virtues of capitalism at its lowest forms, is an immediate disqualifier. Sure, the genre is misogynistic, homophobic, and at times racist. But so are some elected officials.

It took the first song (I think I win!). It's an amazing posse cut by the late great Big L that features one of Jay-Z's earliest appearances. I love Big L. I'm fucking doomed, in this life and the next.


Where to begin here? Big L opens the track, and his verse alone is enough to keep me from running this place. In the second line he brags about getting men lynched, and in the third one he claims to kill infants for ten cents. The fourth line is about being a street genius with a unique penis, and the seventh line is about killing queers. Apparently Big L fills his enemies with so much lead that they can use their dick for a pencil, gets more pussy by accident than most people get on purpose, and sells so much drugs that he is "fucking with more keys than a janitor." I don't condone any of these behaviors in the slightest, but does it make me a bad person (possibly a sociopath) that I enjoy hearing these behaviors rapped about?

A candidate can call The Godfather his favorite film and never have to hear about it again (Scarface could raise some eyebrows, though.) Barack Obama can even endorse The Wire without being held responsible for the murder and drug use depicted in the show (though the campaign is still young- someone on the internet will write something stupid about Obama and the Wire, eventually). All I'm asking for is for gangsta rap fans to be treated the same as everyone else, just like all the people that like boring music that isn't about guns or money. Maybe one day people will be judged by the content of their characters, not the content of their iPod. Maybe one day Big Pun fans and Common fans will live in harmony. But until that magical day comes, if I ever run for office, I'm scrubbing this post off the internets. I don't mean to sound pompous (I actually do) but Middle America is not ready for this much honesty. Peace.