Ice Cube and Oprah

[wombat_socho]

I dropped a link to this Robert Lashley post over in the comments at basilpsyche's joint, but I think Lashley's criticism of Ice Cube as a destructive poser is precisely on point. Cobb really doesn't add anything major to what Lashley has to say, but then he admits he's just piling on. This is worth remembering, though:

And quite frankly, nobody would miss Ice Cube if he self-destructed. Compare him to Whitney Houston, whose redition of the national anthem still stands as one of the greats. Her downfall is a tragedy. If Ice Cube ate a bullet, the chorus would be, "I told you so", if not "what took them so long?"

The whole rappers v. Oprah thing could be written off as a tempest in a teapot if it weren't for the fact that it's a symptom of the bigger cultural war going on in American culture. I described this once to phoenixalpha as the split between "jazz blacks" and "rap blacks", which like any such description is a gross oversimplification, but there you are. If I were better versed in black cultural history I could probably draw some solid connections between rappers and pimp culture and the divide between field niggers and house niggers, but I don't, so I'm just going to say that the current flap looks like today's rendition of a very old argument.

That argument has implications for the country, of course, because what goes in in Black America inevitably affects a lot of folks who don't know jack about that culture aside from what they see on Oprah and what they hear from the trash Interscope is serving to the whiggers in Bethesda, Eden Prairie, Plano and the OC. A lot of those people are going to leave that stuff behind when they get into the corporate world, because suits and rap don't mix too well. As Jane Galt is fond of saying, that kind of trashy behavior has its greatest effects at the margins, on people who really can't afford to screw up too often or too badly. Poverty in America may be more inconvenient and irritating than anything else, but if the price of keeping people out of it is keeping jerks like Ice Cube and his homies of Oprah, I think it's well worth paying.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

we'll have to agree to disagree on whether censorship is strictly governmental. If a private university decides to not allow certain books in their library because of content, that to me is censorship, and no government is involved.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

But how do you justify forcing them to spend money/space on those books, and where does it stop?

[radio-gnome.livejournal.com]

well, if we follow the University libary analogy, which begins to break down fairly quickly, it's not "me" or "you" who is forcing anything, the very nature of the University forces them to spend money and space, and, idealistically, it never stops. And in reality, it often doesn't. Schools are continually expanding existing libraries and building new ones. Square footage of library space is a fairly important aspect of determining prestige among Universities.

At the same time, there are a lot of crap books and not all books should be included. So that would help save resources.

But, again following this analogy, what if the library in question decided to not allow any of the books of a certain genre to be in it, simply because the books are of that genre? No murder mysteries because, well, pick any "rational" explanation. They're all equally invalid.

For example, I think Intelligent Design is, well, it's actually rather funny is what it is, but I would never want a library to exclude well-written books on the positive side of ID, simply because they are about ID. Let folks read them and let them make up their own minds.

In the case of Oprah's show, she has "infinite" floorspace. The shows are going to be done, so there's not really any cost factor in deciding what the subject matter (guests) will be. One could say, "Well, it's her show, she should be able to decide who the guests should be." One could also say, "Oprah has reached a certain status where a kind of journalistic responsibility should be part of this decision, and this doesn't seem like a very responsible journalistic decision, it feels like censorship."

If the articles you linked to stated merely, "it's her decision, end of story", that would be one thing. But they go on and on and on with all of these "reasons" why Oprah shouldn't have Cube or "his ilk" on her show, and, IMO, they are all simply rationalizations for censorship clouded in words that are meant to sound impressive.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's more like they understand the reasons why she doesn't want gangsta rappers on her show and they're agreeing with her. Different color of horse completely. I'll deal with the library analogy later; am feeling under the weather.