Blame it on Gangsta Rap

Nov. 6 1997 -- The clowns on Capital Hill were spending our money today on another cheap trick to cover up the fact that they’ve done absolutely nothing to help out the people of this country who elected them.

Why do they keep doing this? Why do they keep proposing Band-Aid solutions to sucking-chest-wound cultural problems? Because real solutions would require throwing out the essentially Christian conservative assumptions about society and humanity that got us into this mess in the first place. And if you throw out the Christian conservative assumptions, right then and there people will have to start thinking, and they might realize that there’s no particular reason to be taking orders from a bunch of grumpy, uptight old white men and their cronies. The grumpy, uptight old white men wouldn’t want that.

Let's talk specifics. The US leads the industrialized nations in unwanted pregnancies among teenage women. In a thirty-seven country study done 1985, teenage pregnancy rates were found to be lowest in the countries with more equitable income distribution, more liberal attitudes towards sexuality, and easiest access to low cost contraception.

We’ve known all this since 1985, for fuck’s sake, but if we were to put this knowledge to work and spare all those teenagers the agony of an unplanned pregnancy, we’d have to admit that *gasp**cough* people enjoy sex, yes outside of marriage too, and that the government’s sole interest in the matter should be to promote public health, not public morals.

Admitting that the government has no place trying to control what teenagers do with their bodies would put people like Bill Bennett, James Dobson, and Tipper Gore out of their lucrative careers. They might actually have to work for a living.

Better blame it on gangsta rap and Marilyn Manson.

Now what about violence? Call me wacky, but I think that fact that inner-city youth are disaffected and violent might possibly have something to do with the fact that they face a lifetime of brutal repression at the hands of a racist society, exemplified by a police forces like the LAPD. It might have something to do with a lack of opportunity that the same society has the gall to tell them is their own fault. The fact that they are forced to go to schools where the toilets don’t work, the textbooks are older than they are, and rats live in the cafeteria on equal terms with the cooks, and told that they should be grateful. If Newt Gingrich could imply that I was a lazy bum getting fat and happy off of welfare benefits that barely kept me alive I might be inclined to turn to the gun myself.

But if we actually tried to provide these kids with an opportunity we’d have to change our fiscal policy of keeping at least eight million Americans jobless at any one time to prevent inflation that might singe the pocketbooks of the very rich. Then our beloved politicians might annoy their corporate sponsors. They’d lose all those nifty campaign contributions and again, they might be forced to work for a living.

Better blame it on gangsta rap and Marilyn Manson.

And what’s this about the degradation of women? Being a woman myself, I’d definitely call it a problem. But could it possibly be that the people who make it socially acceptable to degrade women aren’t a few guys with guitars, but well-sponsored, media-coddled right-wing religious groups like Promise Keepers (who tell their members to take back the headship of their household - translated out of christian doublespeak, this means ‘Dictate what your wife and children can do, who they can interact with, what they can see, hear, read, and even think, because God wants you to. You don’t have to take their wishes into account because God made you smarter than them.’) and Pat Robertson ("The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women ... It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become Lesbians." -- Pat Robertson (1992)).

No way. It’s so politically fashionable to toady to the right-wing theocrats that bucking the trend by mentioning that they seem a bit misogynistic might conceivably land a congressperson in the unenviable position of having to work for a living.

Better blame it on gangsta rap and Marilyn Manson.