WE Blog

Are we Kansans just collectively retarded? You cannot legislate morality you ignorant high and mighty, holier-than-thou hicks. This state deserves every ounce of disrespect and humiliation that the other states hand out to us. I friggin hate “gangsta rap” but it’s not my place (or yours) to try and legislate it out of existence. It’s free speech asswipes.

Ahhh…but jan beemer and her band of nut cases claim you CAN legislate morality. I was at a southwind meeting last year and saw one of their pamphlets that says just that. southwind is going to make you moral–whether you want it or not.

Boy you said it Pleefer.

Legislation against music? Well only in the backwater feudal duchy of Kansas.

Can I have my turn?

Can we get some legislation against talk radio getting hordes of country music listening slack jaws rabid about telling me to “If you don’t love America yu cn gid out!”?

At least that would be a public service.

It is most definitely a “free speech” issue. If you act on the suggestions in the songs, then you possibly commit a crime, but not saying it. Only until you threaten the President or yell “Fire” in a theatre is it lawful.

Yes it is.

Define obscene.

I find talk radio obscene.

That’s why we have the community standards test.

I’m glad I’m not the one trying to defend the rights of rappers to talk as nasty as they want. I will defend the rights of those making political speech (the original intent of free speech). I will support all efforts to limit those who use obscene speech simply to shock. There is no need for it and it is of no use except to play to little white boys in the suburbs who want to fantasize mistreating “hos”.

Britney Spears, she’s big news. Ans she is “obscene”. This argument against “gangsta rap” sounds just like, “les send all dem negra’s back ta Afurca where day belong”.

Ahhhh-ahh, Kansas!

The point is, IMO, that Kansas doesn’t have the power to legislate anything meaningful to get rid of gangsta rap, so it is an act in futility.

I guess Kansas doesnt have REAL issues to deal with.

Here’s a clue Peggy. AFTER you deal with Kansas’ 19th century water policy (the REAL obscenity in this state) THEN you can play with the rap issue.

‘kay?

With all the talk of a “Nanny State” here we go again! One more time the Government knows what is good for you more then you do. How is this any different then the Religious Right and Gay marriage people?
Me personally I agree with the consensus, I do not like rap or hip hop it drives me up the wall. But then I do like country and if I want other to be tolerant of my taste in music I need to return the thought.
This is sounding like I am tolerant of other and will defend their choices… Unless I do not like their choices! That I want the Government to force them to change to a more likeable thing! The Police have the duty to tell them to turn it down because it is disturbing the public peace. Not to tell them to switch the channel to music everyone else would like to listen to. Drinking milk promotes abuse of women! There are studies that show abusive men drank milk some time in their lives! Now that makes as much sense as claiming that Rap makes for disrespecting of women. We need to stop with the looking for a way to excuse certain actions and realize that if you want to live in a society that respect you then you have to respect others. And I said that with a cigarette in my mouth too!

Hee hee hee. And right up there on the priority list for this legislative session MUST be outlawing the balls dangling from truck hitches. You know, like the Virginia legislator proposed. I bet THAT will never fly in Kansas. You just cant take the balls off those trucks. It would be like taking them from the driver….

It’s a nanny state like others. It’s all about controlling your life regardless of party. We are over regulated and over taxed any way. I agree time can be better spent than worrying about nasty rap. Before Rap it was rock an roll shaking the body.

“I just really like talk radio.”

Now why did I already know that there adhoc?

I just bet you do. Beats thinking huh?

Hee hee hee Pleefer. I thought about getting some for my truck, but then I realized it was redundant. I already have more than most of the men I know out here…

No point in rubbing salt into the wound.

Sonny Scroggins also wants Kansas not to invest in the Sudan. Yep, must be a republican.

Theirs a difference between loud music and music one doesnt like. Personally I find it disturbing that people like Peggy Mast want to try legislate peoples taste in music, at its worst its a mild form of fascism, I find it hard to beilive that people think its a good idea to shred the first amendment, the freedom of speech exists precisely to protect speech one doesn’t like.

The Equal Rights Amendment WILL be on the legislative ticket this year. We have more than double the signatures for that than they had for Alexa’s law. We were promised a hearing from them last year, and we are in the process of getting the speakers lined up.

It WILL be debated.

It is so long past overdue it isn’t even funny. We hope that the major papers will be doing a write up on this very soon.

So please, I beg of you. If you support the ERA (and why wouldn’t you), sign the petition at

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/884034906

Kansas was the first state to ratify the ERA when we were fighting it at the federal level. This isn’t a dem against rep issue, but it is the republicans in the Kansas House and Senate who are wishy washy on it- or flat out against it.

WHY? I don’t know. But I can tell you my REPUBLICAN GRANDMOTHER and GRANDFATHER signed the petition. She fought for it as well back when she was younger.

“Obscene speech is not protected speech.”

Therefore, since I consider any defense of Bush’s policies to be obscene they should be outlawed.

This was decided in Miami over a decade ago.
2 Live Crew had the right to say (not sure I should censor this or not)
“Shut up ho, and do as I please,
And nibble on my ______ like a rat does cheese”.
And as I keep saying about Demon Cox, HAVING rights does not MAKE you right.

oops, balls…

Would that make it a gelded truck? A getruck??

KFG- You’ve got that right. Welcome back from down South- you’re bloggin’ with that twang thing!

Outlander, Pleefer, Ben:

Actually, it is black letter law that obscenity is NOT protected speech. The trick, of course, is to define what is obscene.

The standard case us Miller v. California, 1973.
Basically, it sets out a three part test, in practice notoriously difficult to apply, for determining when material is obscene and thus without constitutional protection.

Case here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=413&page=15

Wiki explanation here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=413&page=15

I still like Potter Stewart’s definition: paraphrased, it’s “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

What bothers me is that some parents think nothing of playing that obscene “music” with their kids in tow. That’s abuse, subjecting a child to obscenity. I have been close to snatching someone’s hair out when I see that.
As long as we’re into banning obnoxiuos stuff, how about those radio comercials that scream the phone number about 3 or 4 times to drill it into your head? It’s a good thing I don’t have a gun when one of those nasty things interupts the music.
Several times when I’m sitting at a red light and one of those jerks drive up beside me with their music real loud, I turn up the country music station as loud as I can to drown them out.
I’ll probably get shot someday.

Thanks Mary, I’m feeling excited to be rid of the stupid things. And I’m for banning all car dealer ads on the radio. No actually, I’ve always wanted to go into Rusty Eck or some place and just start yelling questions and just yelling in place of talking. Then when asked why I’m doing it, I’ll just say, “I thought that’s how you talk around here”.

January 26, 2008

Condemnation of Gangsta Rap

James 3:5: Power in the tongue

WHAT ABOUT THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT’S CONDEMNATION OF GANGSTA RAP??? The Connecticut Resolution condemning gangsta rap has been in existence for nearly a year and the Chicken Little Complex was hastily presupposed. So the sky won’t fall when the state of Kansas passes the resolution.

As far as the Pitch Newspaper & Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog,just like Representative Mast and myself, your newspapers do not speak for the state of Kansas. If you checked your records, I have a hisotry of defending the 1st Amendment rights of blacks, whites or anyone who felt they were wronged.

I am interested in seeing the development of a training tool for adults to learn the meaning of gangsta rap and its ill-effects on society. Two books written on gangsta rap are “Snatched from the Fire” by Jessica James and Raymond Christian’s “Women Tell What Men Should Know”.

The goal is to persuade the other forty-eight states to pass a resolution condemning gangsta rap because of its offensive lyrics and the harm it does to the psyche of our young people.
Personally, I enjoy listening to this type of rap, but I do not enjoy hearing young women, mothers etc. being referred to in a negative way. As a matter of fact, I enjoy listening to the “clean version” of T’Pain and Flo-Rider’s song “Get Low”.

While visiting my grandson in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the idea to protest the words contained in gangsta rap began. The original idea was to challenge anyone who had ever used the “N” word to come out and demonstrate against its use.

Eventually, the challenge developed into something more when Don Imus made his disrespectful remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

One day I heard Rev. Al Sharpton calling for the firing of Don Imus because he used racist and misogynistic comments about the women’s basketball team. I believe the civil rights struggle has been on hold since the 9/11 tragedy.

Thanks to Mr. Imus, the opportunity to bring the struggle of gender, race, and color, the use of the “N” word and unflattering depictions of women in rap and videos back to the forefront where such inequalities are in the forefront of everyone’s mind.

The situation confuses many people because whites and other non-blacks are not supposed to use certain words when referring to black women and men because they are not black. But a black person can refer to their women as ho’s, sluts, the “B” word and use the “N” word unchallenged, which is ridiculous and a double standard.

There needs to be an overall standard when it comes to the use of those words by whites, blacks, etc. The music needs to be cleaned up and made safe for listening by my grandchildren, yours and others. One requirement of a universal standard is that this musical genre should not disrespect anyone and not cause shame on an entire generation.

A desired outcome is for rappers to clean up their music by removing misogynistic lyrics while maintaining artistic freedom with said songs. The challenge is an International one, but with input from the public, the reduction in demand of this type of music and political input from our legislators we can succeed.

There are several purposes of the campaign:
1. To bring awareness to the misogynistic, sexist and racist lyrics of gangsta rap.
2. For women to take a stand against the negative depictions of them in rap, movies, stand-up comedy, etc. To challenge others and their organizations to get involved.
3. To have women speak with their children and other impressionable relatives on the dangers of perpetuating such stereotypes in song.
4. To require our politicians to take a stand on the issue without infringing on the first Amendment rights of those in the entertainment industry.

Sonny Scroggins

P. S. I will release, the 2nd page of the Honorable Professor Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr. Email’s Gangsta Rap Response, next week! (see Below)

There is a great documentary out there that documents a lot of what went on. It is called “Hip-hop-Beyond Beats and Rhymes”. To me, the images have changed little since I was a kid. I grew up watching black males process their hair and adopt the Ike Turner/James Brown look. That was a negative image. You were a “pimp” and you drove a Cadillac. The motivations were the same as gangsta rap is today.

No movie is more sacred to young teens than “Scarface”, a bad remake of the story about Al Capone. The message was to “get rich quick or die trying”. But it was only valid in the black community. Outside the black community, none of it mattered.

To justify slavery , white males separated the slaves into two parts, the mind and the body. The mind belonged to the white male. Black males were brute force, not supposed to think. They were given hypersexuality to insure they created more slaves. Black women were degraded as a means to an end.

Children without fathers is nothing new. It goes back to slavery. Single households and broken homes are not new, they also go back to slavery. Slaveowners could rip a family apart. Black males could be separated from their children. Black women were sex objects for the pleasure of white males.

So, when you look at a gangsta rap video on BET, you are seeing something that is rooted in slavery. Black males are super-sexed, black females exist as sex objects who ae there to seduce them and give them “jewels”. The materialism there is valid only in the ghetto. They don’t dress that way in the Hamptons or on Wall Street.

My generation rebelled against the Pimp mentality. We decided not to hang on the streets and drink alcohol, but to go to college. Rather than burn our hair with lye to straighten it to look white, we adopted afros and afro-centric thinking. When we started showing up on campus, the mainstream got nervous. Now we would be competing for the same jobs as their kids.

Their first line of defense was drugs. They flooded the community with drugs. Gangs sprouted up to control the drugs. Still , they could not stop the momemtum. Going back to Africa, meant we concentrated on the beat. Rap and hip-hop are based on the beat and improvisation. The first rap recordings were protests against the conditions or making fun of the teen lifestyle. The competitions between DJ’s and MC were friendly and of no consequence. Then the drug dealers and the gangbangers got into the act.

They could only go so far. The gatekeepers for all black music still remains to be white males in suits in corporate offices.

They decided to resurrect the old slavery based images. They took away the “mind” and focused again on the “body”. I saw middle class kids come into the studio and told their raps were not “hard-core” enough. They wanted more violence, cursing and sex talk. They knew that sex sells.

That pornography is the largest industry in America. They also saw how to market it to white teens who were fascinated by a lifestyle of living with death and defying it. Seventy to eighty percent of gangsta rap is sold to white teens.

The black kids only imitate the images because they have no alternatives that get them “stain”. Going to college will only get you laughed at.

The music of black folks has always been the most important thing to us since Africa. As our music goes, so do we. With control of the music outside our community, there is no reason for chains on us anymore.

Even the churches have become materialistic. We used to make fun of Reverend Ike and his prayer cloths. Not you have even white evangelical preachers talking about “prosperity gospels”.

All the mega-churches are based on prosperity preachers. The kids hear the same message as they do in gangsta rap. That is, if you drive an Escalade with $10K rims, you have made it. They hear negative messages about schools that teach evolution and don’t allow school prayer.

The drug addict, at least gets drugs. The churches take your money in tithes and give you nothing but promises. Instead of gold chains and grilles, the preachers have $500 suits and pimp the old ladies out of the SS money.

In the meantime, white males look at it all and smile. They have returned us to the only state of mind they are comfortable with. With slogans like “snitches get stitches” they insure that their despots will stay in control just like they do in the foreign countries they have pimped for resources like oil.

They will not let the positive messages be heard. They do not want us to be afro-centric and proud of our African heritage. Instead of the Pimp model , we now have the “50 cent” model. Yet they are one and the same.

I watch the local charlatans. posing as record producers, pimp the dreams of kids who dream of being rappers. They sell them same false hopes the pimps of the 50’s did . They are the leeches that rival the Christian preachers for stealing our dreams, hope and energy. Islam did offer an alternative until it was hijacked by Wahaabi nutcases.

But the real salvation does not lie in any of Man’s religions. It is still in the music. But now even jazz and blues have been taken from the community and co-opted to control us.

Black folks are in the worst condition since slavery. As the economy worsens, that will become more evident. We have the most to lose. We have still not made the break-throughs we need to make. We have the money, but not the wealth. We have no media outlets like other ethnic groups have. We have no major multi-national corporations. We are not organized and recognizing our common goals.

What does gangsta rap say to all this. Nothing. It says ” I got mine , you get yours” . All the images are negative and slave based. It is hyper-sexed and based on brute force.

The competition has become violent but only upon each other. No more, “kill the police” like the old school rappers said. Now, it is pay the police off to keep the drugs flowing. You can spend $10K on some rims, but not put it in a mutual fund or start a business.

And that sad part is that at some point, almost everyone you know is for sale. Some for so cheap , that it is embarrasing. Even the threat of losing a job you hate is the cost.

The difference is that there is no auctioneer selling us off on Wall Street. We accept our enslavement. We believe we have no choice. Either we become the pseudo outlaws of gangsta rap or we have no shot at anything but a meager existence.

Tell your kids, they have been bamboozled. Don’t preach to them about the church and Jesus because that too has become a lie.

You must take them back to Egypt and to Timbuktu. Talk about Barack Obama and his family in Kenya. Teach them that they were the first to believe in one God. That they are the descendants of Abraham and Moses. That Jesus looked like them.

I guarantee most of them will say they aspire to be rappers or in the NBA or NFL. Teach them that those figures are greater slaves than they are. as the book says “60 Million Dollar Slaves”.

Tell them that out of all the rappers , not one of them has a record company…. only record labels that are at the mercy of the five record companies left. That there are no black movie studios, not black TV network or satellite network.

That there is no black radio corporation in all the major black markets. Tell them that most of the rappers they hear come from middle class homes not the streets. And that the streets are a dead end for anyone who thinks they are anything but a way to insure the prisons stay full.

Tell them the only way drug dealers get health care or a pension is if they have a job at Wal-Marts. That when they are shot , we pay for their care. When they are in jail, we pay for their upkeep. So they are still invisible in the system. Still somebody’s “lady” in lockup.

Tell them to make their parents accountable for raising them. Getting an iPod or a cell phone is not the same as spending quality time with them. That if their parents do not stress an education, they want them to fail and be ignorant.

And the preachers. Tell them to stop talking about someone, Jesus, that they do not know.
Jesus never took up a collection or had a building where he had to pay rent or a mortgage.

Tell them to stop saying rap is wrong unless they offer an alternative like after-school programs or tutoring. Unless they sponsor and support businesses in the community. Or nursing homes or have their conventions in hotel they own.

50 cent sold his meager share in his vitamin water. Rappers have sold off their clothing lines. They can’t hang with the Big Boys. They are no Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

How many NBA or NFL franchises do we own? How many sneaker and boot manufacturers do we own? How many white T-shirt and doo-rap companies do we own? How many stores that sell all that garbage do we own? Do we own North Face or Timberland? How many jewelries do we own that sell us all the gold we display?

And where does the money come from? How many black folks have jobs in the private sector , not the public sector? Where does the drug money comes from? Who brings the drugs into our community?

How many “thongs” do we manufacture? How much Blistex and mouth sprays? How many Black and Mild companies do we own, how many tobacco companies? How many Chinese food outlets do we own? How many of them do we supply with rice?

The parallels to slavery in 1860 and 2008 are striking. We need to understand why. We have allowed our culture to be used as a tool against us. Others are getting rich off our misery. And it is misery. How many of us are at peace with our condition in life at this point? How many feel we are better off than we were in 1965?

Look at the media . Where are the voices of sanity? We know about Britney and Tom Cruise , but not about the black folks that are trying to make a difference.

They have a stake at selling us the okey-doke. Who consumes the drugs and the malt liquor? Who is without health care? Who needed the sub-prime mortgages? Who is dying in the war in Iraq? Who is in the prisons at a cost of $60K a year to taxpayers?

Who has to sell their homes and move South when they retire? Who has to live with the gangs and the violence? Whose grandparents have to care for the kids while the Mom is in rehab or dead and the father is in prison? Who has the most kids in Special Ed because of their environment and abuses of their parents?

You only see the worst of us in the media, never the kids who go to college and are successful like Baraka Obama was. They want us to buy into the “body” mentality… the slave in the field , working till they drop always under control and docile. Let them hear Lil Wayne and they are content .. they will flip those burgers, stay in the house with Mom and hit that party on the weekend.

The Professor

Cool…

Nice