Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Lyrical Assault

The Pen is livid.

I was sitting around Monday night, not much to do, when I decided to pick up the LA Times… yes, I was that bored. On the front page of the Calendar section, a headline caught my eye “Is Music Issuing a Call to Violence” by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.

I started reading.

The Pen was in full-on Red Alert mode by paragraph two. Let me take you, briefly, through this nutcase’s line of reasoning.

Modern music lyrics are, Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez claims, giving rise to an epidemic of violence on women. That’s right… Lyrics are causing men to rape and assault women. And what, exactly is her evidence of this startling new revelation? Well, it seems to be no more extensive than eyewitnesses to the recent assaults on women in Central Park during the Puerto Rican Day Parade, who claim that some of the suspects were chanting violent rap lyrics as they assaulted.

Oh-kaaaay.

She goes on--splitting increasingly thin hairs as she goes--to suggest that while most media pundits blamed guns, or movies, or racist websites, or social alienation for the tragedy at Columbine, the most important link to those murders was missed. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, she points out, made violent threats on women in a now-famous videotape.

Yeah… so what!? They actually murdered a black kid and a couple of jocks, precisely because they were… a black kid and a couple of jocks. Do you think those kids’ parents feel marginalized by your claim that despite the fact that their kids are actually dead because of who they were, that somehow it’s more important to consider the possibility that the music Harris and Klebold listened to also made them woman haters as well as murderers? I know I’d be pissed as hell to hear that from you.

“Consider the common link”, she says “between the Central Park assaults, the yearly sexual assaults at Atlanta’s Freaknik celebration, and last year’s multiple rapes at Woodstock: pop music.”

Ugh. Come on lady! Music is as much a link to these incidents as the fact that the sun was out on all three days, or that a majority of the attendees were wearing jeans. Music was a link to that violence only in the sense that musical events, like concerts, are places where large groups of young people (particularly men), and large quantities of alcohol are likely to congregate. I think it’s more likely that a mob mentality lent some kids who were already pre-disposed towards violence (for all kinds of complicated personal reasons) a feeling of mob-induced anonymity which, fueled by drugs and booze, led to sexual violence. I am not willing to consider the possibility that otherwise peaceful, sensitive men who would never have considered assaulting a woman before, were driven to mindless violent behavior by lyrics.

Which brings up another point.

I’ll bet Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez just hates it when women are labeled victims. I’ll bet it drives her crazy when men suggest that women ask to be raped when they wear certain clothes, or behave in certain ways. Well let me tell you what The Pen hates, lady… I hate it when people like you suggest that I am a rapist in sheep’s clothing. I hate the implication that I, or any of the other 99.9% of men in this country who have never committed a sexual assault, are so mindless and easily brainwashed that we could hear a couple of lyrics and suddenly go off on an orgy of sexual conquest.

I mean, listen to her evidence for godssake: “The men in Central Park shake bottles of beer and spew them all over women-exactly the way they do to a stripper in Dr. Dre’s new video…currently the second-most played video on MTV.” I wonder, did this connection just occur to her because she’d seen the video recently, or did she search through the entire catalogue of pop-culture references until she found one that fit her theory? Spraying alcohol on other people is so common in the pop-culture lexicon that sports reporters sometimes wear rain gear into locker rooms after championship games. It’s more a symbol of celebration than of sexual violence, to The Pen. Why, I wonder, doesn’t Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez jump to the conclusion that these men were imitating The Yankees winning the World Series instead of Dr. Dre?

I think the answer is that, for some reason, this woman wants to believe that all men are sexual predators. She talks about an incident in 1993 (when she was in Grad. School in New York, something she mentions over and over) where a man chanting rap lyrics pretended to push her off a subway platform. I get the feeling, as she tells this story, that she was excited to finally have this kind of a tale to tell. As if to say, “At last! I have an anecdote to fit my preconceptions about the nature of men!” Of course my characterization is unfair, but no more unfair than to suggest that this asshole on the platform did what he did because of lyrics. She knows nothing about this guy. We don’t have his point-of-view to draw on. Maybe he was beaten as a kid. Maybe he was on drugs. Neither is an excuse for his behavior, but both are certainly more accepted as root causes of violence than are rap lyrics.

Why, I’m desperate to ask this woman, does it have to be the music? What is it about her that makes her so sure that lyrics are to blame, rather than simply a symptom of a larger sickness? Has she ever stopped to wonder if she’s off base, or is she so full of self-righteous, liberal-education-induced indignation that she is unable to consider any conclusion other than the one she reached on that platform seven years ago?

Because, frankly, I find the idea that music, or TV, or movies could exist in a vacuum, to be ridiculous. If kids are listening to violent lyrics, there must be a reason… other than Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez’s contention that, well, these are the kinds of acts music labels are signing these days.

Society reflects entertainment just as surely as entertainment reflects society. To suggest that an otherwise peaceful generation of children just can’t help themselves when faced with a goddamn lyric is silly. If there weren’t already some degree of anger or disaffection in this current generation of kids, well then they would not respond to those kinds of lyrics in the first place. Why don’t we talk about that?

I know why. Because the answers to those kinds of questions are more complicated than “let’s censor music.” Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez is not prepared for, or even interested in, the kind of complicated, hard-choice solutions these questions would require. She’d rather just tell us what to do and how to live our lives because she, in her highly-educated, self-righteous New York mind, has already figured out all the easy answers.

All this, and I haven’t even gotten to the silliest part of her argument yet.

“None of this is happening in isolation,” she points out, “It is now illegal for women in Afghanistan to go to school. In many nations, women can be beaten by strangers simply for being alone in public.” Well. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to read this paragraph. All of the countries she mentions, every single one, from Afghanistan, to India, to China, are some of the most restrictive societies on the face of the Earth. American movies, TV shows, and music acts are strictly forbidden in these nations. The average Afghani man has never heard any misogynistic rap lyrics, or seen that Dr. Dre video… ever! So, for Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez, The Pen has a question: What are you saying exactly?… That American kids need lyrics to be driven to violence they would otherwise never commit, but that Afghanis just happen to be born with the proclivity for sexual violence?

That sounds racist to me.

This kind of thinking is so typical of the Left in this county. They give lip service to diversity and independent thought, and then turn right around and advocate suppression of any and all ideas they disagree with, or which make them uncomfortable. At least the Right is up front about it. If they don’t want you to do something, they say so. They tell you you’re “godless”, or a “deviant.” It’s disgusting, but at least you know where you stand with the Right. Liberals have to couch their disgust for “un-enlightened” human behavior in this false, “we’re doing it for your own good” bullshit that just infuriates me.

The Pen, most definitely, does not abide.

I wonder where the current incarnation of Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez, with her enlightened mind crafted in the reality-free cocoon of New York graduate school academic theory, would’ve stood on the question of whether or not Elvis’ gyrating hips were appropriate for the television shows of the 50’s. I think I know what she would say now… “But… you don’t understand… that was different! Elvis was about rebellion against the out-of-touch, stifling repression of adults of that era. This is something completely different!”

No, my friend. It is exactly the same thing. The only difference is that now, you are the adult who’s out of touch.

Angry Pen out.