Why It Isn’t About Hip-Hop.

I continue to maintain that there is a distinct difference between Don Imus and the hip-hop community.

Imus is a member of what we vaguely call "the opinion media." Both he and the discussion about his use of racist language could have opened a valuable doorway into a discussion about that very same opinion media and its many other members (i.e. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc). We progressives, instead of leaping at this chance to hold conservative broadcasters accountable for comparable language, have gotten sidetracked into discussing an important, but unrelated, issue.

When I've pointed this out, or tried to articulate the difference between Imus and the hip-hop community, conservatives have attacked me for being a "reverse racist" and progressives have questioned me for having a "double standard" and possibly also for apologizing for offensive and reprehensible lyrics.

Progressives, listen to me: You're missing the point for the principle.

There isn't one, single standard by which we judge all things, simply using more or less intensity in our focus. We have different standards for different things, and this is right and proper. Let's look at a different example. We all know the difference between murdering a person for profit and accidentally killing a person. Our judgment of the matter would reflect that difference. "Fairness" is not some catch-all criterion, where we judge even similar matters irrespective of context or intent.

And the difference between Don Imus and the hip-hop community isn't even a subtle one. It's an obvious and apparent difference. Changing the topic from Imus to hip-hop isn't even a coherent subject change. They are tenuously linked by the topic of racism, but that is, as you know, a very wide topic involving many different things.

The issues raised by Imus and hip-hop, respectively, are also quite different. Imus, as a representative of that opinion media, opens up avenues into a discussion revolving around the accountability of opinion jockeys and what they say on air. Regardless of Imus's political affiliations or (waning) popularity, he falls into the same class of broadcasters as do others such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael Savage. These people have a tremendous amount of influence on the political discourse, and a discussion about them and the hate-speech they use would be both important and beneficial to progressive ends. Hip-hop raises issues about our standards for entertainment, for lyrical content. It does raise some issues for the African-American community (as well as, I might add, the suburban white teenaged community, which may consume up to 71% of mainstream "gangster" rap), as well as a variety of more general cultural issues.

What I hope to establish by pointing out the differences, in a variety of contexts, between Imus and the hip-hop community is simply to establish that they are, in fact, different, and, regarding the issues they lead to, not even related, save by the most tenuous of reasoning. By accepting and promulgating the false idea that they are the same, we as progressives have missed out on a valuable opportunity.

You might be wondering why, if Imus and hip-hop aren't even related issues, we even ending up talking about hip-hop at all, and a very simple answer to that question.

Conservatives don't want to talk about media accountability.

So rather than taking the Imus dialogue in its natural direction, they jumped the train onto a completely different set of tracks. Hip-hop (and gangster rap in particular) provides the perfect foil for conservatives to direct attention to, while deferring responsibility from themselves, whenever issues regarding language usage arise. (and choosing hip-hop to derail…) Derailing the discussion by throwing hip-hop into the mix was very effective, simply because nobody is going to defend gangster rap. Also, while pointing out the disconnect between Imus and hip-hop has nothing to do with apologizing for gangster rap, it's easy to paint it as if it were.

Hip-hop is a subject that we need to discuss, but there’s a time and place for everything. It simply isn't relevant to the “Don Imus discussion,” and it isn't relevant to the political discourse that Imus and the other opinion media figures influence and contribute to. The doorway to discussing media accountability is not the appropriate doorway to discussing hip-hop, and following (and even defending) that rhetorical direction is not beneficial to progressive ends. When we switched topics, we fell for conservative bait-and-switch tactics yet again.

Conservatives always pull this same trick, and we progressives always fall for it. We know that hip-hop is a topic we should discuss, and they use that against us. We need to wake up and start pushing conversations in the right direction, rather than being led around by the nose.

Control of the civil discourse is the key to political power.