The War on Hip Hop

MAASS: somehow, in the wake of Don Imus' firing, there's a backlash against the furthest thing from Imus--rap and hip-hop music. How did they get the blame for Imus?

MARSH: the show has always involved a great deal of race-baiting. But the formula was that Bernard McGuirk told the n----r jokes, as Imus called them on 60 Minutes, and Imus, with a nod and a wink, pretended to chastise him for it. And Bernard being back the next day and doing the same thing told us rather effectively how sincere the chastisement was.

This time, what happened was Imus crossed the line, and he himself said, "nappy-headed hos." That tore the cover off the pretense that it wasn't like this every day, no matter how many presidential candidates and how many respectable people were on that show.

Every day, that show was based in explicit racism--every single day. This is, in fact, certain people's truth about race. It's Bernard McGuirk's truth about race. It's Don Imus' truth about race.

So how do you put the lid back on once this truth gets shown? You put the lid back on by getting rid of the guy who took the lid off. And then, you go for a scapegoat--and you say that this is just as bad as that.

And the thing that was sitting there, waiting for it to happen, was hip-hop. Because, first, hip-hoppers speak Black vernacular language--they talk the way people talk in their community. And second, hip-hop is made by people who don't have the education in what you don't say. They say it. And because they get a lot of attention when they say "bitch" and "ho," they say it more.

Now, I don't think I've ever met a hip-hopper who, one, didn't go to church--maybe Ice T doesn't--and two, didn't love their mom. You wouldn't want to be in the same room with them, and call any woman who had the loosest connection to them a "bitch" or a "whore." Because doing that, then it's real. Otherwise, there's this unreality to it.

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