interesting article

[lauralh]

Thought-provoking, somewhat sad article that asks: What is it about today’s music, violent and disgusting though it may be, that resonates with so many American kids?

(spoiler: divorce/broken homes)

Comments

[cpf.livejournal.com]

Logic error: Correlation does not equal causation.

She's overlooking one enormous factor in the whole picture - the record companies. They choose which artists to promote based on profitability. Obscenities = sales. Music that speaks to teens' problems = sales. Put them both together and you've got a product that appeals to two markets at once, thereby boosting sales. Chocolate + peanut butter. Rap + rock. Clock + radio.

This by no means proves that the two are related; I could just as easily cherry pick examples of non-obscene songs about teen angst or non-angsty songs which are obscene. As I said, flawed logical reasoning.

More bad reasoning here:

Unlike the rest, however, he (Eminem) appears to be a particularly attractive target of opprobrium for two distinct reasons. One, he is white and therefore politically easier to attack. (It is interesting to note that black rappers have not been targeted by name anything like Eminem has.)

So apparently 2 Live Crew never existed, or got arrested for obscenity charges, becoming THE name that came up when demonizing rap and were the basis for album labelling. Guess somebody must have hit the history eraser button again.

Eminem gets named because he gets promoted more than any black rapper, makes a great effort to sell himself as controversial, and a lot of white kids will only listen to white rappers so this is the first thing their parents hear.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

2 Live Crew weren't selling tons of albums till AFTER the obscenity flap, as I recall.

[cpf.livejournal.com]

So? That doesn't change the facts that A: they're black and B: they were the goat of the PMRC. This proves as false her claim that black artists are not attackable politically.

[cpf.livejournal.com]

Okay, Eberstadt is obviously on a crusade for nuclear families with stay-at-home mothers. Check out this article where she correlates working mothers with teen murder/suicide (http://www.policyreview.org/JUN01/eberstadt.html) using the same kind of faulty reasoning. It's way more paranoid than the music article.