Originally Posted By: Porcupine
I was composing a letter today to a local radio station that continues to play a song (surprisingly, not a rap song) that I find offensive because it contains a line that I interpret as being repulsively sexist.


Isn't it a bit prejudiced to accept the notion that rap music is inherently more offensive than other types of popular music. Why don't people bristle at the sugestions of pedophilia in Union Gap's "Young Girl" or Lionel Richie's video for "Hello"? Likewise, nobody gets fired up when Big Joe Turner exclaims, in "Shake, Rattle & Roll," "I'm a one eyed cat peeping in a seafood store. Well, I can look at you and tell you ain't no child no more." Nobody is writing letters to Amy Winehouse's record label, asking them to pull her records from the shelves and force her to go to rehab for her extremely public heroin addiction; to the contrary, they give her awards.

With so many reprehensible ideas being bandied about in popular music, I'm not sure why people continue to single out rap music as being the most deserving of its disapproval. And while I understand that you were not writing about a rap song, I do not understand why you felt a need to include that little aside: "surprisingly, not a rap song".

"Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style." -George Bernard Shaw