The Right’s Hypocrisy About Rap Music and Common

Posted by | May 11, 2011 12:00 | Filed under: Top Stories


The right wing, desperate to find reasons to attack President Obama, has been going crazy because the rapper Common has been invited to appear at a White House poetry event.

Conservative critics are blasting tonight’s White House poetry event for including a rapper named Common, whose lyrics have blasted former President George W. Bush — “burn Bush” — and celebrated a former Black Panther convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper.

The New Jersey state police union is protesting is protesting Common’s appearance at poetry, as is 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

One lyric goes:

“With that happening, why they messing with Saddam?/Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button/Killing over oil and grease/no weapons of destruction/How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one.”

Of course one can’t expect Sarah Palin, and many white conservatives, to understand how rap music gives voice to a population that is often mistreated by authorities. And they know nothing about Common (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.),  his charity work of helping urban kids who need direction, or how his brand of rap is a departure from what had come before.

And the right has a short memory, conveniently forgetting their own associations which don’t seem to trouble them. Eazy-E of NWA, famous for the song “F…Tha Police,” attended an invitation-only lunch with the first President Bush in 1991, and RNC communications director Wendy Burnley bragged “Democrats, eat your hearts out!” George W. Bush pardoned the rapper John Edward Forte who had been arrested at Newark Airport and charged with possessing $1.4 million worth of cocaine in a briefcase.  But when a black president has a rapper at the White House, suddenly he’s suspect of associating with bad guys.

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Copyright 2011 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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