Thursday September 04, 2003

IN MY DAY, WE DIDN'T HAVE CAPS TO BUST! I know we asked the last person denouncing Britney and Madonna in a column to turn off the lights when he left. But there's Grandpa from The Boondocks -- I mean, Stanley Crouch -- still sitting in the dark, cursing it. Someone get a flashlight and give Grandpa a hand.

His every -- what, third? Fourth? -- column is about some bad thing on MTV that he hates and why decent people must band together and crush it. This time it's black performers who act like they want to kill you, and female performers who act like they want to fuck you.

"The black thug evolved into a hero because he went against what were dismissed as white middle-class values," sayeth Stanley. "And the prostitute was projected as the liberated woman because she was willing to strut her stuff against all conventions and follow her glands wherever they led her."

You have to admit that he sort of makes some mild, old-man-on-the-porch sense about the ludicrous (or Ludacris) gangsta fronting in hip hop. But it's nuts to ramble about it in a newspaper column, as if it were of any import whatsoever: it's like writing an angry column denouncing pistachio ice cream as an abomination before God.

(Wait, didn't Jim Lileks write one of those? Oh, you follow me, guys -- it's my theme for most of these columns: people who still think the personal is the political, and thereby diminish them both.)

You know, I bet that Crouch guy actually hangs out with black people. But he certainly can't have had any meaningful exposure to females! I mean, I've known some horny chicks, but none who could be said to have "followed her glands."

But that's alright, Gramps, think we got the formula:

• hip hop -- performed by blacks, enjoyed by whites, therefore bad for blacks.
  

• "slut chic" -- indulged by girls, enjoyed by boys, therefore bad for girls.