Next week, GNR's "November Rain" is Tackled...

I smiled as I remembered a conversation I had with my 5 year old son yesterday afternoon while coming home from Lowe's. I am pretty much a rock dude, with my favorites being on the scale of Van Halen, Matchbox 20. While listening to a local station, that 80's anthem "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" by Poison came on the radio. My son asks, "Why does he say a rose has a thorn dad?" While trying to sound intelligent on the subject after hearing the song for almost 20 years and able to sing almost every lyric in time, I came up with "sometimes the things that are pretty can still hurt you." Not bad for answering on the fly, if you ask me. Bret Michaels would be proud.

Don Imus

There is a firestorm going on over shock-jock radioman Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. For those of you who missed them, he described them using the derogatory and racial terms "nappy headed hos". NBC's Today Show had host Matt Lauer interview him and Rev. Al Sharpton concurrently, then later interviewed Jesse Jackson. For the record- he has been suspended for 2 weeks beginning next Monday (due to a previously scheduled telethon that runs Thursday and Friday to raise money for his charities).

Here's what bugs me...why the big deal?

It is not that what he said was right. Certainly I agree with those saying that he was wrong. I feel diversity aware enough to feel disgusted about his portrayal of women as nothing more than sex objects as he did in using the word "ho", slang for "whore". To me, that is simply seeing a female as nothing more than a vagina, and if that is all you think about when you see a female, believe me you are missing the best parts of a woman. Then to characterize them as "nappy headed" surely is inane and inflammatory. This reference wasn't too hard to comprehend- and black people should not be characterized like this. So overall what did his term mean? A team of black whores. That sounds very intelligent. It just proves he's an idiot.

But why the big deal? Rappers have been using this term in their lyrics for years. Do you see any one of them being raked across the coals for what they publish and put across the airwaves? So it is OK for a black person (and I am stereotyping this group because most of them are black) to use these words? I find them offensive! Let's get them to stop making records! Let's keep their music off the shelves! They have no right to do this also!

What? You don't hear this argument? You don't agree? They are being "artistic"? You say I can choose to not listen if it offends me (which I do)? Well, guess what, you can do the same with this man as well! Don't like him, TURN HIM OFF! That will get his network and his sponsor's attention more than anything the media, of which he is part and parcel, can do. In fact, I think he is basking in the attention of it all. Free PR!

Just great...