Race, Celebrities and Double Standards
In my previous post, I mention about 2 white guys who hated 2pac because of "his attitude". Then I mentioned that those white guys liked heavy metal and punk rock, which promotes the same exact attitude as gangsta rap! After all, those 2 white guys didn't make insulting remarks about Axl Rose, Phil Anselmo, Marrolyn Manson, or that guy from Oasis, all of whom gotten into serious trouble with the law.
One of my friends, Stuart Hayashi, had the following to say about my previous post.
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I think there is this big double-standard that people have between black rappers and famous white actors.
Do you know who I think is a REAL bad influence on little boys? Russell Crowe!
Russell Crowe does not merely create artwork that is violent, orcreate art to show how violent his youth was. He, as a grown,middle-aged man, has behaved violently IN RECENT YEARS! The big lug threatened a TV director for cutting his long,self-indulgent poem-reading during his award speech.
Then he gets into a bar fight with his security guard and rips his ear.
Then Russell Crowe throws an entire telephone at a man.
So wouln't it be logical to conclude that Russell Crowe is a far worse role model for kids than any rapper who merely *RAPS* about violence but who lives peacefully as an adult? Russell Crowe is an OLD MAN who behaves violently in real life.
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Pablo: That's a good point. Most of the gangsta rappers of the 90's have already grown out of the gangsta lifestyle by now. You rarely hear about Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube or Ice T getting into trouble these days.
They might still rap about the gangsta life, but they're not living it anymore. They don't even live in the ghetto where they grew up.
Anyways, back to Stuart Hayashi's words
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What is the consequence of that? Do we hear Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel scolding him for being such a brazen thug? Not as much as we read in *Entertainment Weekly* about what a talented actor Russell Crowe is and about how "sexy" he is for being such a "badboy."
But God forbid that Bill O'Reilly might invite Russell Crowe onto this show to castigate him for the negative message he sends toAmerica's youth.
Russell Crowe, after all, won the Best Actor OSCAR. Perhaps O'Reilly did scold Russell Crowe on his show when the stories of those incidents broke out. Even if that is the case, we still don't see O'Reilly running the same long-term campaign against Crowe on his show -- for Crowe's actual acts of violence! -- that we see O'Reilly running against certain musicians whose art *portrays*violence.
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This reminds me of Bill O'Reilly's campaign against Ludacris because of his lyrics. But I rarely ever hear about Ludacris getting into trouble with the law.
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And what about Mark Wahlberg? He gets into fights. And he's made racist slurs about Koreans.
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This does remind me of a time when Ice Cube made the song "Black Korea" in which he accused Korean store-owners of mis-treating African-American customers and said he wanted to burn their stores. He also made fun of their language. That was back in 1991, the year before a riot occured in LA, when African-American looters burned down Korean-owned stores!
When Mark Wahlberg ( an Irish-American actor who was once a rapper named Marky Mark) was a teenager, he racially insulted and then violently assaulted a Vietnamese boy. He also commited a similar crime against an African American boy.
So both of those rapper/actors ought to be condemned. You shouldn't condemn one without condemning the other.
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Back in 1990, Johnny Depp trashed his hotel rooms. But instead of portraying him as an immature troublemaker, the press cheered that this showed how much of an amusing, eccentric ARTISTE he was.
When was the last time we heard somebody chastise Winona Ryder for being a thief?
And Tom Sizemore has reportedly beat up women. Charges were even filed against him for beating up Heidi Fleiss. And yet, with the exception of *People* magazine, I hardly see any publications condemn Sizemore for his REAL-LIFE abusive behavior.
While black rappers get a bad rap (no pun intended), supposedly grown-up white actors get a free pass when they violate people's rights in REAL LIFE.
