I don't know much about the Jonas Brothers. My son really likes them, and I probably should spend some time listening to their music. I'm pretty sure I won't like them, but who can really tell? Since I don't know much about the Jonas Brothers, and I don't really listen to the Jonas Brothers, I generally try not to blog about the Jonas Brothers. There is a good reason for not writing about things you don't know. You run the risk of writing something like this:
As for me, I don't care what color you are, if you're a kid who listens to hip-hop, I don't want my kids playing with you. I want my kids to have consciences that find hip-hop's lyrical content and themes repulsive. Which is to say, I want my kids to have a strong and uncompromising sense of character.Rod Dreher has been very complimentary of me in the past. I appreciate this, because we live on two different sides of ideological divide and also because I find his blog to be an interesting read, and generally absent to the sort of sweeping, absolutist, all-encompassing rhetoric that is evident in the above quote. I don't really know how to address the implicit charge that kids who listen to hip-hop don't have a "strong and uncompromising sense of character," since, uhm, I was one of those kids, and presently, my son--and basically every kid he knows--is one of those kids.
You guys know me well. I'm an old-head who has only a tangential connection to what is considered hip-hop today. There is no Akon on my Ipod. I haven't bought a Jay-Z joint since The Black Album. I missed large swaths of Cam'Ron's career. I'm old, and I accept that. I'm also bitter. I believe that hip-hop's once great literary promise basically hit a ceiling circa 1996. Moreover, as art-form, hip-hop's machismo has plagued it from jump, crippling it's ability to deal with the opposite sex with any real sense of maturity. I have no desire to hear about ejaculating on a woman's back. But I was 12 when Ice-T recorded "Girls, Let's Get Butt Naked And Fuck," and I hated that too.
But I don't know what I would be had I never heard The Low End Theory or By All Means Necessary. I came up in the Crack Age--and in those days, the loudest, most relevant, most coherent voices against drugs and violence didn't emanate from Washington, or from the Universities, or from the NAACP, but from the street. When Chuck told us to "build ourselves with intellect," when he went Booker T. Washington, and instructed us "to evolve to self-respect\cause we gotta keep ourselves in check," it changed my life. As a conservative, I'd think Rod would appreciate that critique.
That was twenty years ago. These days hip-hop has so infused itself into American culture, that you would have to go to the moon to not listen to it in some respect. Rod is riffing off of Stanley Crouch column which breaks new ground in Crouch's infinite quest to be completely incomprehensible. The column lays out hope that Obama will lead black people away from the pernicious influence of hip-hop. This despite the fact that Obama listens to hip-hop and had Nas campaigning for him.
I hear the president elect rocks a little Jay-Z, but truthfully, he doesn't even have to go there. These days there are white rappers, black rappers, French rappers, gospel rappers, Republican operative rappers, cowboy rappers, Ivy League intellectual rappers, and even snobbish Jazz trumpet rappers. We've had rappers who sound like John Wayne. And rappers who sound like Barack Obama. We have characters in High School Musical who are in love with breaking and hip-hop. And soon, it seems, even the Jonas Brothers will be doing hip-hop. Which means, Rod wouldn't want his kids playing with Barack Obama's kids.
Fine by me. More time and space, for me to work on that arranged marriage for Samori and Sasha. In the meanwhile, I'm off to cop that A Little Bit Longer joint. Maybe there's something to these Jonas kids...
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/12/i-guess-this-means-no-play-dates-huh-rod/6391/
