You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer, Mark Twain once wittily wrote. But what can we do with people who consciously aim for the sewer, especially when American values are concerned?
The nation’s entertainment industry seems determined to flush whatever is left of America’s values and standards of morality straight down the nearest sewer. What’s the latest example? The appearance of one Calvin Broadus as the “celebrity guest” on ABC’s television show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
Broadus is better known as rapper Snoop Dogg. Make that gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg, and Broadus doesn’t bother to deny that title. He embraces it; he revels in it. A careful reading of the lyrics from one of his biggest hits — “Drop It Like It’s Hot” — proves that.
Just to make sure my ears didn’t deceive me the innumerable times I heard them when the song was played on radio stations, I printed out those lyrics from the Web site elyrics.net. And, not to my surprise (or, I suspect, yours), they’re worse than I thought.
Let’s see now, the song starts off with a reference to pimps. Then there’s a line calling police officers “pigs,” and the dreaded “N” word is in there, of course. And it couldn’t be a gangsta rap song without denigrating women, could it? Yes, the line “I’m a bad boy, with a lotta ho’s” is in there.
Oh, and you’ll love this one: “I got the rolly on my arm and I’m pouring Chandon and I roll the best weed cause I got it going on.”
Remember the days when the country’s record executives wouldn’t dare sign a musician who made such a blatant reference to illegal drug use? You can bet executives at ABC don’t.
I’ve saved the absolute worst for last: “I’m a gangsta, but y’all knew that. Da Big Bo$$ Dogg, yeah I had to do that. I keep a blue flag hanging out my backside. But only on the left side, yeah that’s the Crip side.”
Did everybody get that? Yes, the reference to “Crip” is about the notorious street gang whose members have terrorized the nation’s law-abiding citizens for years. Broadus, in his younger days, was a member of the gang, whose colors are blue. What these lyrics tell us is that he’s still a member of the Crips, and that he’s proud of it.
Broadus is so proud of being a Crip, in fact, that several years ago he said of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, one of the gang’s co-founders, “He’s our Martin Luther King.” You read that correctly: Broadus compared a convicted murderer (who’s since been executed) and gangbanger with a history of violence to a man who was the nation’s foremost advocate of peace and nonviolent social protest.
If Broadus’ stupid remark were his worst offense, I’d still have a big problem with Hollywood trying to pass this character off as part of the American mainstream. But there’s more. There are Broadus’ frequent arrests for drug and gun possession. (Normally I’m an advocate of personal gun ownership, but not for convicted felons, which Broadus is.) There’s this line from a 2006 USA Today story that gave a timeline of Broadus’ more notorious run-ins with the law:
“August, 2003: Named by police in an affidavit claiming he lured underage girls in New Orleans to take off their shirts for a video by offering them marijuana and Ecstasy. Outcome: Settled (and sealed) in July 2004.”
What hasn’t been sealed are 1993 accessory to murder charges against Broadus in the death of Philip Woldemariam. Broadus drove the car when one of his fellow gangbangers fatally shot Woldemariam, also a gang member. A Los Angeles jury acquitted Broadus of murder charges but deadlocked on manslaughter charges.
Aren’t television network honchos supposed to check this kind of stuff before they have people on their shows promoting them as “guest celebrities”? What’s behind Hollywood’s love affair with Snoop Dogg?
Maybe the late actor Robert Mitchum, no stranger himself to marijuana use, had it right. After he did time for a late 1940s possession of marijuana conviction, someone asked Mitchum what he thought of jail.
“Kind of like Hollywood,” Mitchum answered, “only with a better class of people.”
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
