Ok, I feel I should do penance for the Emmylou obsession at this point. . .
The Pink Issue of Bitch, which I should probably not read in public, features an article about Sarah Jones and her ongoing struggle with the FCC. The story's also been covered a few other places; FAIR's write-up gives the basic details:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently fined a community radio station for airing a political rap song that attacks sexual exploitation and degrading lyrics in popular music.On May 17, the FCC issued a $7,000 fine to Portland, Oregon's KBOO, a listener-sponsored station, charging that Sarah Jones' "Your Revolution" violated the Commission's decency standards, which were revised in April. The song, which challenges the sexualization of women in rap, asserts that "your revolution will not happen between these thighs."
The FCC ruled that "Your Revolution" contained "unmistakable patently offensive sexual references" that "appear to be designed to pander and shock." This ruling came after the FCC issued an order, nearly seven years in the making, to "provide guidance to broadcast licensees regarding compliance with the Commission's indecency regulations."
You can listen to the Entartete Kunst (well, Entartete Musik) at Airbubble, if you're curious about such things. Pervert.
Or find out why I'm making with the German all of a sudden.
Or there are several links at Sarah's unfortunately-flash-heavy site that'll let you Read All About It:
“Forget about the melting pot. . . multicultural is not a buzz word. This is reality, not just a PC culture.” Born mixed-raced, Jones finds the thread for her stage quilt from her own experience. “I’m taking large risks with the stereotypes. . . .It’s easier that they’re based on real people.” The Baltimore native attended Bryn Mawr College and then came to New york and began doing spoken word, winning the Nuyorican Poets Café’s Grand Slam Championship in 1997. Her anthem, “Your Revolution,” a sexually charged reworking of Gil Scott-Heron’s poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” clouts misogyny upside the head, while allowing women to celebrate hip-hop without having to be a “bitch’ or a ‘ho.”
That first statement is silly, of course, as everyone knows that Multiculturalists are the real racists.
Uh-huh.
np - Peter Gabriel, "The Time of the Turning", OVO: Millennium Show
Duh. The article in Bitch describes Sarah's countersuit, which is at least as important:
In an unusual counteroffensive, a New York poet and performance artist filed suit yesterday against the Federal Communications Commission, charging that it violated her First Amendment rights when it fined a radio station for playing a spoken-word song by her with vivid sexual imagery.The artist, Sarah Jones, asked for a judgment in federal district court in Manhattan that the 1999 song, "Your Revolution," is not indecent as the agency found; for an injunction preventing the commission from enforcing the $7,000 fine against KBOO-FM, a listener-supported station in Portland, Ore.; and for a finding that the commission's ruling violated her free-speech rights.
Lawyers who specialize in First Amendment cases said it was extremely rare for an artist to intervene legally in a case of this sort, which usually pits the F.C.C. against the station it has sanctioned. The suit also represents a further development in a debate about whether the commission is too strict or too lax in policing the airwaves.
Since this story only involves race, gender, sexuality, free speech and government control of the airwaves, it's not been talked about too much. Those are such boring topics, after all.
"Born mixed-raced"...
LOL - like the rest of the Black folk. And then, there is that one stereotype about Bryn Mawr girls...
Ah, women and hip-hop.
Thanks, Giles!
"The exact origins of hip hop remain an elusive oral history. . .'
My Folkloristics PhD topic! And may as well get that linguistics Master's while I'm at it. I will be a useless-degree-having mother fucker.
And I had to laugh at this:
Because I am racist.
Laura, if I ask what the stereotype about Bryn Mawr girls is, will I regret it?
Are you laughing at my Smith College t-shirt?
Well, put it this way: If I told you I once knew a Bryn Mawr girl who kept telling me (couldn't stop telling me, it seemed) the stat was 1 in 2 would you be surprised?
Or, to put it another, my private nickname for her became "Of All Places..."
Oy vey.
Glad I never went through with that plan to get shirts from all Seven Sisters.
Friend of my younger sister's went to Smith. She was like Maggie/Marisa Tomei on Different World. At least I always figured there was a scene where someone asked Maggie why she went to a Historically Black College, and she looked at them and said, "What?"
I finally heard the Sarah Jones track...or lyrics, I guess...she just dropped it on Def Poetry Jam.
That's all.
Just thought I'd share.
So, did you think it was obscene? So much worse than most of what's on the radio these days that FCC intervention was warranted?
Should I bother posting the results of the National Poetry Slam finals?
of course it was obscene. I'm starting to believe that intelligent, honest, creative words are obscene as a rule right about now.
She mentions the word 'dildo' that might have been about it.
But hey, didn't Alanis want to know whether or not some girl "went down on me in a theater?"
Sorry, just, you know, thinking around here.
I pretend not to notice that Sarah McLachlan, Tori, Alanis and other white chicks somehow escape those PARENTAL ADVISORY: Explicit Lyrics stickers, no matter how much swearin' and sex talk and suchlike they do.
Makes life easier, you know?
does she fuck you like me, Mr. Duplicity...
Hey, did that Meredith Brooks album with "Bitch" as its hit single get a PA sticker? The actual word "Bitch" didn't get censored on the radio either did it?
Maybe if she said it like the hip hop cats it would've been censored. If the song was called "Beeyotch" I think it might be viewed differently.