-Caveat Lector- ----- Original Message ----- From: Laura Mildon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Mad Dog Mildon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 1999 4:56 AM Subject: Lyrics to Our Kids' Musical Diet Mad Dog Mildon Weird news will come later, but this I have to rant about. Today's rant is about irresponsible journalism on the behalf of mainstream media as they reported on the latest hideous school shooting incident. As if it wouldn't be absolutely horrifying and shocking enough that two nutcase kids storm into a school and kill themselves, the media practically salivated to deliver the horror of this story by exaggerating the atrocity even further. Journalists absolutely adore alliteration and I'm sure there was a collective stamping of feet and a snapping of fingers with a unison "Rats" uttered that they couldn't use the already tied-up word "Crisis" as in "Crisis at Columbine in Colorado". See "crisis" is already used, as in, "Crisis in Kosovo" (which, according to my dictionary, a ruthless dictator trying to restore Communism, mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing, the outside bombing of innocent people on both sides in a country the size of Ohio constitutes a little more than a "crisis".) But the jackals of mainstream media were visibly salivating over this story and praising themselves on how TV played such an important part in delivering this story (and delivering plenty of false unverified information.) One network tickled with itself proclaimed that TV was instrumental in the world finding out about this event as one teenager, instead of dialing 911 (a generic emergency number in the U.S.) called the TV station. Why? There are TVs in classrooms (oh goody!) and the phone number to the station keeps scrolling along the bottom of the screen: "Got a story to report? Call Us." The relays between studio talking head to Young And Eager Reporter In The Field defied description it was so bad. "Bob, we're told the gunmen slaughtered 25, yes, that's TWENTY FIVE students before turning the guns on themselves. Back to you." Studio Talking Head, "Janice, is that correct, TWENTY FIVE students KILLED ruthlessly?" Janice, "That's right Bob, and ambulances have taken away 39 more students and teachers, many of them CRITICALLY wounded so they might die too." And so the inflammatory reporting went on with the insertion of admissions that they REALLY didn't know much of what was happening since the police had cordoned off the area since bodies AND bombs were still inside. This story is more than horrifying and terrible and I personally feel that the coverage of this story was a little too eager on behalf of journalists vying to have some atrocity close to home that everyone can relate to and shove Kosovo briefly off the headlines since most of us have no idea where Kosovo really is anyhow. Ordinarily I really like Stone Philips and consider him a real asset to MSNBC but Stone, BUDDY!! What was up with the really stoopid questions? He asks a high schooler at Columbine, "If you had it to do all over again, would you still go to that school?" This is stoopid for TWO reasons of which he is probably ALREADY aware: A high schooler.gee to "do it all again" like school students have such a long history to re-think how they'd spend their lives and second, public schools are zoned for areas where people live. My parents fought the Washoe County School District each and every semester to get me a variance to go to the public schools that I wanted. Talk about a tough battle. Kids do not just select which school they want to go to. Besides, Columbine is a nice school, which, is what the student answered. Now the media has raised the question that perhaps the music kids listen to is to blame. Here comes the shocker. I might actually agree. I was talking to my mother who is indeed one of the wisest people I know (my dad is the other.) She said, guardedly, "Laura, I hate to say this, especially to you, but I think I agree with Tipper Gore on this one." She knows I have a particular loathing for Tipper's outfit, the Parent's Music Resource Center whereby extreme Democrats and extreme Conservatives have teamed up to ban or censor music they find objectionable. As a degree holder in the expressive arts (music, journalism, advertising) I usually get my dander up in protecting the First Amendment. However, they all might be right, the First Amendment assumes somehow that human decency will prevail, and it is not. Some argue music does NOT have that strong an influence on teens. I beg to differ. In the 50s my mother wore poodle skirts and my dad sported a DA. In the 70s my cousins wore really hideous platform shoes and gawd-awful polyester tube tops, ack! Then my turn came around and I ended up wearing what my mother referred to as my "dangerous clothing," studded belts and my motorcycle boots and wore short spikey purple hair and shaved off one side of my head. Why? It was the In thing to do, ALL the bands had creative outfits. Now, with gangsta rap, even Levi's has complied in making the baggy "gangsta" style jeans that kids love to wear so much. So, here's the kicker. Does the music influence? I may need some help from readers on this project. I plan to run the entire lyrics, in their pristine state as they are aired on the radio for everyone to read. The problem I think is that parents have long shrugged that their kids listen to obnoxious music and that's the way the cycle goes. The trouble is, we're not READING what they're hearing. I am going to ask Mike, who maintains the Mad Dog site and server, to lift the censoring program on this column for the next couple days (it kicks out any column I write if it has vulgarity in it. It's to make sure the server is pornography-free.) If some of you would like to help, do an Internet search for "Lyrics" to rap and other popular songs. Go ahead and send 'em to me. It's about time we really scrutinized what kind of diet our kids are being fed. I have long railed against Tipper and the PMRC but now, perhaps, they really do have a point and I'd like to explore it.we all should. Be warned, I won't clean up the lyrics for you. Right now rap is the BIGGEST single money maker record companies have ever had. Remarkably, white kids are the biggest consumer of the disks and gobble up the lion's share, so don't go thinking that the "rap" genre is a race-related musical niche. Tipper and her ilk have complained that the record companies remain tight lipped and point to the First Amendment in defending their right to record these "artists" and the broadcasters now feed it to everyone. Where is the FCC in all this? I thought many of these words (like the "f" word, the "sh" word etc. ) were not allowed on public broadcast yet they're being aired constantly. Anyway, that's what's coming. I'll warn you in advance in case you really do not wish to explore what teens are gobbling up and being influenced by. Weird news later, got some good ones. Mad Dog Mildon � 1999 All rights reserved worldwide. http://maddog.buster.com ** TO SUBSCRIBE FOR A DAILY FREE EMAIL: send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and in the body (NOT the subject) put: subscribe maddog-news (your email address here) without the parentheses of course. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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