Ain't No Hos in Country Music

Ain't No Hos in Country Music

The question is not: Should Don Imus have been fired -- for a bad joke or a racist remark, you choose. The question is: Why perpetuate a culture that makes a living on the backs of hos and bad jokes about them in the first place?

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, the NAACP and other civil rights groups were up in arms last week over Imus. Nappy headed hos! Them’s fightin’ words. Imus apologized. CBS folded and fired him.

So why are these same critics and CBS still making a profit on those fighting words, today as they did yesterday? Rap and hip-hop music is a business that makes millions of dollars singing about bitches and hos. The genre objectifies women and glorifies the use of drugs and alcohol and guns. Show me the money. Show me the bling. And if it comes with a scantily clad woman dancing beside me, so much the better.

Of the Don Imus firing, infamous rapper Snoop Dogg said, "It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about hos that's in the 'hood that ain't doing sh*t, that's trying to get a nigg* for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them muthaf*ckas say we are in the same league as him. Kick him off the air forever."

Well, of course, that explains it.

But it doesn’t explain why comics on urban The Steve Harvey Morning Show can regularly do a bit parodying southern rednecks that would make a ho blush, and no one says a word.

That’s because, as civil right attorney Constance Rice puts it, it is what he does.

“But there’s also no basis for firing him [Imus] or ending his show. Firing Mr. Imus for racist riffs would like firing Liberace for flamboyance. It is what he does,” said Rice.

Other than evoking an out-dated reference to the long past Las Vegas entertainer, I agree with Ms. Rice. It is what Imus does – he’s a equal-opportunity mouth, and in America he should be free to speak as he pleases. If you don’t like what he says, change the channel. That's what I do when Steve Harvey makes fun of rednecks.

There ain’t no hos in country music. That’s because if there were, country music fans would turn the dial. It’s a choice.

Save your self-righteous indignation, Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson and Snoop Dogg and CBS. Until you stop encouraging rappers to sing about bitches and hos by making it profitable, you are as bad as those you accuse.