Word: rappings
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...Simpson is set free, it will mean either that he is guilty but had a good enough defense to beat the rap or that he is innocent and might have been sentenced to life in prison were it not for a multimillion-dollar legal defense. Once they have been indicted and put on trial, people with limited financial resources stand a good chance of being convicted, even if innocent. Just as the winner of a formal debate is the better debater and is not necessarily the one whose position represents the truth, it seems that American justice depends less...
...this measure, American poetry must be ailing. Is there any other art form in this country whose vigor is more dependably extolled? Literary organizations both large and small are forever "celebrating" someone or something--Midwestern poets or Latino poets, farmer poets or cowboy poets, formal poets or rap poets. It all feels sometimes like an extended, floating party. Celebration is certainly the aim of Bill Moyers' eight-part PBS series The Language of Life, whose airing coincides with the publication of a companion book, predictably subtitled A Festival of Poets...
Another popular response to Dole's attack on Hollywood involves using a time-honored liberal strategy: Cry racial oppression, and let slip the dogs of war! Frank Rich, in one of two pieces he wrote against Dole, criticizes the senator for mentioning rap groups but not focusing on white bands "that trade in equally grotesque sex and violence [and] reach a far larger audience than their black counterparts...
...have the chance to write a 300-page book on the collapse of our culture. Furthermore, Senator Dole's mention of raplyrics should not be seen as motivated by racism. It's just that when it comes to drawing on sex and violence in music, rap groups have received much more media coverage than other equally deplorable musicians...
After insinuating that the honorable Senator is a racist, Rich hauls in the charge of anti-Semitism. Rich asks himself why Dole decided to focus on the gangsta rap of Time Warner, and generously volunteers an answer: "Does the fact that its chief executive is named Levin play particularly well in some farright G.O.P. quarters?" Now, I enjoy a good ad hominem attack as much as the next guy, but these are the cheapest of cheap shots...