Aye, Peter Ilyich, but the "vital difference" that comes when young children are idolizing rapper that perpetuate hate is extremely common. The kids I was teaching in prison had only a small chance of having a life anyway, and when a rich celebrity "gangsta" (for God's sake, how many subcultures have openly identified themselves as criminals?) with pounds of gold puts out poetry about killing cops (and you know this is not an isolated theme) and "fuck their grieving mothers" I think that venting is a micro-event compared to making money, tons of it, off of other people's misery, perpetuating among other things the eternity of victimhood from which there will be no return. Since it's somebody else's fault, it seems normal to sit around their whole lives waiting for somebody else to make it right. So, please, who gets screwed in this deal? Unless you have lived or worked in such an environment, you cannot understand it like someone who has. And, this is another case, like with TV preachers, where I don't understand why the legitimate ones can have nothing to say about the crooks. The rappers who want to give to a community some hope or way out of their misery, let them do it louder, and at the same time say something appropriate about "thug.com". We're talking about lives being lost, literally, while we have these intellectual analytical discussions. Let anyone who has a love of this art hang out in the projects and rejoice in it.

Chet