Obama's Bad Rap

Amanda Carpenter | August 05, 2008 9:18 AM

My weekly Glamocracy blog is about Obama's admiration for the rap industry that Carol and I have discussed here. The link is here and the blog is copied and pasted below for Townhall readers:

Bring back the culture war. When Ludacris, one of Barack Obama's favorite rappers, called Hillary Clinton an '"irrelevant b****" in his new track, Obama didn't even make an attempt at going Sister Souljah on it. Instead, he handed out a mealy-mouthed statement that both condemned and complimented the rapper.

"While Ludacris is a talented individual, he should be ashamed of his lyrics," his campaign said. The first half of this sentence is bunk and the second is a dupe.

Ludacris is one of the most filthy rappers in the industry and makes money slurring women and glamorizing explicit sex and drugs. (I can't even reprint the most offensive lyrics here.) Regardless of what Obama says, the fact that Ludacris and his friends have been able to mainstream pimps, hos and 40 ounces servings of malt liquor is not talent. And I bet most of those women voters Hillary had locked up in the primaries would agree with me.

Obama's feigned shock over Luda's lyrics is manufactured. Obama knows full well what kind of trash Ludacris spews in his songs. In a July interview with Rolling Stone, Obama was asked about rap and "family values." He again lauded Ludacris and other rappers as "great talents" and even "great businessmen," then lamented, "It would be nice if I could have my daughters listen to their music without me worrying that they were getting bad images of themselves." Obama may worry about what rap does to his daughters' self-esteem, but it sounds like he still plays it for them. He even bragged to a crowd of people in 2004 that his 3-year old girl had been listening to Snoop Dog's "Drop It Like It's Hot" and thought it was "Drop It Like a Sock." Even the radio edit version of that song contains references to pimps, hos and marijuana. I can only hope she didn't understand the rest of the words, either.

Obama's decision to not condemn Ludacris outright is outrageous. It tells me pandering to the rap industry is more important to Obama than taking a strong stand on family values and to me, that's just ludicrous.