Ashley Judd’s no conservative, that’s for sure, but the predicted backlash has already begun. Here’s where it started — excerpts from her memoir:
Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message…um, who? Those names were a red flag.“As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music — with it’s rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’ — is the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny.
“I believe that the social construction of gender — the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women — is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world.”
After the backlash hit, Judd got in touch with rap mogul Russell Simmons. He interviewed her for his website. To her credit she didn’t appear to back down:
My intention was to support artists to know that they have so much power. They make incredible life changing impressions, particularly on the young. And we have choices everyday with our expressions, either empower and celebrate people or to re-enforce inequality and degradation. We are either part of the problem, or part of the solution. There is no in-between.
There are elements, and that is the part that has been so distorted, what I’m being accused of is condemning rap and hip-hop as a whole, and the whole community and when they say community, they mean the fans, and African-Americans, it’s become so generalized. …
My intention was to take a stand to say the elements of that musical expression that are misogynistic and treat girls and women in a hyper-sexualized way that are inappropriate. That is not acceptable in any artistic expression, in any cultural form, whether its country music or in television story lines. And if they read more than one paragraph in the book, they would see that all four hundred pages are about that.
Like Bill Maher and the threat of Islamo-fascism, this is an important debate to have within the world of popular entertainment culture and it’s going to take the rare liberal moire interested in truth than being politically correct to have it.
Hopefully, this will encourage others to speak out.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.