Andrew Breitbart famously said that culture is upstream from politics.
Popular music, movies, and television are constantly emitting deeply political messages, day after day, week after week, year after year, reshaping opinions — and with them, the culture. As such messages reshape culture, they eventually influence politics.
HBO and Snoop Dogg’s upcoming project, set in 1980s gang-ridden Los Angeles, is a perfect example of the power harnessed by those on the left in entertainment, and what better way to use your pulpit than to tarnish the legacy of one of the most beloved political figures on the right?
On Friday at the Austin Convention Center, Snoop appeared as SXSW Music’s 2015 keynote speaker in Austin, TX. Instead of addressing the state of the industry, as most keynotes do, Snoop’s message was both promotional and political in nature.
In addition to advocating for himself and his upcoming projects, the rapper chose to direct his decades-long societal angst at former President Ronald Reagan. After describing a beautiful utopian 1970s for inner city communities, Snoop says things took a turn to the dark side when the 40th President’s social and economic policies were initiated.
“Then when Reaganomics kicked in, certain things were taken away, after-school programs and things of that nature. Guns and drugs were shipped into the neighborhood,” Snoop said.
The former gang member’s latest business venture will premiere on HBO, at a time that has yet to be determined, and will tell of his life on the West Coast during the ‘80s, when gang violence first began to dominate the region’s inner cities, particularly in Snoop’s home of East Los Angeles, where Reaganomics hit hardest, reports the Daily Beast.
“Early in the ‘70s and toward the latter part of the ‘70s everything was beautiful because we had ways to have fun and communicate, and those who were underprivileged, the low economic side of life, the government would provide for us, which helped us get by,” Snoop said.
He continued:
It was a society and we all needed it and we all had it and we all helped each other. Then when Reaganomics kicked in, certain things were taken away, after-school programs and things of that nature. Guns and drugs were shipped into the neighborhood. So it was a shift of having fun and playing football to selling drugs and shooting at each other. To me it was a system that was designed, because when the Reaganomics era began, that’s when this began.
Snoop Dogg, born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., was ten years old at the time of President Reagan’s inauguration, and will reportedly act as the unnamed series’ executive producer.
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