Media Aids Left's Wonderment at Common Controversy

Say you write a couple things a few years ago glorifying cop killing (“free Mumia,” 2:15; “A Song for Assata” a cop-killer the FBI recognizes as a “domestic terrorist,” after whom you named your daughter). They’re immortalized on Youtube. You never walk it back or otherwise express any sort of remorse for it. Then you get an invite from the White House – at the same time police departments around the country commemorate fallen officers.

Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch

Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun

I got the black strap to make the cops run

They watching me, I’m watching them

Er, really?

You are genuinely surprised that there would be criticism of your invitation to the White House, the people’s house, for a poetry slam?

Oh, and you’ve spoken about setting fire to a former president and you’re on record for opposing interracial marriages.

Common has also been a vocal opponent of mixed race relationships and believes black men and white women should not date. In one rap he says, “I don’t know what it is / but white girls gettin’ ass / I know what it is / It’s cash.”

I’m totally open to any links where the author of all this, rapper and performance artist Common, has walked any of this back. America is, for the most part, a redemptive society and people change their views over time, and thank goodness they do. But if he hasn’t walked it back, it’s inconsistent. Even if it’s just a few blemishes on his body of work, these are some pretty big blemishes.

It also highlights a massive double-standard: conservative Americans were placed on the DHS domestic terrorist watch list for simply flying a military-authorized Gadsen flag. Their political dissent of wanting to control their own health care and a demand for less government spending was vitriolic enough to classify them as “Nazis” according to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Yet someone who has never retracted his statements on cop-killing, a racist view on interracial relationships, and talk of violence against a former president is invited to the White House? It’s a massive double standard. This is the biggest problem of them all: free speech is claimed for Common but denied to those who express dissent with the administration.

Is it equality and empowerment to emulate the forces of oppression from the 50s with your lyrics?

Is it truly art? If so, and if done in the vein of irony, then brilliant. But I suspect that it isn’t so.

Do you see how some folks have some questions and criticisms here?

(Apparently not, as the left and the Soros crowd have taken to calling all criticism “racist” from “right-wingers.”)

The White House’s spin doctor, Jay Carney didn’t, and media didn’t press him when his defense was that Common’s lyrics were “cherry-picked.” Not sure how one can “cherry-pick” entire videos and spoken word performances, but apparently, that wasn’t a follow-up.

The Daily Caller discussed how some of the tried and true MSM didn’t want to touch the story:

By 3.00 p.m. Wednesday, neither Politico nor the New York Times offered items on the White House’s PR’s fiasco three days after it had first begun. The Washington Post’s web-site offered a short 190-word article quoting Carney and fairly summarizing the controversy. Cable-rivals MSNBC and Fox ran multiple segments on the dispute. ABC’s Jake Tapper covered the unfolding dispute with multiple tweets and an article on Carney’s comments.