Facts: On Absurdity and Offense
For the last couple of weeks I've been more than a little obsessed with a rap/hip-hop song and I think that's a sign that I need to sit down and analyze its lyrics and my reaction to them. If you possibly can, come to at least the first level of this song with a sense of humor, because it is the most ludicrous, kidding-on-the-square thing I've seen in my life.
I like a wide range of music but generally that excludes rap. The number of rap songs I enjoy can be counted on my fingers. Awhile back I became aware of a rap artist called Tom MacDonald who bills himself as an independent anti-woke rapper. He's talked about the kind of leash-and-collar contracts the music industry puts on naive up-and-coming artists, forcing them to make the music the industry wants and not what the artist wants, and how he walked away from all their offers. Some of his songs intrigued me, though the lyrics are always blunt and unapologetic.
One of his songs, however, moved me deeply and is worth sharing here, off-topic though it be. It's a song about Tom's struggle to get clean and it is gorgeous; a painfully honest scream to high heaven.
I like this guy. I kept a loose eye on him for a few weeks at first, but quickly slid back to my regular Celtic Punk and ElectroSwing playlists.
Pause, jump the tracks.
Since October 7, 2023, I have been listening to Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro a lot more. At first I just wanted to keep up with the situation unfolding in the Middle East. I'd never watched him much before but even I could tell he was at an unusual loss for words and choked up for the first two or three days after the massacre. After that, he was spitting-mad at the camera for at least two months straight. It took until about December of 2023 for him to regain anything like a sense of humor, which I was surprised to find out he does have. A good one, too. He has made me laugh several times.
What I did not expect was this world-class debater and classically trained violinist who has publicly declared that rap is not music to partner with Tom MacDonald to do this.
I strongly advise you have the lyrics up alongside this.
I have so many reactions to this.
Laughter
This is absurd. Absurd. Ben's own colleagues at the DailyWire didn't know about this until it was in front of their faces. The video of Ben watching reactions to the rap is priceless. He looks like an overjoyed kid the whole time.
I spent a while looking through the original reaction videos of people seeing this rap for the first time and it is gold. You can pinpoint the exact moment when their brains break and it's the same moment across all reactions.
It. Is. Gold.
I've heard it said that comedy died under the Obama administration. I don't know if that is true and I don't know if the attribution is fair, but I do get the sense that we've been allowed to laugh about less and less over time, and jokes about what came to be known as “protected classes” quickly became taboo. On the one hand, that sounds good on the surface, making it socially unacceptable to mock many groups of people in a vicious way. However, this taboo does not easily differentiate between malice and good-natured ribbing. Jabbing and poking at each others’ individual and group foibles is one road to bonding. It can always go too far, but in the right spirit this kind of humor is capable of unifying people in spite of and even because of their differences.
Instead, what we have right now is a set of classes and groups protected from any and all criticism and a set of classes and groups with targets painted on their backs. Instead of letting the humor flow in all directions, malice and resentment have taken over. Mainstream humor seems drained of all vitality or else sharpened against only acceptable targets, and often the people wielding said humor are able to laugh at themselves least of all.
The right spirit is pretty important to good humor. I've spent several hours watching a cooking critique channel that has afforded me a great deal of good-natured laughter. Malaysian Youtuber Mr. Nigel puts on the character of Uncle Roger, a Chinese not-chef who complains about bad cooking. He makes racial jokes many times--riffing on his own people, white people, and others--but after watching him and getting a feel for his channel, I find there's nothing to take offense at. He roasts everyone, but his good nature always shines through. When I watch him, I get no sense of malice and he's always ready to poke fun at himself. He doesn't truly hate anyone.
“I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your 'Gags,' and I have always said I never met a man I didn't like.”
Will Rogers
malice - măl′ĭs - noun: A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
If I had a guess, I'd say that a lack of malice and a willingness to laugh at yourself are two vital components to pulling off humor in a controversial setting.
Bonus points on the willingness to laugh at yourself if you're a very well-known, powerful, influential figure. Several years back most phone users were caught up in a craze for this app game Pokemon Go, where you could look through your camera and "see" where Pokemon were supposed to be in your real-life surroundings and catch them. It blew up. Everyone was doing it. Even the Israeli president.
"Somebody call security."
I laughed so hard. I reblogged this to my Tumblr feed, sure that everyone would laugh with me. A few did, but I also caught some surprise backlash. I was told that this wasn't funny and that I was stupid. I can't take those people that seriously, but it did stun me. If the leader of Hamas were to do something like this, I would still wish him caught by the IDF and in chains for the rest of his life, but I'd ALSO think it was funny if he was capable of making a relevant Pokemon Go joke. I ran this situation through my mental simulator and concluded that, yes, if Hitler had been around and was able to make such a joke, I would probably laugh because the instances of a political figure unbending their dignity enough to make that kind of a joke properly is too rare. If I can imagine politicians I believe to be directly serving evil making this sort of joke and still laugh, I do not understand where everyone else's sense of humor went.
So I return to Ben Shapiro and Tom MacDonald making Facts. You've got the tattooed, crazy-braid-tossing guy with metal teeth gesticulating all over the screen right next to the most clean-cut anchorman type who has clearly been stuffed into a hoodie just to make him look even more out of place. Ben stands still and deadpan delivers his verse slower than anything he says on his own show while perfectly on beat, blowing everyone's mind. Ben and his ten thousand plus hours of CLASSICAL VIOLIN TRAINING stand there and feature in what becomes the #1 rap track in America.
He knows what he's doing. He knows what it looks like. You think he forgot his own opinions about rap? Some have accused him of being a hypocrite because he once said rap isn't music. To those who really think he's being a hypocrite, the joke--and Ben--flew ten miles over your heads.
I think part of the reason this hit number one on the charts is because, love him or hate him, he set dignity aside and took us all off guard, giving us a few minutes of riotous laughter that people on all sides of the divide desperately needed.
After I stopped laughing, I found sections of the lyrics playing on loop in my brain for days. That is when I knew I had to process through some of these concepts.
The "All X Are Racist/Sexist" Argument
Claim that I’m racist, yeah alright
I’m not ashamed because I’m white
If every caucasian’s a bigot I guess every Muslim’s a terrorist, every liberal is right.
I want to start with the root concept of this and apply it where it’s cropped up in my life.
One person I knew told me that there was a man in her life that she did not blame for his behavior because he was just raised in sexism and it “wasn’t his fault.” It was a casual statement that did not, as far as I understood it, refer to that particular man’s situation, but referred to the American cultural soup. At the time I was deeply disturbed but had no words to express my intense disagreement. Neither was I ready to be in conflict with anyone I cared for, so I kept my mouth shut.
To me, this whole concept is a bizarre take on Christianity’s concept of original sin, except worse. Instead of a failing ascribed to the whole of humanity, certain classes or segments are permanently tainted simply for being born into that class or segment. That concept, historically, always has dark outcomes.
The idea that men are sexist and it isn’t their fault says so many things that bother me. What I hear is 1) women can’t be sexist 2) men have no control over their viewpoints or behaviors 3) a man’s opinion is to be automatically discounted with an eye to the fact that they have this inherent flaw/sin/failing and that 4) this applies to all men everywhere throughout all time so 5) if you give birth to a baby boy he’s already damned and it’s nobody’s fault but also nobody can really fix it.
Honest? It makes me wonder about some of the trans women, if maybe some of them saw changing their bodies as their only escape from the new priesthood’s damnation.
I took this in the "sexist" direction because that’s a facet of the argument that I’ve personally encountered. However this was originally about race, so let's get back to that.
At this point I am thoroughly muddled on where I am in the race conversation. If you go by historical standards, I am not white. I am Irish, Scottish, and Ashkenazi Jewish (from Russia). White, if I understand correctly, refers to Anglo-Saxon, which is quite literally a minority in this country and has been for a long time. I have a Jewish-Irish friend whose parents proudly own a house in Los Angeles whose deed declares that it cannot be owned by either Jews or Irish. Jews were (and still are) often discriminated against by colleges because they outperform many other groups academically and the doors are closed to them in the name of equity. Irish lives were so cheap in early America that--according to Thomas Sowell--railroad companies preferred to hire Irish to lay tracks instead of getting slave labor, because the death toll was quite high and slaves were an expensive investment. It’s said the work was so dangerous that there’s an Irishman buried under every railroad tie.
But my skin is white. Therefore, anytime there’s a barbed joke or hateful comment about white people, I can’t help but dig to the intent, and the intent of a generally thrown barb like that is clear: If your skin looks white, this is at you. Therefore, even if they are incorrect about me, I still end up taking the remark quite personally because the intent is clear.
Again, the discount on opinions begins to apply. Are you white, or do you appear white? What you have to say is irrelevant, regardless of the facts. You don’t get to speak. You don’t get to have an opinion. You don’t get to bring up questions. I get to laugh at you, but if you laugh at me I will rain hellfire on your head. I will get you fired. I will doxx you if I can.
These are the undertones I hear running through most jokes about white people these days. And yet, it’s the white people who are racist? The white people who are hyperfocused on race ?
When I was a kid, we were encouraged to be colorblind. What that meant was not a flattening of race or a forgetting of culture, but a mutual respect between all cultures. Somewhere along the line that disappeared and I don’t understand why. I’d never felt more at home with those of other races and cultures than I did back then. Ever after, I have walked with stooped shoulders or furtive glances, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, or having my words and actions twisted against me. I do not like this division. It is Awareness taken too far and gone terribly wrong.
Individuals should be judged for their own words and actions.
The Flag
Where the American flags at?
Remember when people would hang those?
They've been taken down, they all been replaced with BLM flags or a rainbow
When I lived in Southern California, I had the uncomfortable feeling that an incorrect display of politics or religion would bring hostility. Maybe even egging or tagging. “Say the right thing or say nothing” and "fly the right banners" was the unspoken pressure that hung over me. To this day if I am in an area where there are only flags that promote BLM or the LGBTQ+ communities, it’s hard not to feel like it would be safer if I conducted my business and left with as little conversation as possible.
Moving to Houston and seeing the multiplicity of flags felt like a breath of freedom. It offered a visual promise of open and honest dialogue. There were huge state flags everywhere. Many front yards had full-size flagpoles with American and state flags flying, and giant American flags are commoner than you’d think in commercial parking lots. Around election season, I saw just as many Biden flags as Trump flags and often in the same neighborhood and that heartened me. It felt like a city where displays of ideological differences were acceptable and front lawn dialogue was part of the culture. There was no lockstep and I didn’t sense the same conformist pressure around me.
It was the first time I felt like I had permission to be proud of being both American and Texan. I didn’t even realize how much I had needed that, but the swell of emotion that carried me in the first few months after I moved alerted me that I had been missing something important for a very long time. There is something about unifying under the ideal of a nation. This, like every grand idea, can always be carried to a negative extreme and of course our country has a history of both evils and incompetencies, but standing together under the ideal that the nation strives for is a beautiful and unifying action. For those first few months in Texas, I felt some small balm to a shame I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying.
I think that, like humor, an American flag hung in the right spirit is a good and unifying thing, in no small part because it is the umbrella meant to encompass all the different groups and aspects of this country. If you break that down too far into groups that become about militancy and hyper-fractionated individualism, we lose sight of being able to reach each other and work together in spite of our differences. Without a uniting principle of some kind, there are no grounds for mutual respect and only division and hostility remain.
Sons Into Thugs/Daughters Into Hoes
This ain't rap, this ain't money, cars, and clothes
We ain't sellin' drugs, we ain't gonna overdose
We ain't pushing guns, ain't promoting stripper poles
We won't turn your sons into thugs or your daughters into hoes
As mentioned before, I listen to very little rap and hip-hop by choice. Occasionally it's in my vicinity and I can't help hearing it. The general lyrics that I catch tend to be about doing something violent or sexual to your bitch and how much money you can flash or what status you can show off in what you wear or drive. Can we call that a spot-check? Because if that's what I'm hearing whenever someone with loudspeakers drives by me, chances are that's indicative of lyrical content for the most popular songs in the genre.
In the end, this all may come back to "Don't like? Don't listen!" And fair enough, generally I don't. But I think MacDonald's point is that music has a pretty profound effect on a lot of people, and a lot of people listen to rap and absorb the lyrics on levels they don’t even pay attention to. His own story pegs the music he consumed at an early age as one factor in his addiction issues. Personally, I love what his lyrics imply: that it's good to aim for higher and brighter concepts instead of the shallow flash and temporary hedonism prevalent in music industry lyrics.
I think he's also asking why. Why is this the lifestyle held up as an ideal? As glamorous? Most people outside that particular lifestyle know it's destructive, and I'd bet many within it do as well. So why hold it up as an ideal? And MacDonald refuses to. He’s actually able to flout the industry standard because he's independent, and that is why this stanza stuck in my brain.
Respect
If you want my pronouns, I'm the man, I'm the man who don't respect you
When… when did we lose the idea that respect has to be earned?
Maybe this seems like a weird nitpick, I don’t know, but even if I have the flaw of handing out trust like candy I know that that’s not a good way to live, and neither is forking over respect by the shovel load. Trust and respect are to be earned.
On the individual level, here’s the truth: I’m struggling with the idea of peoples’ preferred pronouns. At one point I had decided that I would say what I was asked to say, but only for people who I was friends with, whose lives I had invested in and who had invested in me, because they had earned that respect from me. For completely different reasons than respect, I am no longer sure this is a good idea. I begin to wonder if I am actually harming a person on levels they won’t even see until a decade down the line if I acquiesce to this request. Do I respect them now by bending a little, or do I respect them by telling them the truth I believe and trusting they are adult enough to engage me on that level?
But here’s the thing, this previous paragraph works on the individual level. Moving up a level to the group dynanics of the identity politics crew, the loudest segment of that group seem to demand respect that they have not earned from people they do not even know. On the whole, as they demand this hyper-individualized treatment from all of society, I don’t at all get the sense they have even considered whether they have earned respect or whether they owe anyone else respect at all. Their contempt and disdain and rage is, I believe, what brings MacDonald to say, “I’m the man that don’t respect you.”
In that, I hear “You've already told me that you have contempt for me and all that I am. You have not earned my respect and you are not entitled to it.”
And I don’t think he’s wrong.
I Hope I Offend You
I don't care if I offend you
I was put here to upset you
This is hard.
So much of my life has been spent tucking and folding and crimping my corners down so I don't poke, prick, cut, or otherwise mildly discomfit anyone around me. Be small. Be quiet. Don't offer your opinion on difficult things unless asked. Some have suggested to me that this is the way women are conditioned in American society, but in my own life I don't see that I was conditioned to be this way for the benefit of men. What I see is that this was my own strategy for retaining friends. I reasoned that if they couldn't get upset at me, then they would like me and hopefully love me. And of course they couldn't possibly get upset at me if I was inoffensive, non-judgmental, and so ignorant that my opinion wasn't even worth asking in the first place.
Early on, I also became painfully aware of the "Turn or burn" segment of Christianity. To me, their tactics looked like a train on fire with no brakes headed for a blown bridge. It felt like any reasonable middle-ground person would be so turned off by this kind of bludgeoning that they would dive as far off the deep end as they could just to get away from these "crazy Christians" and I couldn't even blame them. I was so embarrassed whenever this came up in online discussions. I tried to be even less offensive and even more loving, like Jesus.
Wait just a minute.
Now, hear me out. I am NOT saying that Tom MacDonald and Ben Shapiro are prophets, or like Jesus... but have you thought about Jesus and the prophets lately?
Invariably, true prophets from God brought a message so counter to the culture that was going on at the time and so offensive to the mainstream that they were often killed or imprisoned. Jeremiah 36 tells of a prophecy written down and read to the king that pissed him off so much that he cut each column from the scroll with a knife as it was read and burned each section in a nearby fire.
And Jesus? Sweet, mild baby Jesus? He and his cousin John both called the Pharisees a brood of vipers, which at the time was about as bad as strolling up to a megachurch pastor and calling him a filthy bastard. In front of the congregants. Jesus constantly pointed out the religious leaders' misuse and abuse of the law, and often with, shall we say, strident language.
I've always wanted the rational conversation, even when I had no ability to formulate one. Now that I can formulate rational conversation better and am honing that ability, it feels like the time for that has already passed. Has it? The uber-judgmental end of Christianity screamed, now extreme Leftists are screaming, is the back-to-back backlash all that is left?
MacDonald has bragged in many other songs about how he can't be cancelled because the record industry doesn't own him or a single piece of his equipment. Given how many people accept a muzzle and fall over themselves to apologize if they so much as sneeze incorrectly, is this the actual correct response to cancel culture?
I will never say I'm sorry, I ain't taking nothing back
I'm so torn. I want calm and reasoned discourse, but when that fails and devolves, is this a valid fallback? I'm starting to think it might be.
This Is My Favorite Hip-Hop/Rap Song
This song is hilarious.
This song tells me that it's okay to stand by what I believe (with the caveat that I'm still working the particulars out) and that the resulting friction is actually a normal part of life.
This song is a reminder that some life choices are healthier than others and tend to have better results. It reminds me there are ideals to aspire to.
I was already reconsidering my dedication to being inoffensive, but this song reminds me once again that being inoffensive is not a virtue. For me, in particular, it is actually cowardice, and I have to find a way to strike a balance with the new and rather combative side of myself I'm discovering.