MLK Day!!! (hiphop/O'Reilly related)
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Well MLK day had everyone talking about black things for at least a short while and Bill O'reilly was no different. There was a segment on tonight's show dealing with "the state of black america" which featured Mr. Clarence Jones, an OG from the MLK days, and John McWhorter, a more current black intellectual and author. They talked about a range of issues and the debate was pretty civil, at least for O'Reilly standards. That being said, the one thing they universally agreed on was that the commercial hiphop that is reaching the mass youth is decimating the culture and is completely what Dr. King was standing against. The basic idea being that in absense of a strong family core to guide kids through adolescense, they instead turn to the mythologized "heroes" they see in the form of hiphop stars and everything they speak about (violence, misogyny, et al). All the usual business, I know. But O'Reilly himself did throw in another angle I think is rarely brought up: the fact that most the entire music industy is owned by white folk, and by promoting and pumping music with these ideals into the culture amounts to nothing more than a more unrecognizable and far more sinister form of racism, poisoning and oppressing an entire culture from the inside-out. A pretty hard-as-f*** conspiracy theory if I do say so and very surprising to hear out of Bill O'Reilly's mouth. Seems like more and more public african-american figures are speaking out against what they see as a parasitic form of entertainment teaching kids the wrong values and draining their culture of any postive vibrancy. What say the SoulStrut community? Hot air or no? 
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