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From Halftime Show to Social Media, Calls To Ban Rap

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No? Halftime at last night’s Super Bowl LVI saw a host of hip-hop icons including Dr. Dre and Mary J. Blige. The New York TimesIt was called “a halftime spectacle heavy on nostalgia, California pride” Charlie Kirk (conservative talkshow host) and the executive director for Right-Wing student group Turning Point USA think it should be banned.

In a much-mocked Sunday night tweetKirk stated that “the NFL has become the league of sexual anarchy.” It should be banned from television.

This tweet is particularly rich because Kirk frequently complains about cancel culture, and makes fun of people who take offense too quickly. Yet here is Kirk—a 28-year-old man—aghast at a bunch of musicians nearly twice his age performing a relatively tame, generally crowd-pleasing selection of songs made popular 20 years ago.

Many people believed that Kirk’s tweet was a result of racism because the performers (with the exception of Eminem) were predominantly black and the show featured hip-hop hits. As the TimesNoting that hip-hop “has landed only a handful moments on one sports’ or entertainment’s most important stages, but not until Sunday evening, it was the main focus.” It’s not hard to picture Kirk complaining, regardless of which pop star took the stage last night. This conservative tradition has been around for a while.

Kirk and right don’t have to be the only ones calling on certain platforms to ban hip-hop. Eric Adams (a black Democrat from New York City) called for social media platforms to stop drilling rap last week.

We pulled Trump from Twitter due to his inflammatory tweets. But we allow music [with]Display of firearms, violence. Adams stated that we allow it to remain on the site, echoing old concerns over “gangsta Rap.”

It was a time when Joe Lieberman and Bill Bennett were fighting against Rap Music that glorifies violence. Adams assumes—like his predecessors—that lyrics about violence are driving gang violence in New York City, instead of simply reflecting this reality or, in many cases, serving as mere bravado and fantasy.

Combine this nouveau concern with hip hop with the resurgence of book bans and fear of Satanic cults (a la QAnon) and…oof. It seems that nostalgia for entertainment from the 1980s, ’90s and 2022 is not the only return. There seems to be a revival of the moral panics from that time.

Gratis MINDS

Texas cannot prohibit mail-in voting.Start at The Texas Tribune:

Late Friday, a Federal Judge ruled that a Texas law prohibiting local elections officials from encouraging people to mail in ballots violates the First Amendment.

After a three-hour trial, Federal District Judge Xavier Rodriguez temporary blocked Harris County’s election administrator from being enforced until further proceedings. Rodriguez’s preliminary ruling is very limited. However, it was the judge who dealt with the first legal challenge to the new voting restrictions and changes made by Republican legislators last year.

The injunction applies to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and local county prosecutors in Harris, Travis and Williamson counties.

You can read more here.

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