The "2 Live Crew" Controversy.

 

Public controversy erupted back in 1980's when Florida record stores outlawed albums from the rap group “2 Live Crew” because of the the offensive lyrics of their music. (Remember now, this was back in the 1980's).  The media gave a great amount of attention to the story, which actually helped the group's popularity due to the publicity they received, but the media never went any further than to say that the group's lyrics were “explict” and “controversial.” The media never actually exposed the lyrics themselves, which was the sole reason for the controversy in the first place. The public never really got the whole story.

To his credit, George Will, in a Newsweek article, July 30, 1990, was the first journalist to accurately expose the group's controversial lyrics.  

As George Will reported, (warning, these lyrics are extremely offensive):

2 Live Crew's "Put Her in the Buck" lyrics:

“To have her walkin' funny we try to abuse it, a big stinking p_ _ _ y can't do it all, so we try real

hard to bust the walls.”

George Will explained that the “walls” in the lyrics were the walls

of women's vaginas. “2 Live Crew's lyrics exult in busting women

-almost always called bitches-in various ways,” Will reported,

“forcing anal sex (and) forcing women to lick feces.”

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He went on to say, for instance (the lryics):

“He'll tear the p_ _ _ y open 'cause it's satisfaction. Suck my d_ _ k,

bitch, it makes you puke.” “I'll break ya down and d­_ _k ya long, 

bust you p _ _ _ _ y then break your backbone.”

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More importantly, had community groups that fight against sexual-violence and abuse, and even parents, knew of the violent nature of those lyrics, they would of had the opportunity to let their elected representatves and the public aware of how such lyrics incite violence against women, and demean and disrespect women. There likely would have also been public outcry to ban the album outright, as well as possible protests and boycotts against the band and the record label itself, but the band got a "free-pass" because the media did not report the complete story.

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"The National Endowment for the Arts" Controversy.

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In another example, a similar controversy arose when it was discovered that The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which was being funded by US tax-dollars, was preparing to exhibit at Washington DC's Corcoran Gallery of Art, a series of “homoerotica (photographic) art" by Robert Mapplethrop, who had already received $30,000 in NEA funding from an exhibition in Philadelphia. In this case, it's true that the photographs were so offensive, that it's fair to say that the media could not have responsively shown them, but they could have either shown "censored versions" of them (as we do in links below), or they could have at least described them, both of which they chose not to do. The result was that the true impact of the story was not understood by the general public, which allowed those who create such “art” to continue having their "works" being made available to the public at public tax-dollar expense. 

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The public was insulated from the reality of the story by the media. Photographs of the “art” included (warning, we have censored these images, but the descriptions of these photographs are extremely offensive): a little girl exposing her genitals, adults and children lying naked together, a man urinating into another man's mouth, men having anal sex with each other, a man with a bullwhip sticking out of his rectum). The public never got the whole story, or even the descriptions of the photographs. More importantly, had the public heard or seen what their tax dollars were actually promoting (through the "Endowment"), they would of most likely contacted their legislative representatives and demanded to withhold their tax-payer funds from financially supporting anything to do with promoting such "art," but that didn't happen, and the NEA got, shall we say, a "free pass" by the media.

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