Let’s see if we’ve got this straight: AOL represents itself as a family- friendly company, a proponent of civilized society. After all, it’s out front in the battle to combat pornography and obscenity from uninvited, unilateral invasions of America’s on-line computers.
Great.
But AOL recently launched a TV commercial starring fatherly Jerry Stiller, a commercial that ends with an appearance by – surprise! – rap star Snoop Dogg. Oh, what rich, hilarious irony.
But the irony that’s less apparent, not the least bit funny and presumably unintended is far richer. Snoop Dogg, as if AOL doesn’t know, is an extremely successful purveyor of both obscenity and pornography , especially through the Internet and via AOL.
Last year the porn industry bestowed several honors upon Snoop for a porn video that he produced and in which he appeared. It was reported to be the top-selling porn video of 2001.
And he wasn’t done there. Next came his co-produced “Girls Gone Wild Doggystyle” sex video. The “genius” behind the “Girls Gone Wild” craze, Joseph Francis, has been charged with racketeering and with taping and selling videos of minors exposing themselves, drug possession and the promotion of prostitution.
A suit filed this summer by two underaged girls who were tapped and taped for an appearance in the Dogg/Francis production, accuses Snoop as having served as Francis’s “bitch magnet.”
Not that Snoop doesn’t now see the light.
“If you notice,” he told the AP, “there hasn’t been no girls [of racial diversity] at all on none of those tapes. No black girls, no Spanish girls – only white girls. And that ain’t cool because white girls ain’t the only hoes who get wild.” Oh, yeah, he’s a social activist, specializing in diversity.
Through AOL, one can find the lyrics of Snoop’s artistry. Beyond very often being unprintably obscene, they’re hateful, violent and desensitizing.
And this is the guy who AOL chose to appear in its just-in-time-for-Christmas commercial? This is a company that claims to be eager to protect you and your family from pornography and obscenity on the Internet?
It’s astonishing that Snoop’s form of commerce isn’t daily shouted down from every pulpit – political, social, spiritual and educational – in this country. Is there a week that goes by that doesn’t include a murdered rapper or a rapper arrested for a violent crime , so often against other rappers or aspiring rappers?
P. Diddy was recently bestowed hero status in this city for donating money he raised from running in the NYC Marathon to the New York City schools system. This newspaper was one of scores of media entities that pointed to P. Diddy’s endeavor as above and beyond the call of goodness.
But was that money a donation or restitution?
The Post recently concluded a chilling but hardly surprising series of articles about the proliferation of violent students in NYC schools – schools that find an increasing number of teachers and students who are too frightened to show up at school, let alone teach or learn.
Yet, the celebrity status of P.Diddy, Board of Ed hero and “Entertainment Tonight” star, is rooted in his productions and promotions of gangsta rap that has so clearly lent itself to the proliferation of verbal and physical incivility among New York’s junior high and high school students.
Start with the fact that P. Diddy named his label Bad Boy Entertainment. Then look deeper. P. Diddy has been a driving force behind some of the most profane, misogynistic, racist, menacing, thug-celebrating, violence-embracing, dehumanizing rappers in the short and profoundly pathetic history of the genre.
There’s no price to pay for this? Kids everywhere eat up what P. Diddy fronts. And they can read and even hear all about on AOL. Tell ’em Snoop Dogg sent ya.