By George Mattingly
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
BERKELEY, Calif., Dec. 13 — Appearing on the Ken Burns TV documentary “Baseball,” the 1927 Yankees look like cartoon convicts in their saucepan-shaped caps and tent-like pinstriped jerseys. “How could they wear such stupid outfits?” our 14-year-old asks in disgust. He stalks off, his cargo pants sagging halfway to his knees, displaying his boxer shorts for our viewing pleasure.
I knock on my son’s door to ask what he’s heard at Berkeley High about this story of gang rape. He says some of his ninth-grade classmates know the girl and, he adds, ‘they say she wanted it.’
HIS BEDROOM WALL begins to shake with the “ka-whump ka-whump” of rap music. The end of each poetic line seems to rhyme with “Brother Tucker.”
“What is this song about?” I ask innocently.
He shrugs, purses his lips and shakes his head sadly at me: Clearly he thinks his dad just fell off a turnip truck.
“An anthem celebrating the dignity and equality of womankind?” I suggest.
“C’mon dad. Nobody listens to the words.”
If not the words, then what exactly would one listen to in this music stripped of melody, harmony and tonal or rhythmic variety? I catch myself before I say something caustic (and, worse, reminiscent of my own parents’ comments about my music).
GANG RAPE
Retreating to a cup of tea and the local rag, I spot a story that says a juvenile gang has allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl at a Berkeley middle school. According to various reports, including one in the San Francisco Chronicle, the victim, who has “learning disabilities,” was allegedly assaulted over a five-hour period in 11 different locations (starting in a shed on school grounds) by seven boys ages 11 to 16, members of a gang called the “Mini Mob.”
I knock on my son’s door to ask what he’s heard at Berkeley High about this story. He says some of his ninth-grade classmates know the girl and, he adds, “they say she wanted it.”
“Nobody wants seven partners for five hours in 11 locations,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “That’s what they say.”
I ask a friend with daughters at Berkeley High and at King Middle School. Their reports are similar.
The Court of Teen Opinion has spoken.
PSYCHIC PROTECTION
One parent reports that at Berkeley High dances, the most popular ‘step’ finds young women prone on the dance floor while boys mount them and simulate copulation.
My wife suggests that it’s reassuring to believe that bad things happen only to those who “want” them. It’s a belief that offers psychic protection from all sorts of threats: microbial and cosmic, as well as two-legged.
Berkeley’s abuzz with reaction — almost all of it judgmental, certain and final.
As I walk by an outdoor cafe, I overhear a middle-aged woman with spiked chartreuse hair explaining to her nodding male companion that in a patriarchal society all male/female sex acts are, by definition, rape.
Berkeley’s liberals issue a call for more counseling and training. “Is the sex education program adequate?” (Impossible to tell whether this response is tongue-in-cheek.)
One parent reports that at Berkeley High dances, the most popular “step” finds young women prone on the dance floor while boys mount them and simulate copulation — an Arthur Murray lesson I must’ve missed.
The costume theme for one day of Berkeley High’s homecoming week is known to the students as “Pimps Up, Ho’s Down.” It is a day when the boys dress as pimps and boss around the girls, who are dressed as whores. (Officially, the school’s student council terms it “Whacky Tacky Day.”)
The father of one of the accused, a 12-year-old boy, defends his son as a frightened bystander who said, “Daddy, I was scared. I didn’t want the other kids to think I was a punk.”
Despite its ring of truth, this defense seemed self-serving, until a couple of weeks later when the same girl reported being raped again — this time at her new middle school, by just one boy, in the bushes during lunch.
This second incident gives pause to some who had been quick to judge. But as in Florida’s presidential election, we may never know the truth.
In all, 13 boys have been accused in three separate incidents of sexual acts involving two girls. All those arrested have been released to the custody of their parents. One 15-year-old boy is being sought. Charges include illegal sex with a minor and lewd acts with a child under 14, but not rape. A pre-trial conference for all 12 of the arrested boys is scheduled for Jan. 2.
VILE LYRICS
The lyrics are not just the usual flaunting of jewelry, luxury cars, drugs, pimping and misogyny, but bragging about slavery, rape and suggesting a ‘head shot’ if the female objects.
As I struggled to understand this story, I wandered by the laser printer where my son was printing out rap lyrics. Since kids get most of their information and opinions from teen “culture,” I’m interested.
You don’t have to like it — your teenagers would prefer that you not like it (that would be just like too totally, like, embarrassing) — but you ought to know what pictures it paints.
The lyrics in the printer tray this time were particularly vile. Not just the usual flaunting of jewelry, luxury cars, drugs, pimping and misogyny (the typical — though not universal — rap zeitgeist), but in this case bragging about slavery, rape and suggesting a “head shot” if the female companion objects.
Waving the lyrics at him, I ask my son if he now knows what’s in them. He nods and repeats his claim that nobody listens to the lyrics.
“Then you won’t mind me telling you I don’t want to ever hear this song in my house, in my car or coming out of any of your devices. Sex and drugs and a vocabulary limited by overuse of non-Grandma words I can live with, but degrading, denigrating, damaging and enslaving human beings I won’t have. Got it?”
He nods — and doesn’t repeat the claim that nobody pays attention to lyrics (even when they print them out).
STUDENT EDITORIAL
Unfortunately in Berkeley, many of the baby boomer parents are so consumed with seeming ‘young’ and ‘hip’ and simpatico to hip-hop ‘culture’ that they’ve forgotten their role as parents.
The next week a student editorial in the Berkeley High Jacket attacks those who see a pattern running through hip-hop “culture” and recent local teen behavior. The writer reminds us that parents in each generation cringe at their children’s music and fashions. She points out that rape is an act of violence, not sex.
But what she neglects to note is that it’s the attitude that an artist, musician, parent or kid takes to the subject matter of a song or movie or life that matters. All of them together delineate what’s in and what’s out of bounds. Music in my teen years may have described sex or violence, but it didn’t condone rape. There’s a difference, a difference we parents are supposed to point out — however tiresome.
Unfortunately in Berkeley, many of the baby boomer parents are so consumed with seeming “young” and “hip” and simpatico to hip-hop “culture” that they’ve forgotten their role as parents and ... yes ... adults.
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Daily I’m reminded of this as I witness the radical feminist mom (or oh-so-politically-correct dad) struggling to be “cool” by bumping to the ka-whump ka-whump of 110 decibels of rap that demeans women as “bitches and ho’s” who are ornamental slaves to “gat”-toting bottom-feeder pimpmasters. Can you spell d-i-s-c-o-n-n-e-c-t?
While this goes on in the best of households, our teenagers struggle to discover any remnant of boundaries they can cross for the purpose of rebellion — and across town the Mini Mob is having preteen sex in a shed.
Ka-whump ka-whump.
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George Mattingly, the publisher of Blue Wind Press, is a poet and free-lance writer.
Clinton and Congress had different goals.
neither one of them reached their goals. |
