How easy it is these days to lose a top-level job for saying the wrong thing!
What I don't understand is... this is a site that's mostly about rap lyrics, right? Rap lyrics are full of transgressive statements about violence and the sexual objectification of women. Why was it this easy to fatally cross the line over there?
Tom Lehman, one of the co-founders of Rap Genius, writes:
However, Mahbod Moghadam, one of my co-founders, annotated the piece with annotations that not only didn’t attempt to enhance anyone’s understanding of the text, but went beyond that into gleeful insensitivity and misogyny. All of which is contrary to everything we’re trying to accomplish at Rap Genius.I guess the point is: There's a text, originated elsewhere, that may be offensive, but the site is about annotating that text, and there's a moderated community of annotators, following the standards of annotation, and the same rules apply to everybody.
Were Mahbod’s annotations posted by a Rap Genius moderator, that person would cease to be an effective community leader and would have to step down.
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22 comments:
The site is designed to comment on rap lyrics, and presumably to explain them to the unknowing.
As far as I can tell, none of the "founders" are black. All three "founders" went to Yale, and Mahbod Moghadam graduated from Stanford Law School.
They got their capital from some Silicon Valley angels, and supposedly "investor pressure" was a big factor in the ousting.
All of which makes me say . . . "what the fuck?"
Misogyny and rap music are like oil and water, they just don't mix. I think the consequence fits the crime.
Dear lord that was hard to type.
"Why was it this easy to fatally cross the line over there?"
Money. Investors. Possibly also Hollywood connections. (The linking of this crime to the violence of Hunger Games has been (not so) strangely absent.)
Hollywood is circling the wagons right now. You will likely not hear much from the usual anti-gun sources in the entertainment industry.
Tell me again the difference between the Taliban and the progressive left.
The employer is fearful, not outraged.
Nobody actually believes PC stuff.
They've been catching hell, for being assholes, for some time now.
Apparently Rap Genius has not been paying sufficient reparations to Crack.
Alert Shakedown Sharpton and Jesse "my son is a felon" Jackson.
"Another big issue with Rap Genius is that it trades on a particular noxious brand of humor that has infected the internet for years: white people "translating" rap lyrics in arch, academic prose. The most famous examples are "rap graphs," but there's also things like this Twitter account, which turns 50 Cent's tweets into "Queen's English." This humor has also been a staple of Bill Maher's stand up act."
The "c" in rap is silent.
Always amusing to find the line when humor has gone too far.
I'm fine with ridiculing the nonsense of a mass murderer. That's a great tool for discouraging future mass murderers.
The worst thing we can do is let mass murder be a tool for insanity to be taken seriously.
I think that what boosted ragtime to the mainstream was not critics but songwriters like Kern and Berlin. I read somewhere that the Blondie song, The Rapture, was rap music. So there's one rap song that I have actually listened to and enjoyed. Maybe Handy was more inventive and original than Berlin, but Berlin's music is what gets played......Cultural appropriation is a two way street. Did Gershwin exploit jazz or do jazz musicians exploit Gershwin. Perhaps rap needs a songwriter of genius to translate its idioms into something more appealing to non hip whites.......There's a lot of music that never jumped out of its neighborhood. The old time guidosl liked Rosselli (if I have the name right) better than Sinatra. The Pogues made some fine music, but try to get someone other than a sodden nick interested in them.....I don't follow music much. Does rap music appeal to anyone besides blacks and loathsome young whites?
In his defense, she is attractive.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/05/27/article-0-1E373AFC00000578-986_634x663.jpg
I like the website. How else would I ever know what "Rooftop like we bringin' '88 back" meant?
It must have been pretty bad if they could use it to push out a co-founder of the site. Oh, well, I guess he can go back to being a lawyer.
I'll continue to turn to a blog called Althouse for my daily ANNotation.
They are the Puritans redux. No vulgarity allowed or the church expels you. Take your act to Rhode Island.
Hazy Dave said...
I'll continue to turn to a blog called Althouse for my daily ANNotation.
This is no time to be clever.
There is misogyny afoot!!
Thanks, Hazy!
No one in their right mind uses the words RAP and GENIUS in the same sentence.
The phrase is an oxyMORON, emphasis on the MORON.
Do a google images search for photos of Mahbod Moghadam Rap Genius and Tom Lehman Rap Genius.
Swallow your coffee first.
How much do hipsters suck? This much.
Tom Lehman - Senior Tour golfer, major champion resume`.
Who knew?
paul a'barge,
"No one in their right mind uses the words RAP and GENIUS in the same sentence.
The phrase is an oxyMORON, emphasis on the MORON."
I love that Rap's taken over the entire world and culture so people like you are like dogs barking in the wind.
It's a kind of Civil Rights marker that's self-evident and really gratifying,...
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