Fighting Stereotypes

While reading the July 8 letters critical of rap music, I recall the 1950s when our parish priest condemned “that truck driver Presley” whose hip swinging was called “too vile for teen-agers to view.” Jerry Lee Lewis was also castigated for “acting like a rabid animal on stage.”

A local radio station owner and Republican political leader barred Bo Diddley’s music from his broadcasts because he had deduced Bo’s lyrics were “unintelligible and thus must be obscene.” Ironically, Bo Diddley is now a staunch Republican who performed at George Bush’s inaugural gala.

Maybe in another 30 years today’s rappers will become staunch Republicans and we’ll look back and laugh at the flap being made over rappers by those totalitarian fundamentalists who know what’s best for us to hear now, as they did in the 1950s.

JOE HOFERR

Los Angeles

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