Politically Correct

I want to point out the irony between two articles in the Aug. 20 Calendar.

While MCA Records Black Music President Ernie Singleton “fought hard” for “free speech principles” for gangsta rap artists, who sing about killing cops and shoving safety pins through women’s nipples (“Ice-T Fallout: Signs of Industry Wariness of ‘Gangsta’ Rap”), leaders of the Media Image Coalition of Minorities and Women decried the pilot of “Driving Miss Daisy” as “dangerous” because it portrays a “powerless black man waiting on an elderly white woman” (“Steering ‘Daisy’ Through an Unexpected Roadblock”). Dangerous? They add that airing the pilot could have “serious social consequences” and called for a boycott.

Singleton states, “I firmly believe in our Constitution and I think a black artist has a First Amendment right to express his own experience.” I wonder why that should not also apply to Alfred Uhry, who based the play and series on his grandmother’s chauffeur, whom he describes as “the most beautiful, most elegant, dignified man I ever met.”

I try to be politically correct, but sometimes the standards baffle me.

STEVE PEPOON, Chatsworth