Women’s Rights Activists Go A-Protesting

Prominent women’s-rights activists went caroling Thursday on the corporate doorstep of Time Warner Inc. to protest the company’s role in promoting music that they say encourages domestic violence.

Carrying hand-lettered signs bearing messages such as “Sexism Is Music to Time Warner’s Ears,” the group took to the sidewalk in front of Time Warner’s Rockefeller Center headquarters to denounce a song called “Smack My Bitch Up.”

The song, by the British rock group Prodigy, was released as a single last month on Madonna’s Maverick label, which is half-owned by Time Warner’s Warner Bros. Records unit. The song is also the first track of Prodigy’s “Fat of the Land” album, one of the year’s hottest records, with 2 million in U.S. sales.

Warner Bros. and Maverick said in a joint statement Thursday that they were “saddened that those who exercise their right to express themselves freely would deny it to others.”

The protesters targeted Time Warner and its chairman, Gerald Levin, rather than Madonna, because “he’s the decision-maker over Warner Bros. Records,” said Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms. magazine.

The nation’s two biggest retail chains, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kmart Corp., both yanked the Prodigy album from their stores Dec. 5 after an article about the controversy appeared in The Times.

Steinem was joined at Thursday’s small demonstration by C. DeLores Tucker, a longtime crusader against violent rap lyrics; Anita Perez, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus; Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation; and author Susan Brownmiller.

Singer Melba Moore led the group in a new version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” with lyrics by Steinem.

“You have a right to publish, as Klan and Nazis do,” they sang, “but you would never publish what endangers men like you.”

The protesters asked to meet with Levin but were referred instead to executives at Burbank-based Warner Bros. because, a spokesman said, “decisions about specific products are made at the division level.”

Levin himself got involved in a 1993 controversy over music lyrics, writing an essay in the Wall Street Journal defending rapper Ice-T during the explosive controversy over his song “Cop Killer.” Time Warner later pulled the record off the market and ended its relationship with the singer.

Levin, according to a well-placed source, also had a role in the 1995 decision to sell Time Warner’s stake in Interscope Records after songs by Interscope rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg were assailed for allegedly promoting violence and degrading women.

In their statement, Warner Bros. and Maverick said, “While the lyric in question was never intended to be harmful or disrespectful to women or any other group and we sincerely regret that it may have been misinterpreted, the possibility that some will be offended or disturbed by any creative work is a risk inherent in any artistic endeavor.”

The Recording Industry Assn. of America, a Washington-based trade group, issued a statement supporting Prodigy and its Maverick record label. “Music has always been a forum to express ideas, to protest wars, to mirror life, to create controversy. We must preserve that forum,” the group said.

Just down the block from the protest at Time Warner, the Coconuts record store was crowded with holiday shoppers. A store manager, who asked not to be identified, said the Prodigy album, while still popular, had fallen off the racks of the store’s hottest-selling CDs. “Sales will probably pick up now just because of the attention,” she said.