February 26, 2007

Ghost Ride It!

Ok, let's set aside that this song has an incredibly uncreative beat and is so clearly based on an attention grabbing gimmick it actually got the Macarena song stuck in my head by association.

I'm not the type of alarmist that freaks out whenever some stupid kid does something he thinks his heroes of pop culture want him to do. Songs about street violence? Fine. Video games with the blasting and the shooting, whahey 'n lehvin! Sure. But I mean, this is pretty hard to defend. He's telling people explicitly to get out of their cars while the cars are still moving down the street? I mean come on!

Thanks to Czar for tipping me off to this one.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Do you think that that bus he rocks around his neck is of the short variety?

How long til we see our first ghost ridin' death in the Darwin Awards?

MosBen said...

Jay, I can only assume we have but minutes to wait.

I was talking about this last night at Quizzo and I guess I should clarify my point. I'm not arguing that this song or the artist behind it would be any more blameworthy on a moral or legal grounds for injuries or deaths sustained immitating the subject of the song. The people taking such action are ultimately responsible for their own actions. What I'm talking about is the conversation about art and culture where a conservative is trying to argue that they *are* responsible for the injuries/deaths. The easiest and most common response to a claim that Judas Priest is telling kids to kill themselves is, "No, not really. You're overreating and misinterpreting the work to find a scapegoat." Judas Priest didn't tell kids to kill themselves, but these guys *are* telling kids to go get their car moving down the streets and then leave the wheel to dance or whatever. Again, I don't think this makes them ultimately responsible it just shifts the argument a bit. It's not an argument loser, it's a slap-your-head-as-these-fools-don't-make-your-job-easier.