Michelle Malkin is consistent, if nothing else. The newest subject of her misinformed, airhead conservative rage is the viral marketing campaign for the hit film Straight Outta Compton. Malkin is convinced that everyone who goes to StraightOuttaSomewhere.com and spends a few minutes with the marketing campign’s web tool is perpetuating racism in the United States.
Writing for TownHall.com — a conservative publication that has hosted brain cell-killing essays by other far-right fact-ignorant pundits like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and Michael Savage — Malkin states:
“Here’s how the poison is spreading. A savvy marketing team at Universal/Comcast Corp. developed a web toy that allows social media fans to customize the theatrical poster logo for the media giant’s new biopic, ‘Straight Outta Compton.’ Hundred of thousands of clueless users have uploaded photos of themselves and substituted ‘Compton’ with the names of their hometowns.”
Oh, well then. I had no idea that indulging in a little web application fun was so harmful to American race relations. Thank you so much, woman who wrote a book called In Denfense of Internment. I’m so glad you could open the eyes of hundreds of thousands of “clueless users.”
What a load of crap. The marketing campaign for the N.W.A. biopic is not promoting racism in the United States. White, trigger-happy cops have that market cornered.
According to Malkin’s half-baked essay, aside from “hundreds of thousands of clueless users” blindly promoting racism via a Universal/Comcast Corp. marketing campaign, a slew of celebrities are doing so as well. She specifically names Jennifer Lopez, Serena Williams, LeBron James, and Ed Sheeran as purveyors of this racial madness, along with 2016 Republican Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio.
Malkin also refers to the marketing campaign as a “publicity coup” for former N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. She claims they are using the marketing campaign to “pimp the movie — named after their breakthrough 1988 album — glorifying the rise of their band N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and the hardcore gangsta rap genre.”
Ha, she said pimp.
I find it silly that a marketing campaign, which is itself harmless, is causing Michelle Malkin such distress. I mean, sure, she’s one of those far-right fact-ignorant pundits whose work is hosted by TownHall.com, but seriously, getting pissed about a marketing campaign is about as silly as getting pissed that a 12-year-old boy survived a car accident thanks to CHIP.
Perhaps she’ll stalk the “hundreds of thousands of clueless users” too?
Ultimately, the crux of Malkin’s reasoning must lie in the same realm as everyone else’s when it comes to animosity toward rap music. Malkin’s outrage toward the marketing campaign has to merely be a focal point for her revulsion with N.W.A.’s music and some of the things members of the group have done.
She correctly points out that N.W.A. was no supporter of police and that some of the members (notably Ice Cube and Dr. Dre) have had a history of violence and stirring up trouble, notably during the 1992 L.A. Riots.
Sure, I’ll buy that. N.W.A.’s music was incendiary and the actions of their members have been, occasionally and historically, less than favorable. But at the same time, biopics are not discriminatory in who they showcase and the events Malkin is referencing in her essay are over 20 years old. N.W.A. is as important to the rap genre as Run-DMC, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and Big Daddy Kane, and further, as important to the evolution of American music as Leadbelly, Berry Gordy, Hank Williams, and Michael Jackson.
An N.W.A. biopic is long-overdue. Michelle Malkin may have focused on a marketing campaign as the target for her disposition toward her perceptions of what rap music is, but that doesn’t diminish N.W.A.’s influence and their standing in the history of American music.
For Michelle, courtesy of the Straight Outta Compton marketing campaign:
