Pop Go the Liberals
The Left’s latest take on the culture wars is offensively superficial.

By Carson Holloway, author of All Shook Up: Music Passion and Politics.
May 5-6, 2001

Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America, by Eric Nuzum (Perennial, 352 pp., $15).

mong the Left's latest contributions to the culture wars, Eric Nuzum's Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in

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America explores the debate over the morality of pop music as it has manifested itself in regard to such concerns as sex, violence, drugs, religion, race, and political protest.

This book is almost useless for understanding the concerns of pop's critics, whom Nuzum refuses to treat seriously. Complaints against pop music, according to Nuzum, arise from discrimination, which shows itself in the arbitrarily selective criticism of some forms of music, thus belying a secret agenda on the part of the critics: They are animated not by an interest in the character of the young but by a thirst for political control, and in particular by a racist desire to suppress minority cultures. On this score the book is entirely unconvincing. What Nuzum presents as arbitrariness is in fact perfectly reasonable. Thus, for example, critics do not attack all references to sex and violence in art and literature because not all references are problematically explicit or morally corrupt. Nuzum's criticism relies on a simple-minded notion of consistency that would equate 2 Live Crew's lyrics with a Biblical passage like "he knew his wife" because both are "references" to sex.

The more specific charge of racism generally fails in light of the abundance of white musicians who have been morally condemned, and what Nuzum apparently regards as his most telling example in fact proves nothing. Claiming that there is no difference between the songs except for the race of the artists, he notes that Eric Clapton's cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" raised no outcry while Ice-T's "Cop Killer" met with vociferous protest. This assertion is ridiculous to anyone familiar with the two songs. Clapton narrates a confrontation in which a gun discharges and which the storyteller asserts is a case of self-defense, while Ice-T sings about deliberately killing cops at random, while, for good measure, acknowledging but belittling the grief this will befall the resulting widows.

The book is equally useless for one seeking some account of the moral influence of music. Dismissing the "common sense" notion that music must have some impact on the attitudes and behavior of the young, Nuzum instead appeals to "science," which he claims demonstrates that many kids do not comprehend the lyrical themes of the music they love, and that when they do and it conflicts with their moral beliefs, they either reject it or interpret it benignly. On this basis he concludes that "[n]o piece of music, no matter how vulgar or obscene, can ruin a good kid." This leaves out some inconvenient questions. What about the influence on kids who are not "good," whose beliefs are not fully formed? What about the influence on kids who are "bad," whose destructive inclinations, admittedly already present, find support in some forms of popular music? Furthermore, Nuzum's denial that music has any appreciable influence on the attitudes of the young is later contradicted by his praise for the uses of music to advance (basically leftist) social and political messages. Hence, for example, his comment that rap "legitimized" the political "dissatisfaction" of the young and "made it cool for teens to … disagree with the locus of power in our society, and explore the revolutionary nature of self-empowerment."

Parental Advisory is useful, unintentionally, insofar as it illustrates the illiberal, even tyrannical, nature of contemporary liberalism. Nuzum counts it as wrongful censorship for groups of citizens to use boycotts to pressure a retailer to remove a recording, or even for owners of radio stations to refuse to air certain songs they find objectionable — despite the fact that such actions involve nothing but the free actions of people using their own property as they see fit. It is, moreover, censorship to deny government funding to controversial performers, or to rescind their invitations to events at public schools. Even worse, Nuzum's list of incidents in his concluding "Chronology of Music Censorship in the United States" includes such activities as a public lecture denouncing misogynistic rock and Pat Boone's recording of cleaned-up versions of suggestive R&B songs.

This, then, is the contemporary liberal's notion of freedom: He may use any resources, including yours and the public's, to proselytize to you and your children using a moral system that you reject, and you may not stop him, and really ought not even to object or create alternatives more in keeping with your principles. Alas, the liberal's moral universe is indistinguishable from that of the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."