The Religious Right has perhaps inevitably caught wind of the story of a Florida middle school teacher who was suspended for using explicit lyrics from a Lil Wayne song to teach her students about figurative language. The school district disciplined the teacher, who recognized that the lyrics to “6 Foot 7 Foot” were “totally inappropriate for a school assignment,” but that hasn’t stopped groups like the American Family Association and Concerned Women For America from latching onto the episode as evidence of the evils of rap, feminism, lesbians, and contemporary literature.
In an interview with the Christian Post Tuesday, American Family Association president Tim Wildmon declared that “rappers don’t use English, so that would be crazy to have rap music as part of an English class.” Wildmon later made clear that he was not personally familiar with the genre, saying, “from what I’ve heard it’s hard to find rap music that doesn’t have obscenities in it.” He suggested that the teacher should have picked a Gospel song instead.
“Rappers don’t use English, so that would be crazy to have rap music as part of an English class,” quipped Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, in an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday. He criticized the use of profanities in a school assignment. “It’s irresponsible, it’s inappropriate, and I don’t think it fits the course that he’s teaching at all – I would object if I were a parent,” Wildmon declared.
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Wildmon of AFA also homed in on the profanity-laced Lil Wayne lyrics, and questioned the teacher’s reasoning behind the selection. “To take lyrics that include obscenities – from what I’ve heard it’s hard to find rap music that doesn’t have obscenities in it – that should not be appropriate for a Junior High School,” the AFA president declared. “Why didn’t he pick Gospel or Country music, and why that song from that particular artist?”
Meanwhile, Concerned Women For America’s Janice Shaw Crouse saw the Florida incident as proof of the failures of feminism. “With the supposed success of feminism, we have more misogynist popular music and cultural influence than ever before,” she told the Post. She blamed this trend on feminists who “forgot about helping women achieve dignity and success, and instead got bogged down in special interest agendas like abortion, lesbianism and quotas.”
“As a consequence, we’ve got watered down quality and ramped up sexuality and crudity,” Crouse quipped. With teachers using comic books and contemporary literature as curriculum material, students have no concept of great literature.”
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Crouse called it “ironic” that “with the supposed success of feminism, we have more misogynist popular music and cultural influence than ever before.” Even while more women earn advanced degrees than ever before, popular culture objectifies them more and more.The problem traces back to a major shift for the worse in the feminist movement, Crouse argued. “They forgot about quality – they forgot about helping women achieve dignity and success, and instead got bogged down in special interest agendas like abortion, lesbianism and quotas,” she said.
