I know I'm not the only one who remembers the history of modern music. People have been pissed at certain elements of "Satan's influence" in music since people had the ability to be pissed and since the invention of Satan as a catch-all for evil.

Fat, white Bill Haley scared people with rock 'n' roll. The Doors couldn't bring anyone higher on national television. In Jethro Tull's "Locomotive Breath" they had "got him by the balls" changed to "... by the hands" in 1971. Elvis was told not to swivel. Sinead O' Connor received death threats and was ostracized after singing "War" and ripping up a picture of the Pope. NBC still won't re-air it. The Rolling Stones were only allowed to spend "some time" together on the Ed Sullivan show. There were - in the 1940s and 1950s minds of the confused and bigoted - black people forcing their unseemly passion to "the youth of America." Madonna, God help us, was pilloried for "Like a Prayer" and "Like a Virgin." Does anyone not insane really blame The Beatles for Charles Manson?

But none of that is the newest damnation, the ungodly dark-hearted hip-hop. And what makes perceived violence or disrespect towards women in music new sins? Or the only sins? People who claim to be music aficionados - and many others - suddenly can't understand this loud, obscene and disrespectful hip-hop?

A lot of music and its performers were scandalous in their day. Anyone paying attention knows this. Really wake up. What makes hip-hop such a black mark on American society? (When a lot of people use "hip-hop" they usually mean rap. Hip-hop is music but its definition goes beyond music.) Certainly a lot of it can very much be considered disrespectful, but that does not translate into damaging and influencing an imagined monolithic black culture, that is somehow spilling over to corrupt "the youth of America."

Dire Straits - ghetto rats that they are - "get away" with saying faggot on the radio to this day, every day. Don't believe me? They were all about, "money for nuthin' and chicks for free" (disrespectful?) on their most commercially successful song to date. "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup / Yeah buddy that's his own hair / That little faggot got his own jet airplane /That little faggot he's a millionaire."

It's startling to hear; yet national radio plays it without anyone batting an eye.

Talk about your double standards. What makes Dire Straits and so many of the musicians of the past innocuous, while Tupac Shakur or Ludacris (to use just two examples) are such societal pariahs and their lyrics looked on with a jaundiced eye or outright distaste?

"You're my nigga, my best friend / Never gonna call you, a bitch again."

Got love that one, from Tupac's "Never Gonna Call U Bitch Again" because it decries the use of "bitch" while still using "nigga." Multitudes. Can the critics handle the dichotomy?