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Since its inception, hip-hop has endured endless attacks – typically, but not always, wrongheaded – mostly because of references to violence and for celebrating a culture that devalues women. When a wealthy, white radio host used a derogatory term to describe members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, other wealthy, white men rushed to his aid by inexplicably pinning blame on hip-hop.  Perhaps the fever pitch of misdirected blame on rap music was reached when Congress devoted time and resources into hearings probing the genre, another hilariously off-kilter spectacle in which a body of old, wealthy white men who authorize war wagged their fingers at the use of indelicate language.

But perhaps the most ignorant and insulting knock against hip-hop yet – and that’s saying something – is this suggestion from a writer at TheLoop21.com that it in spotlighting the gritty, ravaged neighborhoods from which many rappers emerged, the artists are actually glorifying poverty. It’s a ridiculous premise in virtually every imaginable way – the most obvious being that acknowledging poverty and desperation exist and treating them as if they’re worthy of aspiration are far, far different things.

The author confuses one of the most celebrated notions in hip-hop – pride in one’s roots – as a devastating concept that forces those who make it out of poverty to act as a sort-of one-man welfare agency for his deadbeat friends back home.

“This mentality of dependence is encouraged and glorified by rappers and then forced back upon the potential breadwinners of poor communities. Athletes, politicians and even members of are own family are thrust into positions of sharing with the hood.”

This is about as logical as knocking someone who sits at his mother’s bedside during chemo treatments of enabling cancer.

In other ways, the author simply seems laughably unaware of most popular hip-hop – he makes the bizarre assertion that hip-hop should embrace self-sufficiency, which is essentially the equivalent of suggesting country doesn’t talk enough about pick-ups trucks and American flags. The braggadocio and swagger that exemplifies hip-hop relies on artists reveling in having taken matters into their own hands. Take this Kanye West line from “Bring Me Down”:  “Made a mil myself, and I’m still myself, and I’ma look in the mirror if I need some help.” That type of back-patting is typical of an artist and a genre that rewards those who climb out “tha hood” but who don’t forget those who never made it.

Notably, the suggestion that rap glorifies poverty ignores what has been an enduring – and valid – critique of hip-hop’s materialism. Rappers have long touted their bling, be it cars, clothes, jewelry, houses, whatever, precisely because those things are big, glittering symbols that they have escaped poverty. There are certainly arguments to be made that an obsession with diamonds and Dom shows misplaced priorities, but it’s hard to ignore these rappers’ desire to distance themselves from having very little and what it represents.

Look, don’t get me wrong – much as I love hip-hop, it is ripe for critiques, and indeed, many brilliant ones have been made. It’s a complex community with characters ranging from Soulja Boy to Mos Def, and anything that big, crowded and noisy is bound to have its problems. But this assertion is patently ridiculous – and so blind to even the most obvious and celebrated hallmarks of the genre it purports to want to help that it deserves to get called out.

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It has been a year and a half since Chris Brown was arrested for assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards. Both of them have released albums since then, acknowledging the incident in their own ways – Brown with songs like the over-the-top “Changed Man,” and Rihanna more subtly on tracks like “Stupid in Love” and “Cold Case Love.”

Though she shouldn’t have to forever wear her victimhood on her sleeve, Rihanna did express in interviews following the incident that she felt to compelled to speak out about her ordeal out of concern for her young fans who might be dealing with similar problems. It’s pretty bizarre, therefore, that her newest hit has her singing the hook on a domestic violence-fueled Eminem track, the single “Love the Way You Lie,” currently No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Rihanna’s portion of the song is rather tongue-in-cheek. She moans the refrain throughout: “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, well that’s all right because I like the way it hurts/Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, well that’s all right because I love the way you lie.” In between her bouts of singing, though, Eminem hurls angry words that paint a scary picture of a relationship gone wrong, a theme typical of his raps. “I feel so ashamed, I snap … I laid hands on her/I’ll never stoop so low again/I guess I don’t even know my own strength,” he spits, before closing the song with this terrifying revelation: “I’m tired of the games, I just want her back I know I’m a liar/If she ever tries to fucking leave again, I’ma tie her to the bed and set this fucking house on fire.”

Subtle, Eminem is not. Which makes Rihanna’s participation in such an explicitly violent song all the more hard to understand. She has lent her vocals to countless rap tracks by other artists, giving a strong feminine touch to songs like “Run This Town” with Jay-Z and Kanye West, and “Live Your Life” with T.I. And while some of those songs contained vaguely violent elements, they were rooted in metaphor (“Get your fatigues on”), and had Rihanna as an active participant – she dons the same all-black outfit and badass swagger as the men she’s next to. But in “Love the Way You Lie,” the girl at the center of the story is clearly and unequivocally a victim, even if Eminem describes being hurt by her too.

Rihanna certainly isn’t obligated to forever use her music as a platform from which to speak out against abuse. There has to be a happy medium, however, between advocating for women and participating in a song in which one is getting beaten to death.

Norma Lopez went missing on her way home from summer school. Photo via KTLA News.

When 7-year-old Kyron Horman went missing from his Portland, Ore. school early last month, news outlets ranging from blogs to newspapers to TV stations raced to cover the story. His name quickly climbed up most-searched term lists and People magazine has been relentless in its documentation of each break in the case. Meanwhile, the case of another young boy who went missing at nearly the exact same time as Horman, Anthony Thomas, generated only a fraction of the coverage.

It was only a yet another example of the media’s crush to report on abductions and foul play involving white women and children, while giving little coverage to minorities who disappear: The latest example is 17-year-old Norma Lopez, who appears to have been kidnapped on her way home from summer school in Moreno Valley, Calif. Most of the coverage of Lopez’s disappearance has come from local news outlets, while the national attention to the case by places like the Los Angeles Times and CNN has been restricted to short blog posts — rising nowhere near the level that dominated the disappearances of girls like Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway.

Media coverage is crucial to the cases of people who go missing because it is often vigilant members of the public who can play a role in helping law enforcement find the victim. Certainly a young, beautiful girl like Lopez and the eery circumstances surrounding her going missing — some of her belongings and “evidence of a struggle” were found in a field Lopez would walk through as a shortcut — are just as deserving of coverage as any other person — white, female or otherwise.

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As some people may have noticed, I’ve been pathetically absent from my own digs as of late – in large part because I recently completed a cross-country move from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.

I’ve been predictably surprised by my new, strange habitat: It’s a bizarre place where Subway restaurants serve pizza, where bars offer “rail” drinks (instead of “well”), and where Lay’s peddles a dill-pickle-flavored variety of potato chips. (Also, if you couldn’t tell, I do a lot of eating and drinking.)

But beyond my own fascination with the peculiarities of various food and beverage purveyors, there’s an interesting dichotomy in the power and age dynamics at work in each town. Both L.A. and D.C. are one-industry towns, revolving around entertainment and government, respectively. The faces of those industries, and those who actually wield power within them, are almost hilariously opposed.

The likes of Selena Gomez, Zac Efron and the stars of “Twilight” are all visible power players in Hollywood. Throw their faces on your vehicle and it’s likely to be at least moderately successful. It’s a culture that fawns over youth and discards older stars with relative ease. But the people (and by that, I of course mean white dudes) who actually hold the puppet strings – the studio bosses, news directors, magazine editors, etc. are of course much older. Viacom chair Sumner Redstone is 87, for example.

In D.C. though, it’s the old, white men who are the public faces of the government (minus, you know, one very-visible guy who is less white). It’s a culture where age is often considered an asset. Take this report from my new place of employ, which finds:

But the culture on Capitol Hill not only makes it taboo to question older lawmakers’ ability, it also rewards their longevity with roles as influential committee chairmen and a greater share of earmarks. …

“This job is the only job in the country where you can keep working even if your staff [members] are literally carrying you into the office,” said one former Senate staffer who worked for Sen. Arlen Specter. The 80-year-old Democrat from Pennsylvania recently lost his primary bid for a 6th term.

And predictably, it’s the young staffers doing the carrying who weird enormous power behind the scenes – a fact emphasized by a recent New York Times magazine article, All the Obama 20-Somethings:

When Barack Obama’s presidential campaign began on a clear and frigid day in Springfield, Ill., in 2007, the young men and women who would shovel snow in Iowa, crash on couches in Pittsburgh and pass up grad school to join it could not quite grasp that two years later their journey would end at the Oval Office. They also could not imagine all of the unseen difficulties that would await them — everything from a cratering economy and an attempt at a Christmas Day terrorist attack to plummeting poll numbers as their president fell to earth. Showing up to work each day at the most prestigious address in America can feel a bit like finals week in college. They are always on call, always working hard.

I know all too well how easily age can work against you when you’re applying for anything beyond an entry-level position - a fact that is only amplified in an economy where recent grads find themselves competing with workers in their sectors who have been laid off and possess years more experience. It’s weirdly comforting to know, then, that one sector that values and encourages young people is also one of the most powerful.

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Despite its tendency to sometimes dwell on bitches and bling, and despite its status as arguably the most dominant force in pop culture, hip-hop remains the mainstream musical genre that most willingly delves into politics – and nothing has made that clearer recently than Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

Racial profiling and disparate treatment from police helped launch hip-hop from the start, and has been a consistent thread for decades, from N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” to Tupac Shakur lamenting “Cops give a damn about a Negro, pull the trigger, kill a n—-, he’s a hero,” in “Changes” to Jay-Z speculating in “99 Problems” that he got pulled over because “I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low.”

After spending much of 2008 and 2009 celebrating the candidacy, and win, of President Barack Obama, rap artists are getting back to the business of calling foul on disparate treament of minorities. Kanye West and others already joined a group of musicians – including rap troupe Cypress Hill - under the banner Sound Strike, all of whom promised not to play in Arizona because of SB 1070, which gives law enforcement officers broad authority in stopping and demanding documentation from anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally.

The Washington Post points out that Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli has also taken Arizona to task in his song “Papers Please,” aimed squarely at Arizona, rapping “I could never support a law that don’t respect humanity.” Kweli told the Post that he felt a personal connection with what Arizona minorities will be dealing with when the law takes effect:

“I grew up with my mother telling me . . . you are never supposed to leave your house without ID,” Kweli said in an interview Friday. “This is something I’d grown up used to as a young black person. I’ve been stopped and been detained.”

Indeed, such encounters with the police are enduring hallmarks of some timeless hip-hop tracks. Chuck D and Toki Wright have also released Arizona-themed songs – not to mention the tracks like Public Enemy’s original “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” which took issue with the state back in 1991 when it refused to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday.

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The juggernaut media spectacle surrounding LeBron James that culminated in a wildly self-indulgent primetime employer-switching special got me thinking whether any female athlete would ever be able to get away with ring-leading such a narcissistic circus. If anyone deserves to be on the level of celebrity and power warranting such silliness, it would be Serena Williams, the tennis powerhouse who just strolled to her 13th grand slam title at Wimbledon.

But instead, Williams – who, unlike LeBron, has no team but her own – has a much less noteworthy spread in Harper’s Bazaar, where she dishes not on her career demands or her insatiable need to win, a la King James, but on her diet regimen and evolving fashion sense. And though she’s one of sports’ all-time greatest competitors, her warrior-like spirit comes uncomfortably close to being mocked in a “fashion faceoff” feature pitting Serena against her sister Venus.

It’s all a part of what has become a staple in beauty magazines: the ubiquitous makeover feature in which a talented female who doesn’t conform to beauty standards is polished and buffed until they’re sufficiently girl-ified. It’s a trend that has been thrust upon ladies from Susan Boyle to
track star Caster Semanya to *Jersey Shore’s female contingent*.

But what’s even more maddening than an athlete of Williams’ mind-boggling ability being fawned over for losing 10 pounds and sporting a new sassy new “fresh bob,” instead of say, being one of the most dominant athletes – male or female – of the past century, is the reaction the makeover piece has already spawned.

Despite Williams’ own explanation in the article that she began eating more sensibly and trying to “lean out” her body was something she undertook to make her even more of a threat on the court, and to stay healthier in the long run, the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan characterizes Williams’s efforts, and the photoshoot, simply as an effort to “revamp her image” after losing her temper at a line judge during last year’s U.S. Open. Why Givhan makes this formulation, given that Williams makes no mention of the incident in the article, isn’t clear – except that whereas male stars like Ron Artest with a history of on-court outbursts can walk away from that image, but women athletes like Williams (whose verbal tirade was far less serious) apparently need to spend the rest of their careers running from it.

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Can you put a price on rape? It’s an uncomfortable question – but one that the state of California has grappled with recently, and ultimately the state Assembly voted Thursday to award $20 million to Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped at age 11 outside her home in Northern California, and rescued last year after spending 18 years in captivity. During that period, Dugard had two daughters, both allegedly fathered by her abductor, Phillip Garrido.

The settlement was approved by the Assembly after Dugard and her daughters filed a claim through the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, accusing the state of negligence, failure to discharge a mandatory duty and infliction of emotional distress stemming from the fact that Garrido was under state parole supervision for previous crimes. According to the Los Angeles Times, though the Corrections Department won’t admit any wrongdoing, lawyers working for the state warned that a jury would likely award Dugard a much larger amount if the case went to trial. So, though lawmakers admitted in an analysis that the Dugard case “a unique and tragic character,” they were essentially taking the most cost-effective route in disposing of it. In a state crippled by budget problems, this isn’t necessarily unreasonable.

But it does introduce the unnerving task of determining what’s an appropriate amount of compensation for a victim of a terrible crime – one that will require, as the analysis pointed out, extensive counseling for Dugard and her daughters probably for the rest of their lives. It also noted that “Ms. Dugard’s daughters have received no formal education and neither is equipped to handle the academic or social challenges that school – and society — will pose, nor has Mrs. Dugard received any education since her abduction.”

In addition to helping victims live their lives and recover from their trauma in relative comfort – or at least with fewer financial burdens impeding their recovery – compensation awards of this nature are also intended to punish the state for failing to do its job. If Garrido had been monitored more closely, perhaps Dugard could have been found much sooner. Several senators touched on this concept indirectly this week during Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings when they chastised the court for not awarding victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill enough money in punitive damages, thereby not giving oil companies enough incentive to, ahem, clean up their acts and avoid future spills.

So where does Dugard’s award stack up with other notable California crime victims? It’s – rightly – much more than the$1.43 million awarded by the city of Los Angeles to Tennie Pierce, the black firefighter who filed suit after his co-workers laced his dinner with dog food, which he said was characteristic of the way minorities and women were treated within the department. In that case, too, officials agreed to pay because they were advised that a jury would award the victim a much larger sum.  The Roman Catholic church has agreed to pay several large settlements over the last decade to victims of priest abuse – including a $21 million payout by the Archdiocese of San Francisco (split among 15 victims), and a $100 million settlement agreed to by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange (split among 90 victims).

It is often said of awards to victims that no amount of money can make up for the psychological distress they’ve endured, or the amount of time with loved ones and experiencing life that they’ve lost. But here’s hoping that Dugard and her family can take the money from the state, and the support of well-wishers across the globe, and begin rebuilding happy, healthy lives for themselves – and that state workers charged with keeping ex-felons in line will remember that if the safety of children isn’t enough incentive to work painstakingly hard at their jobs, perhaps the threat of an enormous lawsuit is.

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Those who believe print media institutions to be out of touch, and unable to keep up with the frenetic pace of online news-gathering need only look to this Los Angeles Times story, which won’t be released in print until Sunday, which details the downfall of a once-promising young actress whom you might of heard of – Lindsay Lohan, only two or three years too late.

A decade ago, Lohan was considered one of the most talented young actresses of her generation. Her performances in teen comedies such as “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday” earned her comparisons to the likes of Jodie Foster.

The piece begins by revealing that months ago, Lohan was fired from a role in the movie “The Other Side.” But it’s certainly not the first time Lohan has had the film community distrustful of her – she was famously taken to the woodshed by the producer of the 2006 movie “Georgia Rule,” by the film’s producer, who threatened legal action against Lohan because of what he deemed “irresponsible and unprofessional” conduct and “heavy partying.”

Though Lohan is still attached to the film “Inferno,” about porn star Linda Lovelace, she spent a good deal of her time in Cannes – where she was supposed to be promoting the movie – partying, and eventually missed a court date in Los Angeles because she claimed to have lost her passport there.

Certainly Lohan’s legal troubles are ongoing, but they’re nothing new. Why the L.A. Times is choosing to frame them in a way that only now paints Lohan as a fallen angel – when her partying and destructive behavior have been the story of her life far longer than the up-and-coming young actress narrative – is bizarre, and comically overdue.

Accused Russian agent Anna Chapman

… That seems to be the message the Washington Post and other outlets are feeding us with their fawning profiles of Anna Chapman, who is part of a ring of 11 who have been accused of spying on behalf of the Russian government while leading normal lives in America – lives that included Facebook profiles (gasp!) and kids’ piano recitals.

One of the Post’s trademarks is writing offensive pieces about women under the guise that the articles were meant to be funny – the pinnacle example being Charlotte Allen’s “why are women such dumb bitches?” article. And perhaps the author (a woman) was aiming for hilarity in calling Chapman a “secret agent/Maxim model look-alike” and inexplicably including informative, substantive sentences like “Da, da, da!” (My ultimate favorite: when she unblinkingly describes Chapman as having a “head for business” but a “bod for sin.” Seriously.)

Certainly the possibility of the existence of a Russian spy ring – one that hid out in the open, with its members leading semi-public but still incredibly average lives – is newsworthy. As is the fact that one of them has become an Internet sensation thanks to her good looks. But reporting on a sensation, and feverishly joining the frenzy are two different things, particularly when the story involves issues of national security and international policy. But the Post brushes those things aside so flippantly, it actually declares that the scandal involving Chapman “sure beats a shoe bomber.”

Have we really lost our heads over a hot girl? Because honestly, we have plenty of those in America.

Now comes a real-life product that’s not far off: Designer Cynthia Rowley has partnered with Pampers to create a line of designer disposable diapers that will be sold at Target – featuring “pastels, stripes, madras and ruffles,” according to the New York Times.

While I’ve certainly enjoyed Target’s innovative designer partnerships in the past (their Libertine and Zac Posen lines have been especially amazing), this seems like a bit of an overstep. While the designs are probably intended to bring a little cheer to mothers who have the unfortunate task of changing diapers all day, but I would venture that a dirty diaper adorned with a kicky pattern or some fashionable ruffles still isn’t all that pleasant.

But that’s not even the point. With shows like “Toddlers in Tiaras” eerily forcing adulthood on kids earlier and earlier, I suppose it was only a matter of time before people attempted to make grown-up designs for infants. I certainly admit to demanding expensive clothes or rides to the mall from my parents since I began dressing myself, so I like to think that the period when I was still in diapers was maybe the only break my mom ever had from name brands and designers.