It’s Admirable to Call Women B*tches? A Fisking of Althouse

I generally like Ann Althouse, but I think she went really wrong with this one.

So yesterday there was a rumor that Jay-Z had decided to stop using the word “b*tch” in his music, prompted by the birth of his daughter.  This was based on a poem he allegedly wrote which said:

Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich

I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch

I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it

Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it

Which kind-of sort-of indicates that he was swearing it off, and that led to an editorial in the Guardian which led to commentary by Althouse.  And then a while later, Rolling Stone reports that the whole thing as false (leading Althouse to update the story).  Of course one might suspect that Jay-Z was floating a trial balloon and when his fans reacted negatively, he decided to pretend he never said it, but really I am not interested in whether this story is true or not.  I am interested in Althouse’s reaction to it, before the Rolling Stone article came along dispelling the rumor.  So leaving out the update where she mentions the Rolling Stone article, she writes:

Now that he has a baby girl, Jay-Z will eschew the word "bitch."

Is that enough?

Is it even admirable? If you do something only when you've acquired a self-interest, it seems to me it would be more admirable to continue doing what you were doing before.

Now, I am not personally opposed to all uses of the word “b*tch.”  If someone really deserves it, I call them either a b*tch or a b*stard, depending on gender.  But Guardian commenter Tricia Rose has a pretty valid point when she says:

It is quite true that hip-hop has played a starring role in making sexist ideas sexy, visible and funky. Through the power of black music, style, swagger and lyrical creativity, Jay-Z and many other highly successful rappers (e.g, Snoop Dog, 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne) have expanded the visibility and value of aggressively sexist lyrics. And, frankly, if you want to find openly celebrated sexism against black women, there is no richer contemporary source than commercial, mainstream hip-hop.

This hasn't happened because commercially powerful artists have randomly or dutifully dropped a sexist word here or there to punctuate an infectious beat. Whole identities in countless songs rely on excessively sexist behaviour and name-calling to define the protagonist's power and importance.

So let’s pretend that he really did decide to do this (even though he denied it later).  We still have Althouse stepping in and suggesting that he was doing this out of “self-interest.”

Well, now is that exactly right?  I mean he doesn’t personally benefit from this conduct—instead his daughter does.  So that is a dubious definition of self-interest.  I think there are lots of parents who consider themselves selfless when they give up something for their children.  But that is a forgivable error—it suggests that in Althouse’s mind she identifies so much with the good of her children that she considers their interests to be her “self-interest.”  But she is technically wrong.

The deeper error is that she discounted the possibility of a real change in heart.  It is hardly a new story to have a man witness the miracle of childbirth and for him to become a deeper person at that moment.  Some lessons in life, you can only learn by experience.

(Which apparently Jay-Z now is claiming he didn’t learn.  Again that returns me to the trial balloon theory—maybe he didn’t want to be that image anymore and was looking for a graceful way to leave it behind.)

And all of this is an example of how Ann Althouse is in many respects a leftist, although a moderate one.  It is fashionable chiefly on the left these days to pretend that the worst sin that a person could commit is to be a hypocrite.  So she thinks it is more admirable to be a consistent pig than to hypocritically stop being one out of the “self-interest” of having a daughter.  It’s a product of moral relativism which I dissected in an old post at Patterico’s.  As I wrote there:

Imagine if you asked Dr. [Martin Luther] King whose soul was more likely to be condemned by God.  Thomas Jefferson, a slave holder who hypocritically gave this nation a universal charter of freedom?  Or the slave holder who consistently maintained that slavery was right?  Thomas Jefferson couldn’t find the moral strength to stop owning slaves, but at least he made sure everyone understood that what he was doing was evil and it should not be followed.  Obviously the best option is for a person to be a consistent advocate of freedom..., but if that isn’t one of your choices, isn’t Jefferson’s hypocrisy preferable?

Likewise, I don’t think that Jay-Z should necessarily stop saying the word b*tch altogether, but if he could just stop being such a pig, and maybe even teach the impressionable young men who listen to him to show more respect for women, that’s a good thing, even if it is hypocritical.

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