This brings up a point I often ponder: should the records of horrific criminals be cancelled? Consider the two extremes: A) artist is never played again, no more royalties are paid. Nobody gets to enjoy the music. B) the artist's estate is sold to a victims compensation trust, that collects, say, $4m/year that gets distributed to victims and charities. You still hear their song occasionally on the radio and gradually…
Afrika Bambaataa has died
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#62When I open up a famous author / musician / athlete's wikipedia page, it feels like it's a coin flip over whether there's some horrible thing they've done and largely gotten away with it.
I'm still upset about Neil Gaiman. I connected deeply with a lot of his work in my youth and now I don't know what to think...
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine scenarios where decent people in tough environments might be compelled to join a gang, rob, or even murder. That doesn’t make it ok, but it makes it at least understandable. I’m unable to imagine a reason why decent people might be compelled to rape children, let alone serially.
> decent people in tough environments ... murder You find an excuse for MURDER? You are definitely not a decent person.
I’m not talking about random “my neighbor disrespected me so I killed him” idiocy. Just saying, I can at least imagine situations where, even if he shouldn’t have done it, if I were in the jury, I’d probably vote to acquit. If you can’t, you are definitely not a decent person.
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#64Bambaataa was a serial sexual abuser and everybody in the rap scene knew it back in the day (early 90s) same way everyone knew about R. Kelly (I ran a rap program on the radio in 92-94).
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#65Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes it more understandable, but he lost a trial that said he was raping a child when he was 38 years old. Someone abused as a child who does sketchy things in their early 20s is tragic. Someone doing the same when they’re nearly 40 is a whole lot harder to dismiss. Like, you don’t make it to that age without hearing a lot of people along the way saying not to rape children.
Oh, please, don't think I'm making any excuses here .. but I was around and about the evidence management side of a five deep dive into institutional childhood abuse ... the various things that went down tend to explain a lot of early following behaviour once some kind of distance from early abuse is made. You're right to flag ongoing and persistent shitty behaviour as unacceptable - even assigning blame there gets p…
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> s3xual This is not TikTok. You can spell the word sexual without fear.
Is TikTok how the practice of censoring one's own swears came about? I've seen it on a lot of social posts and have been wondering. Besides it being hokey (why use the word to then immediately self-censor), it also instantly dates the poster as someone too new to the world to be able to make an interesting post. That last part is just an opinion, though.
That said I wouldn't even assume "s3xual" is a result of this. It smells of older censorship to me, all the new stuff is video-first, so phonetic substitutes are more characteristic.
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#68Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a reasonable question. All my information was third hand at best. We didn't play Bambaataa, R Kelly or Tupac (convicted rapist) records. That's about all a radio station could do. Can't state what legally speaking were merely rumors on the air without facing problems. All you can do is not support them commercially, which we did.
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If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Re: Afrika Bambaataa has died
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait and/or snark? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly; actually a rather shocking amount. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.