Losing her KOOL

Speaking of Lisa Madigan, as I did several posts down, another crusade of hers that ticks me off is her lawsuit against Kool cigarettes manufacturer Brown and Williamson for allegedly targeting youths with their hip-hop cigarettes.

She has a coalition of African-American and anti-smoking advocates arrayed on her side to protest the cigarettes as well as Brown and Willamson's sponsorship of a DJ contest on the north side.

This is all well and good. Certainly nobody should be marketing cigarettes to children. But the big question here is: why aren't these people at least as equally outraged at the mass-marketing of hip-hop to children?

These people gathered outside of a building where vulgar, sex-soaked music that advocates alcohol, drug use and violence towards men, women and children of all races is being marketed to young minorities and all they care about is the possibility that somebody might take up smoking? Give me a break.

Here's a gem from Chicago's most embarrassing pastor that sums it up:

We want to make it clear to them that we will not sit back and let Brown and Williamson or any other tobacco company, first of all, pervert true hip-hop -- this is not what hip-hop is about. Nor will we stand back and let them line their pockets over the dead bodies of our children," Michael Pfleger, parish priest of St. Sabina Catholic Church, told WLS-TV.

What on earth does he mean by "true hip-hop?" Maybe back in 1979 hip-hop was about cultural expression in such benign forms as graffiti, rapping, break-dancing and mixing (yes, I know the four elements - I know a lot more about hip-hop from days long past), but 25 years later, let's face the facts.

I have no doubt that these people really care about protecting children [except for Lisa Madigan - she's a glory hound whose daddy (Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan) revved up the whole power of the state Democrat machine to get her elected], but they are so incredibly wrong to protest a cigarette manufacturer instead of, say BET, MTV, Def Jam records or Jive or any of the other labels that daily exploit kids with a product that is far more destructive on an individual or societal level than all the tobacco in Virginia ever could be.