| | McCain endorser blends reggaeton with 'gangsta rap'
Update at bottom: Michelle Malkin slams 'pathetic McCain pander'A couple of decades ago, "hip to be square" could work in a presidential campaign. Not any more.
"On Monday morning the Republican candidate got some new Gasolina when he appeared with reggaeton star Daddy Yankee at Central High School in Phoenix, Arizona," Jordan Levin reports for the Miami Herald.
The article continues, "The choice of Central High School, whose students are three-quarters Latino, in a state where immigration has been an especially contentious issue, seemed clearly calculated to boost McCain's profile in a population that could be key in several battleground states."
Yankee was giving the 71-year-old McCain a generational boost, exciting squealing high school students as he offered his endorsement, according to the Associated Press.
"I believe in his ideals and his proposals," Yankee said. "He's been a fighter for the Hispanic community. He's been a fighter for the immigration issue."
While it notes that reggaeton music can be "raunchy," the Herald, along with other media outlets such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, neglected to mention Yankee's multiple collaborations with gangsta rap artists, songs that include murder boasts, racial epithets, and misogynistic slurs.
"Gangsta Zone" with controversial hip hop star Snoop Dogg, a former drug dealer who once famously beat a murder rap, was the second single released from Daddy Yankee's 2005 record, and the video was shot in a barrio in Puerto Rico.
In the song, Snoop tackles his usual subjects: guns, women and gangsters.
"I let em know I bust a hoe," Snoop raps.
Snoop also lets loose with a "nigga," a "muthafucka," plus one "tell ya bitch to come here."
 "Gangsta Zone" isn't the only gangsta rap song featuring Daddy Yankee. The McCain supporter sings "the sound of the niggaz is a universal language" in his duet "Bring it On" with the Senegalese-American hip hop artist Akon who adds, "I got my nigga and my gun we open fire, You better get out of my way coz I'm a rider." Yankee has also released songs with other harder edged rappers like Lil Jon, Paul Wall and members of 50 Cent's G-Unit.
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has been hit with a barrage of criticism in the press due to his endorsements from rappers such as Jay-Z and Kanye West.
Frank James, in a blog for the Baltimore Sun, criticized Obama after he appeared to mimic a gesture from a popular rap video.
"Is it hypocritical for Obama to use a gesture from a rap star whose lyrics are so 'street' they can't be reproduced in a blog meant for a general audience, whose lyrics amount to the type Obama has criticized in the past as demeaning to African Americans and women?" James asked. "Indeed, the 'Dirt Off Your Shoulder' lyrics repeatedly include the N-word."
MTV News recently asked, "Can hip-hop support Obama without hurting his campaign?"
The network reported that "hip-hop's embrace is a mixed blessing — politically, anyway — for the candidate, as the media firestorm over Ludacris' mixtape freestyle about Obama showed dramatically. Luda's lyrical jabs at Hillary Clinton, John McCain and George Bush were vilified by some media outlets, leading Obama's camp to issue a statement saying Luda 'should be ashamed' of his words."
Rapper Scarface told MTV, "[Rappers] need to be quiet, super quiet on Barack. All it takes is for a mutha----er getting out there being real [ghetto] and people will be like, 'We don't wanna f--- with Obama'; they'll wanna smash on him because of what somebody else said. [Someone] speaks for himself and its Barack's fault? What did Luda say — that's Barack's fault? Is it Barack's fault what I'm saying? I don't wanna be the reason he don't get [the presidency]!"
The Associated Press's Errin Haines concurred, saying that the Ludacris controversy "points up the dilemma facing the nation's potential first black president, who wants the support of the influential hip-hop community but needs to steer clear of the controversy so commonly associated with its music."
Similarly, at the Washington Post, J. Freedom du Lac wrote that hip-hop's "continuing lightning-rod status" and "long history as a cultural wedge issue," makes it so "Obama can't love them back -- at least not unconditionally."
Conservative columnist Evan Gahr referred to rappers as "Obama's Other Jeremiah Wrights," and opined, "Although the media has finally exposed Barack Obama's ties to the unhinged pastor his support from rappers who propagate equally pernicious nonsense has gone almost entirely unnoticed."
"Have any rappers donated to his campaign? Will he return the money? Why has he not renounced support from rappers? Is this going to take 20 years like it did with Reverend Wright?" Gahr asked.
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly has waged a long crusade against gangster rap on his network, and he has also taken Obama to task over his "rap posse."
"Having a thug like Ludacris anywhere near your campaign is not a good thing, and Obama knows it," O'Reilly wrote a few weeks ago in his syndicated column.
A user at the New York Times website complained about a "double standard" in coverage.
"Ludacris is a gangsta’ rapper but Daddy Yankee, whose lyrics are equally misogynistic and violent, is a musician. Senator Obama NEVER accepted the endorsement of Ludaris or any other rapper, but the mear mention of his name by them is met with blaring headlines from the MSM. Why the double standard? Because McCain is old? Because he’s white like most of the media?" blogged Dawn.
While not technically a gangster rapper, Daddy Yankee can sometimes talk like one.
In an interview posted at LatinRapper.com, Daddy Yankee dissed other rappers for not being real gangsters. "In reality I don't worry about that 'cause I'm really sure that all of those rappers that diss me aint gangsters (laughs), you understand? I don't worry about none of them, cause I know none of them are gangsters, and none of them are gonna do anything to me cause they know I'm a boss."
This video is from CNN.com, broadcast August 25, 2008.
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This video is from YouTube, broadcast August 25, 2008.
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Michelle Malkin slams 'pathetic McCain pander'
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin was less than pleased by the McCain campaign's embracement of the Daddy Yankee endorsement.
At her blog, Malkin blasted it as "another pathetic McCain pander."
"Can someone, anyone, in the McCain camp stop him from self-immolation?" Malkin asks. "Can the open-borders GOP establishment drive a bigger wedge between the conservative base and the GOP ticket?"
Malkin mocks McCain citing an attack ad his campaign issued against Obama: "Celeb-u-pocrisy, anyone?"
Some commenters at Malkin's blog agreed that this was a major gaffe by the McCain campaign, and they were particularly irked because Yankee has also been an "outspoken critic of immigration enforcement."
"Daddy Yankee has also recorded with and performed live with Akon and uses the N word in almost all of his songs," one commenter complained.
Another one wrote, "Performing with Snoop dogg should have raised a few eyebrows with his advisors, that scumbag was arrested here in the valley not long ago on gun and dope charges."
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