Word: cop
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This defense is self-contradictory. Frankie and Johnny does not pretend to have a political "message" that must be "heeded." If Cop Killer has a message, it is that the murder of policemen is a justified response to police brutality. And not in self-defense, but in premeditated acts of revenge against random cops. ("I know your family's grievin...
...company's second defense of Cop Killer is the classic one of free expression: "We stand for creative freedom. We believe that the worth of what an artist or journalist has to say does not depend on preapproval from a government official or a corporate censor...
...another genuine dilemma. Whatever the actual merits of Cop Killer, if Time Warner withdraws the album now the company will be perceived as giving in to outside pressure. That is a disastrous precedent for a global conglomerate...
...Time-Warner merger of 1989 was supposed to produce corporate "synergy": the whole was supposed to be more than the sum of the parts. The Cop Killer controversy is an example of negative synergy. People get mad at Cop Killer and start boycotting the movie Batman Returns. A reviewer praises Cop Killer ("Tracy Marrow's poetry takes a switchblade and deftly slices life's jugular," etc.), and TIME is accused of corruption instead of mere foolishness. Senior Time Warner executives find themselves under attack for -- and defending -- products of their company they neither honestly care for nor really understand...
Anyway, it's absurd to discuss Cop Killer as part of the "confrontation of ideas" -- or even as an authentic anguished cry of rage from the ghetto. Cop Killer is a cynical commercial concoction, designed to titillate its audience with imagery of violence. It merely exploits the authentic anguish of the inner city for further titillation. Tracy Marrow is in business for a buck, just like Time Warner. Cop Killer is an excellent joke on the white establishment, of which the company's anguished apologia ("Why can't we hear what rap is trying to tell us?") is the punch...