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Every February I am educated about dozens of impressive blacks of the past who, rightfully so, earned my respect by advancing science, healing the the sick, and creating Jazz, Rock, Swing, R&B and Gospel. And then I look around today, and see thugs making millions calling women "hoes" and getting shot because after becoming millionaires, they continue to hang with the same loosers and act like petty criminals.

I am appalled at my kids' infatuation with hip-hop. And it's not as though they've had no contact with good music. Before this they enjoyed a wide variety of music, and even liked gaelic and country music. I told them, look, these guys like to act like they're really tough guys and what do they do? They challenge each other to a poetry contest. I draw attention to the lack of melody, the lack of good rhythm, the lack of joy, the over-abundance of anger, the near-complete focus on self-gratification, the degradation of women (the lollipop song, for instance), the hand gestures and body language that look like a neurologically spastic condition, the use of third-world sweatshop labor to make clothing products pushed by the "artists," the way those wearing these clothes have to walk down the street holding the front of their pants to keep them from falling down but only end up looking like they can't keep their hands off their own dicks.

I pointed out that over the centuries hemlines and necklines have gone up and down, that there have been long pants and hip-hugger pants, shorts and short shorts, even pants with the butts cut out. The gamut has been run. The only thing left was to just wear the pants halfway pulled up or halfway pulled down but that that hadn't been done in all these centuries because it didn't look like being dressed, just halfway between getting dressed or undressed. That's not being in fashion; that's just being indeterminate.

So now we have an industry devoted to folks who can't sing, who cannot, for the most part, read music or actually play any musical instruments, who, for the the most part, cannot even rhyme very well, who choose a tent-like clothing ensemble that looks as though a five year old has raided his daddy's college sports wardrobe and his mother's box of costume jewelry, who sport expressions like they're bored, angry, depressed, or in the middle of a painful bowel movement, who choose names like Ludacris, Dr. Dooom, and Fannypack. How could we not expect their fashion sense to be equally defective?